Fewer Vic grads on the dole

Things may be looking up for Victoria University students and graduates looking for work.

The number of jobs available through Student Job Search has increased over the last few months, in keeping with a national trend.

A Labour Department report shows a 9.5 per cent increase in total job vacancies advertised online in the three months to the end of March 2010.

The unemployment rate has plunged unexpectedly from more than 7 per cent to 6 per cent in the March quarter, specifically among young men.

The number of people unemployed dropped by 25,000 during the quarter, while the number of people employed grew by 22,000.

Usually in the March quarter, temporary Christmas holiday jobs and seasonal farm work fade away and unemployment increases, says Statistics NZ.

The number of skilled job vacancies in Wellington advertised online has increased by 12.7 per cent in the same period, a hopeful sign for dispirited Victoria graduates.

Victoria University graduate John Owen left university in 2009 with an LLB and a BA in Religious Studies. He found the economic climate a difficult one to graduate into: “The normal job hunting websites were pretty bereft of opportunities compared to when I was idly looking around while I was doing my degree.

“Competing with skilled people who had suffered redundancy as well as the latest crop of graduates for the few advertised positions meant it was a pretty tough market to stand out in,” he said.

While on the rise, there are still fewer jobs available to students through Student Job Search compared with this time last year.

The amount of unemployed people aged 20–24 increased by 11,000 to reach 27,400 in the year leading up to December 2009. The flow-on effect for tertiary students is increased competition, Student Job Search reports.

“There is more competition for those jobs that tertiary students would usually fill, such as part-time, casual and summer roles. Student Job Search lists jobs for tertiary students only, which helps cut down on that competition.”

Nationally, job vacancies advertised online are still below the levels seen before the recession, the Labour Department study reports.

However, the report is optimistic: “The consistent increase in advertised vacancies over the last nine months is a positive indicator that the labour market is strengthening.”

Vacancies advertised online have increased by 23.1 per cent since the recessionary low of June last year, Employment Minister Paula Bennett said in April.

“It’s a positive sign in a labour market that, while weak, is still showing signs of hope,” she said.

Student Job Search is focused on helping students gain skills, work experience, graduate career opportunities and financial freedom by giving students friendly advice, helping them find work that fits around their study, and by reducing competition around employment. You can register online at www.sjs.co.nz.

Disruption to Wellington rail services and inaccurate bus timetabling are making it difficult for Victoria University students to get to lectures on time.

Students who rely on the bus service to get to university are unhappy with the discrepancy between timetabled information and the actual arrival time of buses.

An hour at the Kelburn campus bus stop at midday on Monday 15 March saw buses often arriving between 3 and 9 minutes late.

Victoria University student Sabina Kaminski-Pritchett has missed lectures because of the unreliable service. “Often the number 18 just doesn’t show up and there have been a couple of times when I have waited and two in a row haven’t come, or come 20 minutes late—useless.”

Students are also affected by the $500 million upgrade to Wellington’s rail network that has been in process for over a year, and will not be completed for at least another.

The construction required to upgrade a rail infrastructure neglected by its previous Australian owners has caused frequent and serious disruption to the service.

In July 2009 two trains collided with steel structures that were constructed prematurely, delaying trains for thousands of passengers. In February this year a train hit an overhanging power line, affecting the service for three days and again leaving thousands of commuters stranded or late for school or work.

Less serious incidents have been frequent, with passengers reporting lengthy delays and dissatisfaction with the bus replacements.

Victoria University student Miriam Kavermann travels frequently to Masterton and is unhappy with paying the same price as a rail ticket for a bus journey that takes 30 minutes longer.“It’s fucking expensive.”

A 2009 survey of 750 Wellington residents conducted by Metlink revealed that 95 per cent of those questioned believed that reliability is the key issue for public transport users. The same survey revealed that only 54 per cent of the group found public transport in Wellington reliable.

Peter Glensor, Chair of Greater Wellington’s Transport and Access Committee, states on the Metlink website that “Major changes are underway but unfortunately they will not happen overnight. Real time information is well and truly on the way; we are about to sign a contract with a supplier to design and introduce a Real Time Information system. This will tell people, via display screens, mobile phones and the internet, when their next bus or train is actually due.”

These changes will be welcomed by Sabrina Kaminski-Pritchett. “Obviously a girl doesn’t want to WALK up and ruddy up her complexion!”

If you use public transport and find yourself sitting at the bus stop during an exam, you need to get in contact with your Faculty Student Administration Office. If you miss an in-class test you need to contact your course coordinator. Contact details for the individual faculties are online at www.vuw.ac.nz.

When I was a little girl, I quite fancied the idea of becoming a nun. I thought the nuns looked like pretty little penguins in their habits, and liked the idea of pottering about in an abbey garden, minding the lambs and tending the vegetable patch.

I suppose I gave up on the idea when puberty hit. Suddenly boys seemed more important than piety, and life became complicated by the pursuit of that sweet little thing we call the orgasm.

I’ll never forget my first one. I awoke from what I can only assume was a sexy dream to find that a strange and rather wonderful sensation was flooding through my body. It was as if my vagina was giving me a gentle reprimand, saying “Jules, look what I can do. Look what you’ve been missing.”

By this time, the boys in my class had been dicussing masturbation explicitly for months. If everything they said was true, I was sharing a classroom with fifteen fully-fledged porn addicts. Masturbation seemed to dominate their thoughts, and as they couldn’t exactly do it right there in Social Studies, they settled for regaling us with detailed accounts of their solo sexual adventures. Strangely, us girls kept quiet. I like to think that this was because we had a bit of an edge on the maturity front, rather than because we were restricted by old-school notions of female propriety.

Our discretion didn’t last long. Flash forward a few years, and the talk of the common room was this cool new thing called sex. I ended up giving it a go just to see what all the fuss was about. I was bitterly dissapointed at my findings—he had evidently never heard of foreplay, and in his years of studying the vagina online, he seemd to have failed to notice the prescence of a clitoris. Still, I don’t pretend that I was particularly good myself—I imagine that my bemusement at the whole situation rather took away from the passion of the moment.

I’ve since enjoyed a rather healthy sex life, until now that is. I am currently in a period of imposed celibacy, enforced by my fractured spine, which tells me off for far less althletic movements than those required during sex. In a moment of sheer desperation, I called my boyfriend for a round of good old fashioned phone sex. Unfortunately, it went a little like this:

Him: What are you doing?
Me: I’m sitting on the couch, reading. What are you doing?
Him: I’m sitting on the bed with my laptop.
Me: Are you looking at porn?
Him: Nah, I’m studying up on Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation. What are you wearing?
Me: Oh, it’s super cold so I’ve popped my dad’s old jumper over my pyjamas. You?
Him: Just jeans and a tee-shirt. Are you wearing underwear?
Me: Yup. You?
Him: Yeah. Umm. Are you touching yourself?
Me: No! My dad is in the next room and could come in any minute! You?
Him: No, but I am finding Baudrillard very stimulating.
Me: Do you have an erection?
Him: Intellectually stimulating, Juliet.
Me: Oh.

Okay, so we’re not phone sex people. If I’m honest, I knew that it would never work. I call a spade a spade and a vagina a vagina, and euphemism are an essential part of phone sex. I could never bring myself to say, in the words of Kate Winslet, “I’m aching for your big purple-headed womb ferret”. Text sex is even less appealing to me. I hate text language, making it a rather labourious process, and one with far too much room for misunderstanding.

Me: Ur sexy. Im lyng n bd thnkng bout u x
Him: I don’t know what you just said. ‘I’m lying in bed with a bout of flu’?
Me: You have the flu? I’m sorry to hear that!

Sigh, I seem to have exhausted my options. Maybe I’ll enter a convent over summer. Who needs sex anyway? If The Sound of Music is anything to go by, there’s plenty of fun to be had without it.

And Fox-lox said: “Come along with me, and I will show you the way.” But Fox-lox took them into the fox’s hole, and he and his young ones soon ate up poor Chicken-licken, Hen-len, Cock-lock, Duck-luck, Drake-lake, Goose-loose, Ganderdander,and Turkey-lurkey; and they never saw the King to tell him that the sky had fallen.

The unfortunate demise of Chicken-licken was my favourite bedtime tale when I was a kid. For those of you who haven’t read it, it’s a story about a chicken who decides that the sky must be falling when an acorn lands on his head. He wanders about the forest, gathering a group of friends to help him make the journey to tell the King. A fox eats them before they get there. The end.

This sick little story taught little Juliet Buckler some very important lessons. Firstly, it taught me not to jump to fucking stupid conclusions. Chances are, the sky isn’t falling—it’s probably just an acorn. Secondly, it taught me not to be naive enough to trust a hungry fox—or anyone, really. Thirdly, and most importantly, it taught me that shit happens. Life isn’t all Harry Potter defeats Dumbledore and has three cute kids with Ginny. Sometimes things go super wrong.

Five weeks ago I arrived in Christchurch to visit my parents for a week. Four weeks ago I fell into a big hole and broke my back. Two weeks ago I had some hip bone and metal grafted onto my spine. Today I went to the mall and bought some cute socks (irrelevant, but jolly).

There are definite perks in my situation. I had to quit uni and can’t work, so the government is paying me to sit about all day, chain-smoking and reading pornographic historical fiction. I don’t even have to stand up in the shower anymore—they gave me a stool. They also gave me an odd little contraption that looks like a bionic arm to save me bending down to pick things up. I mainly use it to dangle my underwear in front of my mother’s face as she tries to do the dishes.

I’ve accepted the fact that my life is going to be a bit shit for a while. The last twenty-one years have been relatively incident free, so I figure that it’s my turn for a bit of hardship. The thing that is getting tedious, though, is the insistence of my well-wishers on telling me twenty times each day how lucky I am.

It could’ve been a hell of a lot worse, sure. Give me a few weeks and I’ll be breakdancing again, sans wheelchair. In fact, I spent last night drinking wine in bed with old friends—I can’t be that ill. But as far as I’m concerned, falling into a hole mid-wee, knickers down, isn’t a stroke of luck. Winning $2 from an instant Kiwi is good luck. Being asked the only essay question you studied for is good luck. Not falling into the hole is good luck.

It’s cute, I guess, this blind positivity, this obsession with happy endings. It’s like everyone wants reassurance that I like having a broken back, that I consider myself quite lucky to have been given the opportunity to learn traits like patience and compassion.

I don’t, overall, like having a broken back. I do, however, like to grumble about it. Everybody likes to grumble. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t be so obsessed about talking about the weather. We wouldn’t have funerals. We wouldn’t go to work hungover. In fact, I bet if we didn’t like complaining so much people wouldn’t go to work at all.

But the one time I get something really juicy to complain about, an excuse to wince and moan every time I make the slightest movement, people aren’t letting me. Instead, they look at me with these wide, expecting eyes until I crack and say something like “Yeah, I’m so lucky. Like, I could’ve broken my arms too.”

I’ll bet that Chicken-licken, Hen-len, Cock-lock, Duck-luck, Drake-lake, Goose-loose, Ganderdander,and Turkey-lurkey complained and protested as they saw their friends being savaged and eaten. And who could blame them?

At least it was a quick death, I guess.

I’ve been working on my grumpy look for years. I wrinkle my nose, pout, and frown so hard that my eyebrows obstruct my vision. I wedge earphones into my ears, blasting music that I don’t even like. I get absorbed in dark little fantasies, imagining that the bus I’m on suddenly explodes, or that anthrax starts snowing down from the ceiling of my lecture theatre. I look, in my mind, rather like a thoroughly disgruntled troll.

“That’s a big book.” Oh God. A slimy-haired businessman is sliding into the seat next to me. The bus is half empty! I grimace; “Sure is, I’ve got a test in ten minutes and I’ve really got to finish this play.” I shuffle as far away from him as I can and get back to my book. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I see him peering at the cover. Here we go again. “Shakespeare” he says. I don’t reply. “Shakespeare” he says again, a little louder. I narrow my eyes and say “Yup”.

“Do you know that Shakespeare invented the word ‘lonely’?” he asks, poor sod. I feel a little guilty as I slam the book closed, push past him, and move into a spare seat two rows ahead.

The test goes okay. I’m on the bus home, in a slightly better mood this time. I can’t help looking at the man sitting opposite me. He looks like a crazy scientist, with a thick white beard that rivals Dumbledore’s (yeah, I know him).

He smiles, leans forward, and says “Do you know that the universe is expanding at a speed that is faster than the speed of light?” I was right! He tells me that he works as a hydraulic technician. Sounds impressive. He looks chuffed as I show vague interest and ask for more information. “I fix buses,” he says.

He talks to me about space from the bus station to the basin reserve. I can’t work out whether he’s actually making sense or if he’s using fake words to try to impress me. I literally have no idea what he’s saying, and I’m starting to get annoyed. My nods become less enthusiastic, and I end up staring out of the window. I’m pretty sure that he’s oblivious to the fact that I’m no longer listening.

“Do you like Star Trek?” he asks, making his space talk seem somewhat less reliable. “No,” I say, trying as hard as I can to look like a kid who can smell something disagreeable. Undeterred, he proceeds to summarise the entire storyline for me, unaware that his babbling is falling on deaf ears.

Despite my best efforts to appear sociopathic, there is something about me that seems to invite odd people to vomit strange words all over me. I have friends who like getting into long conversations with total strangers, but I don’t understand why. Chances are, if a person is so lonely that they try to strike up a conversation with a stranger at a bus stop, there is some-thing seriously wrong with them.

Bollocks to this happy clappy, let’s be nice to everyone business. I’m trying to have a cigarette in peace.

I broke my back last week. I wish I had broken it doing something cool, like falling out of a plane and narrowly escaping death, or rescuing septuplets from a burning building, but I didn’t. I fell in a big hole, actually. It’s been a shitty week, but I’m past the worst. This came, incidentally, when I realised after a bathroom trip that my boyfriend was going to have to pull my underwear up for me.

I don’t know if it’s the morphine, but over the last few days I have seen some light in my situation. See, for the next two months, I am to don a silver back brace, one that makes me look rather like a turtle with its shell on the wrong way. Being in so much pain has taken my grumpy look to a whole new level—I can snarl harder than I ever could before, and I’m pretty much permanently frowning. On top of all of this, I’m pretty sure sponge baths aren’t as thorough as showering, and I haven’t looked in a mirror for a week. I can’t see many whackos approaching me now I’m an angry, smelly, indestructible ninja turtle.

Oh God, I’m one of them. A smelly hag wearing a bullet proof vest, my knickers at my ankles. I hope someone on the bus will talk to me. I’m so lonely.

If justice is a glass of milk, then revenge is a Singapore Sling—sweet, poisonous, and best served cold. Sure, justice is sweet, but revenge is sweeter.

I had my first taste of revenge at a very early age. Tiffany Marshall was a first class bitch; pure evil in the form of a little freckled five-year-old. So evil, in fact, that she broke the unsaid, though widely understood playground rule; that you never take advantage of a girl hanging from the monkey bars. There I was, my leggings (oh, the nineties) around my ankles, exposed to the taunting eyes of my classmates. To seek justice would have involved reliving my story to my teacher and parents, which I was not about to do. No, I had to act alone, and it had to hurt.

I waited a couple of weeks, my resentment towards her growing as fast as the list of my cruel, bottom-related nicknames. Blind-man’s Bluff is a game of trust, foolish girl. “Keep walking,” I cackled, as I saw her disappear over a ledge into a bush, meters below. I’ll bet she still has a bump on her head.

I watched in horror and admiration as a friend of mine served a long, cool glass of revenge to a party-crasher in her house this weekend. A stranger had stepped in front of poor Isobel as she passed into the kitchen, looking her up and down, his eyes lingering a little too long on her chest, before purring “that’s a fiiine piece of ass”. Who says that? Isobel let out an indignant grunt and pushed her way past, willing to let this one slide. Undeterred by Isobel’s coolness, or perhaps mistaking her grunt for one of sexual frustration, the said stranger decided that it was time to get a little more physical. He grabbed her bottom.

I do hate having my bottom grabbed. My reaction is usually to give the offending male a good old-fashioned kick in the shins, but Isobel had a better idea—she got pissy, literally. She stormed to the bathroom, peed in a glass, and left it on the windowsill to cool. “Would you like a drink?”

See, there are some situations in which justice does not suffice. This guy needed to learn his lesson, before his slimy little fingers pinched any other innocent Wellingtonian bottoms. I hope that every time he reaches out for a little feel, he tastes Isobel’s urine at the back of his throat.

Vengeful? Yes. Always.

My boyfriend’s first taste of revenge highlights the reason that same-sex schools should be disestablished, involving, as one would expect, a pie, a porno, and a tampon. A poor boy left a half-eaten pie on the table as he went off to take a phone call at his house, and Kim, always the opportunist, decided that it was time to take punitive action. He put a tomato sauce-stained tampon in the boy’s pie, and waited for the boy to take a bite. When to boy pulled the (seemingly blood-stained) tampon out of his mouth Kim, to add insult to injury, informed him that he had found it in his mother’s bedside rubbish bin. “In my defence,” he says, “my victim had once played a porn video (in which a man stuck his entire head into some poor girl’s vagina) to our fourth-form geography class when the relief teacher failed to turn up.” Boys.

When my flatmate Daniel got turned down by a girl who he had asked to the school dance, he took a rather unusual course of action, deciding to punish her rather than woo her. He climbed on the science block roof, armed with a video camera and a bag of frozen rats that he had stolen from the science department. As his friend filmed, he tied the rats up with string and lowered them onto his crush’s head. How could she have refused such a gentleman?

I’ve never been much good at maths, but my mother did at least make sure that I understand the most useful equations: Wrong + Wrong = Right, and Eye=Eye, Tooth=Tooth. She explained the concepts to me as she told me about being rejected whilst on a date with a man called Steven. Grabbing his arm, she wrestled the watch off his wrist and dunked it straight into his pint of beer.

“There’s an old proverb,” she said. “Revenge is a dish which people of taste prefer to eat cold.”

Correction: In my last article, I accidently wrote that “the word ‘fuck’ officially appeared first in a poem written around 1500, way before the Bible was written”. It should, of course, have read; “the word ‘fuck’ officially appeared first in a poem written around 1500, way after the Bible was written”. The Bible is, like, super old. I have apologised to the author (J.K. Rowling), and would apologise to God, except that I’m not so sure that He even exists.

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
—Philip Larkin, 1971.

I’m quite lucky, I think, in that my parents’ most major fuck-up was sorted out pretty much as soon as I hit nursery school. I was a cute little kid—before my chubby stage hit I was blonde, pigtailed and blue-eyed. Detracting slightly from my angelic appearance, however, was the fact that by the time I was four, I was expertly using just about every mummy-effing swear word in the book.

My parents forgot, somewhere along the way, to tell us kids that it’s not socially acceptable to mutter “fuck it” if you hit a snake during a game of Snakes and Ladders. So, after four years of living in a profane household, I was (not literally, of course) “fuck”-ing and “shit”-ting all over the place.

They were smart, those Bermudian nursery school teachers. Every time I swore, a cake of soap would be held out in front of me until I poked my tongue out and gave it a tiny, reluctant lick. This technique seems a little dated, unkind even, but I swear that every time I “fuck” or “shit” these days I get a faint taste of soap in the back of my mouth. Again, please do not take me literally here.

I’m no longer confronted with a bar of soap when I curse, but I have noticed that a few students seem to have taken offence to the occasional coarseness of the writing in this magazine. I swear as naturally, and almost as frequently, as I breathe, so I’ve decided it’s about time I sit down and have a good think about what I’m actually saying when I use the word ‘fuck’.

‘Fuck’ has always been my favourite profanity, mainly because of its versatility.

“Fuckety fuck! The fucking fucker’s fucked!” is a kick-ass way of saying ‘Oh dear, the bloody idiot is in big trouble’. The word ‘fuck’ literally means, according to the OED, ‘an act of sexual intercourse’. There’s no reason that us new-age kids should be offended or affronted by someone exclaiming the word “sex”, even those who think it’s sacred (like me, Dad).

Of course, there’s more to it than that. Whilst when we say “I fucked John Smith last night” it means “I had sex with John Smith last night”, ‘fucked’ is also used to imply that something is destroyed or defiled; “My computer is fucked”. As Wiki-too-lazy-to-actually-research-pedia points out, linking sex and destruction is bad. Bad and ridiculous. But now we enter that age-old debate about whether the prolific usage of the word ‘fuck’ is enough for us to justifiably say that its meaning is no longer offensive. I am absolutely in the ‘don’t use the word gay as an insult’ boat, but I am a keen advocate of the word ‘fuck’. It is less offensive to me because our society does not so overtly objectify people who have sex; in fact, most of us are pretty fond of it.

Some people don’t like words like ‘fuck’ for religious reasons, but for you guys, I’ve found a loophole. Sure, the Bible makes it quite obvious that cursing is wrong—Peter 3:10 declares, “For, whoever would love life and see good days must keep his tongue from evil and his lips from deceitful speech”. Everyone in cyberspace, however, seems to agree that the word ‘fuck’ officially appeared first in a poem written around 1500, way before the Bible was written. So it totally doesn’t count.

Offensiveness and literal meanings aside, boy does a good ‘fuck’ feel great. The harsh ‘k’ sound at the end has a kick to it that ‘golly’ will never have, and the naughty feeling it gives me when I use it in a public place reminds me of the days when I would sneak out at night to meet my friends at the local park.

Fuck it. ‘Fuck’ is a fucking great word. And shitting fuck, ‘shit’ is too. Urgh. Soap. I have to stop—my saliva is starting to lather.

Gaydar:
n—informal humorous
the putative ability to recognise that a person is homosexual intuitively or by means of very slight indications.

Slight indications? Shit, then I guess alarm bells should have sounded as soon as I saw his bedroom. A red feather boa framed the Cabaret poster on his wall, and there was a little pile of fashion books on his bedside table. We got up and straightened our hair together. It was as if he was screaming at me, “Juliet, I’m gay but I don’t want to tell you. JUST LOOK AROUND”.

I fell in crush with Lou on my first day at my new high school. The dean’s address was lost on me—all I could hear were Lou’s snarky witticisms and my own loud, pervy internal monologue.

We went to a pretty crappy school. Big, scary boys would light the rubbish bins on fire most lunchtimes, and girls would actually smoke in the bathrooms (a cliché act of rebellion that I had previously only seen in trashy teen films). In short, Cashmere High School was not the place to come out.

Luka was in the closet, and I quite happily climbed in with him. And bloody hell did we have fun in there. We missed six weeks worth of classes that year, mostly because we were at my house watching Sailor Moon. When we were in class, we were unbearable. We would roll around the floor in the back of the class, alternating baby talk with raunchy sex noises. We had matching t‑shirts, and more catch phrases than NCEA credits. The relationship ran its course, and a few months later I met a new boy, Henry.

I guess alarm bells should have sounded when I saw The Male Nude on top of a stack of books on his bedside table. Still my gaydar didn’t bleep. No, it stayed quite silent until the very day that Henry and Luka started dating. It’s always weird to see your ex-boyfriend with a new partner. It’s always lovely to see two friends fall in love. Seeing two of your ex-boyfriends falling in love is like someone fucking you slightly too hard—great, if a little painful.

Having good gaydar isn’t the ability to determine somebody’s sexual preference from a person’s tastes and actions. If we ruled out every Wellington boy who conforms to banal gay stereotypes, there wouldn’t be many fish left in the sea.

A person with good gaydar does, however, at least need to understand that not everyone they meet wants to have sex with them. This is where I run into problems. As a deeply narcissistic girl, every time I am approached by anyone of the opposite sex, I assume that they are as in love with me as I am myself.

Trouble is, they very rarely are. They’re talking to me because they want a cigarette. They’re talking to me because they want to know if they have a chance with my hot friend. They’re talking to me because they mistook me for someone they know and feel awkward just walking away. They’re talking to me because I’m right there when their ex-girlfriend walks in. And yet, time and time again, I end up flirting outrageously with a lost cause, whether it’s a boy who is in love with my ex-boyfriend, a boy who is in love with himself, or a boy who is just standing next to me to make himself look taller.

I remember a friend of mine exclaiming once, “I’ve never been dumped”, a proclamation that was not well received by us other mere mortals in the room. Being rejected or dumped is bad for the self-esteem, but it does keep my brobdingnagian ego in check. My mother told me once that I’m destined to be left at the altar. But hey, after a few more years of hitting on the wrong men, at least it won’t be much of a surprise.

The landfills are overflowing. The hole in the ozone layer is getting bigger. Let’s talk about clothes.

So I fell in love with a dress last week. I’m talking true love. I love this dress more than I love Harry Potter. I love this dress more than I loved my pet rabbit Christmas (RIP). Hell, I love this dress more than I love my own mother. I can’t have the bloody dress, of course—the left sleeve costs as much as my booklist three times over. But this hasn’t stopped me visiting it every day, obsessively thinking about it, and telling everyone I know about it. I was put on this earth to wear that dress. It is perfection.

My mother and I had a long conversation about ‘the dress’ over dinner, as my father and the boyfriend exchanged bemused glances. My mother quickly wiped the smug grim off poor Kim’s face when she asked, “So, you would have asked Juliet out if she was wearing a big old hole-ridden polar-fleece?” He should, of course, have chimed in with something like “Of course I would have—even though I had barely talked to her I could tell that she was a nice young woman”, but he couldn’t seem to get the words out. “I guess not”, was his supremely smooth reply.

I admire his honesty. You see, to admit that we judge people on the basis of what they wear is to expose ourselves as shallow. Surely the only function of clothes should be to protect us from the weather? But why, then, do I ache for that dress? Why have I been dreaming of that autumny metallic print ever since I laid eyes on it? Why have I been considering a one-night Vivian Street excursion in order to get the money together to buy it?

It’s not that I think I’ll be happier wearing it. It’s not that I think it will make me feel more confident, sexier. No, it’s envy that I’m after. I want to walk into a party and see my friend’s eyes narrow in desperate longing. I want to meet the Queen on the street and make her look down at her own shabby outfit in disgust. Good Lord, I need that dress.
So I’m shallow, judgemental, and can sometimes develop slightly unnatural feelings for a garment. I’m not the first, you know. History has proven that life is more fun in pretty dresses. Look back at the Puritans, closing the theatres and bashing all of the fun out of life in their heavy black garb. I’d rather be a superficial twit in a beautiful Elizabethan dress than live the dreary life they led. And Marie Antoinette! She threw sequins in the face of poverty and politics, and lived a full and happy life (until her head fell off). Princess Di is another royal example of the importance of a good wardrobe, as a woman remembered as much for her outfits as… wait… what else did she do?

My mother is proof that we never grow out of this tendency to place rather too much importance on the way we dress. A couple of months before I saw ‘the dress’, she came across ‘the coat’. It is a bloody lovely coat—complete with enough blue velvet, ruffles and tiers to satisfy even the most ostentatious drama teacher. But of course the coat alone wasn’t enough. Next came the broch to pin on the coat. Then the burgundy boots to wear with the coat. I think by the end of the spree my father was just relieved that she didn’t decide to repaint the entire house in a coat-complimentary colour scheme.

Even my father, as much as he pretends not to, takes pleasure in clothes. He goes for a sort of mobster look, complete with trilby hats and leather jackets. I remember visiting Costume Cave to pick out a dress for my 21st, and being surprised to see him disappear into the changing rooms with a pale blue suit and pink sequined bow-tie. It’s always the quiet ones.

We can be superficial creatures, us humans, and sometimes it’s fun to just own it. I admit that I probably worry about what to wear more than I worry about climate change. I confess that I think more about the merits of sequins than I think about the state this world is in. But if there is anyone on campus who can prove that they never even notice what people are wearing, come to the Salient office. You’ve won a $100 shopping spree at the shop of your choice.

I am a complete failure. I’ve known it for years, ever since the very first day I entered the adult world (kindergarten). I presented my self-portrait to my teacher, expecting her to exclaim in my mother’s voice, “Juliet, I just don’t know where you get it from. I’m so proud!”, when she instead offered a rather harsh critique, suggesting that I should, in future, include a torso in my representations of the human form. I thought about trying to explain to her the subtleties of abstraction, but instead I took it in my stride. A bad review is a bad review.

Over the years, the taste of failure has become as familiar to me as the taste of toothpaste. I was that girl who always shrieked and froze when she was a metre away from the high-jump bar. I was that girl who only made the B netball team when there were only enough players for two teams. I was that girl who listened to the pretty adjudicator coo “You’re all winners”, as she handed out certificates to the three other people in the school speech competitions.

I learned early on that there is no point in ‘reaching for the stars’. I’ll inevitably fail to reach them—I even failed to grow to an average height.

Over the holidays I decided to give up smoking. My friends snorted when I told them—they didn’t believe for a second that I would succeed. ‘Humph’, I thought to myself, ‘I’ll show them’. And I did. I showed them that they were right. I’m a failure.

This time though, I’m not sure I wanted to succeed. Some people like chocolate, others coffee, others wine. I like smoking. Is that really so wrong?

According to the general public in New Zealand, yes. Bloody sanctimonious gits. I sat down for dinner recently with my mother’s friends, when one of them turned to me and said “You’re a lovely girl, but you stink of smoke.” I thought it was rude to tell anyone that they stink of anything over dinner, but it seems my terrible habit justified this harsh little outburst.

Do these people think that we don’t understand the dangers of smoking? Do they think that their comments will inspire us to run to the bathrooms in tears to flush away our terrible habit? I doubt it. In fact, I think they’d be rather put out if we did, as they’d then have to look for other ways to assert their moral superiority.

There is only one thing worse than sanctimonious non-smokers—quitters. My brother has recently joined this traitorous group. Last night, as I whinged piteously to him about having the flu, he managed to slip in “Oh, being sick is a great opportunity to give up smoking”. Prat.

It is almost impossible to enjoy a cigarette these days without being confronted with a gruesome image of a decomposing lung or a stupid anti-smoking catch phrase. Those ‘trendy’ anti-smoking advertisements at bus stops are so inflammatory that every time I see one I want to smoke my entire packet of cigarettes at once. If I see another failed musician pose under the quote “It’s just a turn-off eh” I will hunt him down and smoke his penis.

At least we smokers rally together. I ran into my high school drama teacher last time I was in Christchurch. A keen smoker, she patted me on the head when she saw that the nasty pictures on my packet of B&H were covered up with holographic kitten stickers.

Of course, I don’t believe that smokers should be allowed to jeopardise the health of others, and so I support the smoking ban in bars, restaurants, and public places. But this nonsense about making parks smoke-free? Fascism. Next we’ll be rounded up and marched into reservations, where we’ll be forced to wear placards stating our preferred brand and daily tobacco intake.

It has been, for me, one of those years that has really made me think about my own mortality. A number of family friends have passed away, struck down unexpectedly and prematurely. I realise that smoking has terrible consequences on one’s health, but really, death is random. I’d rather go like my grandmother—cleaning a pub, fag in hand, than die at the end of a long life of smug self-deprivation.

So maybe I’m not a complete and utter failure? At least I manage, sometimes ten times a day, to blow smoke in the face of social prejudice.

Each year in New Zealand, about 24,000 non-smokers die of non-smoking related illnesses. I, for one, am determined to never become one of those statistics.

I bought my first vibrator today. What self-respecting, sexually liberated twenty-one-year old doesn’t own one? Well, I didn’t, and now I do. I own it.

My British parents have instilled in me a kind of deeply ingrained prudishness that has resulted in a series of disastrous sex shop visits. I remember standing outside the saloon doors of that dodgy looking shop at the top of Cuba—the one with the large sign advertising ten dollar vibrators. ‘Good deal’, I thought, ‘I wonder if they do student discounts?’I paused for a moment, trying to overcome my nervous fit of giggles, when I heard a friendly but intimidating voice boom “Hello?” He had seen my feet! What to do, what to do? Run, and lose face, energy, and the chance to meet the love of my life? Or go in, knowing that I could never now pull off the casual, collected look that most people adopt when perusing adult stores, managing to look cool even as they slide their fingers into silicone vaginas. I turned on the spot and ran.

With the help of Siobhan I actually made it through the lurid orange door of Peaches and Cream this afternoon. The owner barely looked up at us two leather-clad girls as we walked straight towards the dildo section. I wonder why? We searched the shelves for something unintimidating and pretty, preferably in glitter. I could feel the colour rising in my cheeks as my eyes fell on enormous plastic penises, so large that they looked like they would feel something like childbirth. ‘I’ll start small’, I thought to myself as I picked up a purple model called ‘The Little Vibrating Softee’. Although slightly worried by the words ‘injury’, ‘aggravation’ and ‘electrocution’ on the box, the price was right and the colour jolly.

I sidled coolly up to the counter, intending to act as if I buy a sex toy a week, and then out it all came. As soon as I opened my mouth things started to go wrong. “One vibrator please,” I said as I put the box on the counter. Not cool, Juliet.

The man was everything one wants in a sex-store owner. He laughed, checked the box, and informed me that I would need some batteries. I nodded furiously at his every suggestion, which resulted in my buying the largest pack of overpriced batteries he could offer. “That’ll keep me going tonight,” I blurted out, wanting to kill myself and my clichés immediately.

He didn’t even pretend to laugh this time as he put my new friend in a discreet bag and sent me on my way. “What’s your returns policy?” I asked on my way out. What had come over me?

As soon as Cressida opened the door I proudly thrust my new purchase in her face. We sat on her bed and took it out of its box, put in a battery, and spent a few minutes playing with it like giggling fourteen-year-old girls.
I went into my room, promising my flatmates that I would report back to them when I was finished. About twenty seconds later I emerged from my room a different girl. Men? What was I thinking? We have plastic! It wasn’t that moment that I realised that men are an obsolete species, good for nothing except for manning vibrator factories.

As you may be able to tell from the content of this column, I have no concept of discre­tion about matters of the delicate variety like masturbation. Zipping up my skirt, I graphically described the event to my flat­mates before texting anyone and everyone I know. Olivia, upon hearing the story, decid­ed to visit a Dunedin sex shop tomorrow to find out what all the fuss is about. It’s lovely to know that my story touched someone.

It certainly touched me.

Oh. My. Blog.

Woke up last night and realised that this city is too small for me. I came, I saw, I was scene. I’m Wellington royalty, and I’m bored of it. Wait, I am Wellington. Don’t get pissy at me for it- I can’t help being Wellington’s hottest socialite. I wouldn’t even spit on you pieces of shit; you ain’t worth my liquid gold saliva. I couldn’t if I tried cos I take so much E that I’ve always got the dries.

Have you heard of Patrick Wolfe? No, I bet you haven’t, you filth. Last night he invited me up into his hotel room to smoke crack. We watched porn all night and ended up fucking, stopping occasionally for a line of Ketamine. Do you even know what K is? Guess not, losers.

I’ve screwed every band in Wellington. They always head straight for me after they play, like moths to a fluoro flame. It’s pathetic, but I understand—they’re human! Girls, guys—who cares? I’m gender irrelevant. I never swallow though, I’m vegan.

Checked out Neon Sleep this morning. Lolz. Look at this sad whore.

Pleather? Never! This Wild Pair punk princess needs to crawl back into Newtown and die. I want to soak her sweaty fringe in kerosene, throw my Lucky Strike at her and watch her plastic clothes melt into her spotty skin. This photo was taken just as I kicked the chair out from under her. She’s laughing because she thinks I’m joking. She stopped laughing when I strangled her fat little neck with the extra arm on my Nom-D sweater.

I’m wearing $3000 worth of clothes today. I’m wearing four Karen walker necklaces, just to make sure people don’t think I’m povvo. Daddy pays for everything anyway, lol. Last week he bought me $19,000 worth of Stolen Girlfriends Club tees. I don’t wear t-shirts, but I needed something to sleep in.

Better go—Karen Walker just got the spotting knives hot enough.

15/05/09

Oh. My. Rave.

Hung out all of yesterday with Lady GaGa. She did the acoustic version of Poker Face for us. She’s pretty cool, but she got a bit clingy towards the end of the night. She kept asking for my number, and when I said no she got angry and decided not to play a renegade show in our laundry room like we’d planned. Then we got reeeeeal fucked up on meth and she did it anyway.

I don’t really get why she’s so famous. I mean, I can’t sing but I sure as hell am hotter than she is. Don’t quote me on this, but I’m pretty sure she was wearing FAKE FUR. Why go fake when you can get the real deal? I’ve got a fabby fur coat which was made out of the last two Siamese minks on earth. Yeah, that’s right, that shit’s extinct because of me.

Got to go—GaGa is gagging for it.

17/05/09
Punk is in. I’m telling you, it’s in. Bought a pair of black Doc Martins today. Listened to God Save the Queen 400 times on my I-flip. Oh wait, is that post-punk? What’s post-punk? What’s punk? I’m punk.

Donny Tourette called last night. He wants to hang out sometime. I said yes, but only because punk is in. I hear he said that he “dicks all over the Sex Pistols”. Fabby.

Some paparazzi got out their pappatrons and papped me in Good as Gold. Reckon I’ll be on Neon Sleep tomorrow. Hope they got a good shot of my new nose ring. Karen Walker designed it especially for me.

19/05/2009
I’m moving to Auckland. I can’t put up with this small-town shit any more. I was sitting outside Plum all day today, and I only saw one guy who looked decent. He was wearing technicolour jeans and had a sweater on with five arm holes! So cool. So now. So good in bed.

Daddy said he’s going to give me some money to start a zine in Auckland. I’m pretty sure I’ll be the first to start a fashion zine in Auckland, so it looks like I’m going to get pretty rich. Well, even richer. I think I’ll just take photos of uggos and rip their outfits to shreds. Wait, there’s something I’ve never thought about—how come uggos never have hot clothes? Guess there’s no point in bothering trying to make yourself look good if you ain’t got it.

This’ll be my last blog. Check out my new zine in November—I think I’ll call it Berlin.

I’d give anything to be able to potter about the house all day, watching daytime soap operas and washing the occasional dish. I’d peer through my kitchen window at the neighbour’s house, see Madge peering back, and yell “Yooohooo, did you hear about Sally’s husband? Shocking!”

I’d curl up in a chair when the house was spotless, reading a pornographic novel about Tudor England. I’d sip gin all day, making sure I brushed away the stench of stale booze when I heard my husband pull into the drive. I’d have sex with the milkman, the plumber, and Madge. I’d pop out 10 children and I’d name them all after characters from The Bold and the Beautiful. The only reason I’d burn my bra would be if my husband didn’t like it.

This world is hard for the lazy, and I am definitely one of them. I spend my life avoiding exertion, and can’t understand these people who actually exercise for fun. I remember once waking up next to a boy who immediately sprung up and dressed for a morning run. I couldn’t get out of the house fast enough. Well, I could have, if I wasn’t so disgusted by running.

You see these sporty breeds running along the waterfront in uniform lycra, waving a smug hello at you and your ice-cream as they pass. I never wave back. Quite frankly, I can’t be bothered.

Me? I resent even having to get out of bed. I resent having to walk to the bus stop. I resent the idea that I have to work to survive. I resent having to do an assignment, when I’d rather just YouTube Louis Theroux documentaries. If I had it my way, I’d sit in bed all day, daydreaming about Harry Potter as David Tennant fed me chocolate.

I’ve always been a lazy girl. In kindergarten I got a certificate for going to sleep the fastest at nap time, and in primary school I spent most PE lessons hiding in the cloakroom. It runs in the family: I once stumbled across my mother’s 3rd form school report and was delighted to read that the PE teacher couldn’t comment, “as Elayne is yet to have turned up to a single PE lesson”.

I had Jehovah’s Witnesses at my door recently. I answered the door in my pyjamas, fag in hand, and listened politely as they gave me some beautifully illustrated pamphlets. “This looks nice”, I thought to myself as I studied a picture of children playing with woodland creatures underneath a rainbow. As I read on, I realised that it wasn’t for me. This brings me to my next point: self-deprivation. Why?

Why should I give up smoking? I like it! Why shouldn’t I have casual sex? I like it! Why shouldn’t I eat a block of chocolate whilst watching an entire season of Project Runway? I like it! Why can’t I have wine every night? I like it!

Like I said, we’ve got this all wrong. Back to the caves, I say, where we can lounge about in the sun all day, grunting at each other because we can’t be bothered talking. No rules, no morals, just a bunch of primates who know what life’s about.

We’re the only species on Earth who have been silly enough to make life difficult for ourselves. I envy the kitten that I live with—her sole purpose in life is to find the most comfortable place in our house to sleep. Her behaviour seems erratic to us humans, but only because she acts on impulse, doing whatever first pops into her head; “oooh, that shiny thing looks fun, I’ll play with that for a bit…oooh, is that edible?”

Let’s start a revolution. Let’s stop worrying about politics, grades, morals, and our own general well-being, and spend tomorrow just looking for the warmest spot in the house. Let’s make sure all of our favourite things are always at arm’s reach: cake, cigarettes and Harry Potter. Let’s call work and tell them we’re not coming in again. Let’s throw away our running shoes, and order pizza instead.

Oh no, wait, I can’t be bothered. And anyway, I’ve got an essay due.

I found my twenty-first birthday a bit difficult. My father dressed in a pale blue suit with a pink sequined bow-tie, my mother in a floor-length gown. It should have been great—I hit Watusi with my friends and parents, downed cocktails, opened presents, and my parents lasted the evening without making one of those excruciating speeches you get at some twenty-firsts.

Then it hit me. An adult! I’m supposed to be an adult! I put down my tequila, ordered a dry martini, and tried to think of something to say that wasn’t related to clothes, music or celebrity gossip. I had nothing.

“It was that kind of a crazy afternoon, terrifically cold, and no sun out or anything, and you felt like you were disappearing every time you crossed a road.”

Oh God, I was having a Holden Caulfield moment at twenty-one! There I was, surrounded by people I love, and all I could think about was my insignificance, my lack of purpose, my worthlessness. Who was I?

If only Holden had internet access! My quarter life crisis naturally put a bit of a dampener on my evening, but it didn’t result in months of soul-searching, therapy or a course of Prozac. No, all I needed to find myself was a quick round of Facebook quizzes.

There’s something incredibly addictive about Facebook quizzes. In reality, I do know that a result based on questions such as “what is your favourite colour?” is not going to tell me how many children I will have in the future, but again and again I find my hand moving towards the “Take this Quiz” button.

Do you want to know a bit about me?

I’m an art freak/hipster. I am “often friends with stoners, but may not smoke up”. I’m “often quiet, and have really weird mannerisms, but have a very eccentric personality”. I have swine flu. I’m very white; I “pay taxes, listen to pop music, rock, country”. My celebrity boyfriend is Will Smith. My anime character is very immature. I am “as cool as a cucumber and should live in Wellington”. I’m a “Bukowski kind of girl—pornographic, self-destructive, exuberant”. I’m an “oily-haired slob” who will always be “a slightly unrealized potential”. A quiz titled “What colour is your eyes?” told me that they are blue, and that I “like walking on the beach and watching the ski”. I’m “sooooo tomboy”.

I have an “aura which allures great thinkers and free spirits to fawn over” me. However, I “might not be able to understand everything they are trying to say, but after passing the pipe around, will be seeing amazing things as well”. I’m a geek, who “loves dressing up as characters that don’t exist”. I am “a slut who enjoys getting laid”. I am an Eagle, which means that I should “stay away from a wolf or horse personality”. I “don’t like sitting” and I “love doing hard thinks”. I am not on a boat.

Everyone’s got to have a ‘schtick’. Rachael loves vaginas. She sent me a postcard once, with only the word ‘vagina’ scrawled on the back. Henri loves solvents. Cressida loves graphic novels and World of Warcraft. Luka is good at everything, from styling a beehive to building a wardrobe. Caitlin has hippie tendencies. Grace loves cats. Phylli takes her top off a lot. I, according to Facebook, am an unkempt, geek-whore who likes drugs and country music, and needs to stay away from horses.

My friends have all been through an internet dating phase at one stage or another, something that I have thus far avoided. Without fail, they would exchange witty, promising emails with a prospective lover only to be severely let down on their first date.

Nonetheless, I think I’m going to give it a go. To avoid confusion, I am going to be totally honest about who I am. “My name is Juliet Buckler. I am an oily-haired slut who enjoys getting laid and walking on the beach. I have blue eyes and swine flu, and am very immature. I’m a real tomboy, who loves dressing up. I may or may not like getting stoned. Please do not reply if you are a wolf or a horse personality”.

See you online, baby.

I was on a first date with a sweet Irish Catholic boy called James.

I should have seen it coming when James asked me to meet him at the train station. Unfortunately though, I was caught off-guard when he suggested that “Hey, we should live a little, let’s take the first train that comes!” I sighed inside, wishing that I could, for once, have a normal, relaxed, uncontrived first date. Neither of us really wanted to go to the polluted seaside town of Helensburgh, but neither of us wanted to admit that we weren’t spontaneous, zany, “Who knows what I’m going to do next!” We bought the tickets, boarded the train, and spent the commute congratulating ourselves for our adventurous spirits whilst swigging from a bottle of wine in a brown paper bag.

I stared out at the littered beach, pretending to be enjoying a blissful silence whilst desperately thinking of what to say next. We were sitting in a bin shelter, supping from a third bottle of wine, trying to ignore the rotting rubbish and heavy rain. Then, without warning, he looked at me through narrowed eyes and said “You want to have sex with me, don’t you Juliet?” This was not a proposition; it was an accusation.

Normally I would have cut and run at this point, but as the train home was hours away, I instead had to spend half an hour convincing him that I wasn’t about to pounce. He had somehow seen longing in my miserable pout, and heard my slurred speech as a seductive purr.

I nodded understandingly as he told me that he wanted to save himself for his wife, and didn’t even voice my confusion as to why he would ask me out when he stressed that he would never have a relationship with a non-catholic.

Thank God for fermented grapes. Without wine, I think we would’ve ended up shouting at each other and trying to walk the hundreds of miles back to Glasgow. As it was, we got into one of the best first-date conversations I have ever had. Leaving the delicate subjects of sex and religion behind, we spent the rest of the date trying to think of things that fit into the category of ‘boring and scary’.

Death is boring and scary. Well, I’ve never actually died, but it sounds bloody boring to me. Jail is boring and scary. I did actually spend a night in a cell once, and was a disappointing criminal. I lay awake crying all night, wishing that I didn’t have to ask the guard to push the flush button outside of my cell whenever I went to the toilet. Debt is boring and scary. Car crashes are boring and scary. War is boring and scary. Pregnancy is boring and scary. Exams are boring and scary. The Phelps family are boring and scary. Hell is boring and scary. Terrorism is boring and scary. Terminal illness is boring and scary.

Running is boring. Murderers are scary. Running through Upper Hutt at night is boring and scary. You get the idea.

It was coverage of the Swine Flu epidemic that got me thinking of the ‘boring and scary’ conversation again. It must be terribly thrilling for survivalists, but Bird Flu was such a let-down for me that I’m not letting myself get excited about this new epidemic. Seriously though, does anyone have some Tamiflu? I’ll give you my course related costs!

Next time you’re on one of those insanely awkward dates, bring this conversation up. They’ll think you are vapid and a little idiotic at first, but if it turned this date around, it can turn any date around.

James and I ended up alone in a carriage, kissing ferociously on the way home. His mind was probably on how he was going to phrase his confession, but I could think of only one thing. No, it wasn’t sex—it was my full bladder. With about a litre of wine sloshing around inside me, I had to cross my legs incredibly tightly to stop myself weeing myself in front of him. At first he probably gave me credit for my piety, but he eventually noticed my discomfort and set off to see if there was a toilet on the train. When he found out there wasn’t, he joked “you should just go here”.

No, there wasn’t a second date. Yes, I am disgusted at myself when I think that someone had to clean up my wee. No, I wasn’t thirteen- it was only three years ago. Yes, I’d love to go on a date with you.

The next day even the most reputable newspapers reported the breaking news. The director, Simon Langton, wrote: “Nobody had the slightest inkling that Colin Firth, wearing a lightweight cotton voile shirt with his nipples showing underneath, would have such an effect.” Giggle. Colin. Giggle. Nipples. As a fan of all things trivial, I adore it when events like this make the front page. Long gone are the days when newspapers were considered great sources of information, so we may as well delight in the transparency of such journalism. Trash-mag journalism is incredibly appealing to me; I dream of a time when I’ll spend my days writing articles instructing readers how to lose seven kilograms in seven seconds.

Last week anyone who picked up a newspaper or popped online would have found it hard to miss the numerous articles about Britain’s newest star, Susan Boyle. A self-proclaimed “short and dumpy” woman from Blackburn, Susan surprised a severe and cynical audience on last week’s episode of Britain’s Got Talent and has since become an internet phenomenon. Videos of her performance of ‘I Dreamed a Dream’ from Les Misérables have had well over 50 million hits at the time of writing, and columnists all over New Zealand have since delighted in analysing the reasons behind her success. The least cynical proclaim her as a prodigious talent who never got her ‘big break’, and the more sceptical emphasise the fact that before she started singing, the cruel audience cat-called and laughed at her for reasons no less superficial than her looks. It is the surprise that such a wonderful voice could come from someone so unattractive, they suggest, that provoked the audience to stand and cheer as wildly as they did.

Now for those of you who haven’t seen her, Susan Boyle is a forty-seven year old woman who is, I think, reasonably attractive. She isn’t a busty, botoxed Hollywood Barbie, but I wouldn’t be unhappy if I reached forty-seven and looked as fresh-faced as she does. Nonetheless, barely an article has been written that doesn’t at least mention her physical appearance—clear evidence of our connection of success and good looks in this image obsessed-world. To analyse this too carefully would be both boring and hypocritical; I am, after all, hoping to write a number of articles in my lifetime on the merits of pastel colours during the spring season.

The show itself is supremely and overtly manipulative. Once I had seen Susan Boyle’s audition I was hooked—I spent at least an hour looking up other clips from previous seasons. I don’t pretend that I am above enjoying the emotional highs and lows that the producers cleverly manoeuvre, but I must admit that the sentimentality of the show surprised me. The Brits have started letting their stiff upper lips quiver through stories of the adversity the contestants have faced, and the ‘fighters’ seem to be the ones who receive the most praise. Susan Boyle, the never-been kissed virgin who has spent her life looking after her ill mother, George Sampson, the little Billy Elliott who wants to dance his way out of his council estate, and Andrew Johnston, the Soprano choirboy who has been bullied constantly because of his singing. All of them went far in the competition, and all of them were praised for their fighting spirits.

Meanwhile, Lydia Hurley, an 11 year old who sang a song called ‘Posh’ in an upper-class accent was stopped in her tracks by Simon, who said on the show that he hates “stage-school monsters”. It’s not just the triumph of the average-looking, then, that makes the success of people like Susan Boyle so euphoric for the audience. The audience encourages those who want a better life, and are fighting the oppressive British class system. They are the ones who Britain is backing.

I’m not sure I’ve met anyone who has read Pride and Prejudice and not fallen in love with the heroine, Elizabeth Bennett. Fiery and intelligent, though with little money, she wins the love of Mr Darcy despite his obsession with marrying a well connected woman. Susan, with that voice, I bet Colin Firth is on the way to Blackburn.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a column on the permanent and clichéd act of teenage rebellion that is my lower-back tribal tattoo. When a Sunday Star Times reporter called, asking if she could interview me about the said tattoo, I was naturally so amused that I accepted.

“Some choose to be ‘conformers’, which means they set goals like making top sports teams or getting good marks. But others decide to be ‘non conformers’, and set goals such as breaking school rules and getting in trouble with police”, the reporter wrote.

Good God. I thought it was an innocent act of rebellion, but it seems that I’m destined for jail.

I was a bit of prat when I was a teenager. A hopelessly clever and misunderstood prat, of course. But we’ve all done silly things, right? I’m…I’m not going to jail, right?

The only upside to my being lumped in the ‘criminal-to-be’ category is that my inbox has since been flooded with emails describing other stories of teenage rebellion. I realise that not everyone turns into a post-pubescent prick during this period of their lives, but I’ve had a number of wonderful conversations with those of us who did.

I can empathise with Rachael, who sometimes found herself doing odd things with the simple goal of annoying her parents. Rachael’s parents are religious, which was a great source of fun for her as a teenager. She enjoyed herself mightily, she said, as she scattered pregnancy tests around her house as a thirteen-year-old virgin.

Teenagers like Ant found great fun in trying to outwit their parents. When Ant’s father bet him $1000 that he couldn’t complete a near-impossible puzzle, he bought the solution book and claimed the money. Realising that his father might question him completing a puzzle with a one-in-a-million success rate, he said that the cat knocked an integral piece in place. Ant has all the makings of a very successful lawyer.

Dating a bad-boy boyfriend is even more cliché than getting a tattoo. When fourteen-year-old Caitlin asked her mother what she thought of her boyfriend, she replied “he looks like a heroine addict”. Caitlin threw a GameBoy at her head. A little unfair, she admits, as he was a heroine addict.

Almost every reformed vagabond I spoke to had an inexplicable hatred of letterboxes in their teenage years. A friend of mine took it upon himself to build “a letterbox mountain”, and another collected one hundred number ‘7’s from his unfortunate neighbours.

Another thing we all had in common was the consumption of rocket fuel—that lethal mixture of whatever happened to be in Mummy and Daddy’s liquor cabinet at the time. When my poor father went out for a drink he would exclaim “gosh this gin is strong!”—totally unaware that he had been drinking watered-down spirits for years.

I remember once stealing a magnum of sparkling wine and sharing it with my friends in the local park. ‘Genius’, I thought, as I filled it with water and smashed it on the kitchen floor the next morning. I mopped it up in front of them, my fake tears dripping visibly into the puddle of ‘wine’. Guilt racked me for a few hours, until I ended up admitting my crime whilst in floods of genuine tears. I think the leniency of their punishment of me reflected a certain pride in their daughter’s problem solving abilities.

Worse, though, than all of this, is the poetry we wrote as teenagers. Most youths should be banned from the art, or at least discouraged from using the words ‘angst’, ‘chasm’, ‘soul’ and ‘void’. Susan Townsend’s character Adrian Mole exemplifies this perfectly:

PANDORA! PANDORA! PANDORA!

By Adrian Mole

Oh! my love, My heart is yearning, My mouth is dry, My soul is burning. You’re in Tunisia, I am here. Remember me and shed a tear. Come back tanned and brown and healthy. You’re lucky that your dad is wealthy.

She will be back in six days.

Teenagers, like first years, cop a lot of unfair flack. Not everyone reaches fourteen and decides that it’s necessary to fuck authority with a Sex Pistols doll, nor do all first years get repeatedly trapped in the automatic doors.

It is a natural reaction to get frustrated and offended when we’re automatically judged because of age or our position in the meaningless hierarchy of university.

But let’s not take ourselves too seriously, eh? Teenagers are often prats, or at least I was. And first years, I know it seems mortifying to be laughed at whilst trying to wrench your backpack out of the automatic doors, but trust me, when next year comes about and you spot a flailing first year sandwiched between those heavy doors, you’ll laugh too. It’s funny.

The first flat I lived in was in a council estate in the deep, dark depths of the Glaswegian ghetto. We were new to flat hunting of course, but still should have realised that something was suspect when we had to battle our way through a group of young skinheads on our initial tour of the house. “It’s a family area,” Kate mentioned as we watched them throw bottles at each other. Putting their violence down to youthful exuberance, we took the flat.

Wadestown is a family area. Karori is a family area. Yoker, Glasgow was not.

The local pub was nicknamed ‘McStabs’, a result of the drug related knife-crime that the area was famous for. Within days of moving in we had the words “Fuck off and cut your hair, New Zealand dafties” scrawled across our door, a brick through our window, and our naïve attempt at a vegetable garden destroyed. The perpetrators? A knife-wielding street gang whose members called themselves ‘Neds’.

The eight months we lived there were punctuated with violence and crime. Towards the end of our stay we came home to find that our door had been kicked in. Kate’s Ned connections informed her that a man had thrown his crack onto our balcony as he ran away from the police, and had later broken in to retrieve his booty.

We shouldn’t have been surprised when Kate failed to give us our £1000 bond back, given her allegiance with the Neds. We were too stupid to deserve it really; we were so trusting that if she’d told us the crack was icing sugar we would have believed her.

I’ve got a great flat now, but finding it was hard work. The landlord is a little odd; he spent a good ten minutes reiterating that we were “not to EVER throw a television off the roof.” We giggled at his eccentric emphasis of this as we signed the tenancy agreement, and wanted to ask more about his last tenants. “Of course we’d never throw a television off the roof! What an absurd thing to do!”

This weekend we threw the television out of the window. Why? New Zealand’s Next Top Model.

I’ve always enjoyed seeing how New Zealand television programs compare to their international counterparts. I watched Stars in Their Eyes with particular glee, and savored the embarrassment I felt when Simon Barnett felt it necessary to mention that he “didn’t agree with the lifestyle” of a lesbian singer. The success of such programs surely relies on their audiences being simultaneously embarrassed and entertained by their heavy-handed production, and their failure to reach the mark. They emphasise that indoctrinated Kiwi attitude that, if we are not always successful, at least ‘we gave it a go’.

New Zealand’s Next Top Model takes this to the extreme. The whole idea of the show doesn’t really make sense—when did a supermodel last emerge out of New Zealand? We still cling to the memory of our darling Rachel Hunter, who now designs a range of dated womanswear for The Warehouse.

The promo promised a cringe-worthy version of the American franchise. It was difficult to not let out a nervous giggle when one of the judges deemed it appropriate to tell a model that she “walks like a cripple.”

I laughed harder when the models were taken, not to Tokyo or Paris like the American contestants, but to the conservative chain store Max. Max obviously sponsor the show, but did they have to be so obvious as to have the challenge winner exclaim “Oh my God, I’m so glad I’ve won, because all my life I’ve wanted to be in a Max shoot!” Bit of a specific life ambition, isn’t it?

A flatmate of mine is friends with one of the girls from Christchurch, and tells me that while she is portrayed as an absolute airhead on the show, in reality she is modest, quiet, and intelligent. It’s fair to assume that the producers thought that it would be entertaining to portray the girls as stereotypically idiotic models, but did they really have to include lines like “I like modeling because, like, it’s good to look good and stuff eh”? The producers clearly didn’t count on the fact that this, in addition to its clumsy production and maniacal judges, makes the program unbearable, and not in a funny way.

I hope our landlord never finds out about the tele-vision incident. If he does though, I can honestly say that it was not an act of vandalism; it was an act of national pride.

My name is Juliet Buckler, and I have a lower back tribal tattoo.

I groan and curse my liberal parents every time I catch a glimpse of it in the mirror. What in God’s name were they thinking when they signed the permission form? The only thing that consoles me is the possibility that I could have chosen something even worse, like a Playboy bunny on my thigh, or dolphins jumping over my belly-button.

One would think that this moment of insanity would have left me with at least a very permanent reminder: that I should think before I act. Trouble is, it’s on my back, so I often forget about it.

Two years ago I was working in a call centre in Glasgow with my friend Grace. We were selling car insurance, were badly paid, and were working twelve-hour shifts. Worse still was the presence of Claire, the girl who sat between us. Claire and her fucking yo-yo. Our jaws would clench as it unraveled, our teeth grinding as once, twice, three hundred times a day it would come to a standstill on the ground. I can still vividly remember her slowly winding it back up, oblivious to the idea that perhaps she wasn’t doing it right.

The stress caused by Claire and her yo-yo made us hit the bottle pretty hard. At lunchtime in phone booths, on toilet breaks, and after work; vodka was the only thing that kept us from grabbing the yo-yo from her hands and putting it through the paper shredder.

Vodka does not inspire good decision making. It was a great help in my forgetting my little tribal mistake as we set off to the tattoo parlour one day after work. Thank God the tattooist noticed our slurred speech and sent us home. This became my first near miss.

Three or four months later I found myself sitting outside a tattoo parlour once again. We had finally saved enough money to get out of Glasgow and were travelling, like typical New Zealanders, in a Volkswagen Morrison. April, a girl always quick to give everything a catchy nickname, named it ‘Van Morrison Weird Van’. Those words were to be the tattoo.

Although I spoke against the idea with absolute conviction, I was worried at one point that April was going to convince me to get it. She’s a very persuasive girl, and decided that there would be no point in having it done unless all six of us did. A reluctant flash of my tribal tragedy eventually convinced her that it was a terrible idea. This was my second near miss.

Since then I’ve taken particular notice of other people’s tattoos. A good tattoo to me shows a person as thoughtful, rational, and artistic. Bad tattoos, like mine, expose those people who are impulsive, irrational, and can’t always rely on their own taste.

There’s Ben, who decided to tattoo his wrists with the Latin words for ‘left’ and ‘right’. Now every time he flashes his left arm he exposes the word ‘sinister’ in gothic print. Hardly a friendly handshake.

Hamish must have known what he was doing when he got his tattoo. I can only hope he was making fun of bad tattoos when he tattooed his leg with a picture of an emo kid saying the words “I cut myself with Daddy’s credit card cuz he touches his secretary more than he touches me.” He’ll have some explaining to do to his grandchildren.

And what about poor Pamela Anderson? She had to get the word ‘Tommy’ changed to the word ‘Mommy’ after her first out of three divorces. Luckily she had learnt her lesson by the time she married and divorced Rick Saloman, although I can imagine one or two things that she could have done with the word ‘Rick’.

My flatmate Rachael is going to get a tattoo soon. It is going to be of a beautiful drawing she saw in a book years ago. Even I, with my tattoo-phobia, have to admit that it’s going to look lovely.

So, if the time comes when a child of mine presents to me that same permission form I handed to my mother five years ago, I’ll ask them what they want done. If it’s anything tribal, I’m afraid they’re going to have to see mummy’s lower back.

I knew there must be a rational explanation for their fear. I liked thinking about it as I walked to school. Did they think it was haunted? This didn’t seem unreasonable; Aro inhabitants are superstitious people. I was told with absolute conviction recently that a cat murderer lives on Aro Street. The evidence? “Haven’t you seen all the missing cat posters down that road?”

I became obsessed with this bus shelter. I would arrive at my lectures unable to tear my thoughts away from its mysterious powers of repulsion. I had to do something about it before it resulted in a failed year at university. I had to go inside.

I planned it carefully—I didn’t want to mess it up. It was a bright autumn day; children were playing at the nearby park and cars were passing frequently. I took a deep breath and stepped inside.

I dry retched as I was overpowered by the stench of urine and vomit.

Drunks do the darndest things.

There must have been something especially funny in the air this weekend. I woke up on Sunday in Myrtle Manor, my new flat, and the air was thick with unusually intense hung-over self-loathing. We sat outside in our overgrown courtyard, affectionately named ‘Smokers Paradise,’ and swapped stories. We were a sheepish bunch.

Grace was the first to speak. Her head was in her hands, and etched in her voice was a kind of muffled mortification.

“Cupcakes…” she said, almost choking on the word. “…Cupcakes. I was at my mothers 50th birthday and I threw cupcakes at her friends. Oh God.”

I would have never picked Grace as the cupcake-throwing type. I’ve known her for years, and she has never before been inclined to bowl baked goods.

“It was the vodka,” she groaned. Drunks do the darndest things.

Lily and Harry exchanged glances with raised eyebrows.

“You were almost as obnoxious as us then,” said Harry as he launched into a story about the previous night. The two had stumbled into Midnight Café on their way home. The line was long, and the room was spinning. When the barista asked them how they were, Harry had replied with what he thought was acidic wit—

“Fine, but starving.”

“Cunt,” replied the barista. At this point Lily and Harry launched into a chant that went something along the lines of, “Serv-ice, serv-ice, serve us, serve us!” They then proceeded to call the poor, tired barista “a disgrace to the profession,” and stormed out haughtily holding hands.

“It was the Country Red,” they groaned. Drunks do the darndest things.

They looked at me, recognising on my face the same guilty, embarrassed look that they themselves were feeling. This was becoming more a counseling session than one of the normal Sunday morning catch-ups.

“I just didn’t want to dance,” I croaked. They pressed me for more. I told them about my shouting at a poor girl who was trying to be nice. I had never met her before, but she was insistent that I dance with her on the balcony of San Fran. In a moment of madness I had started mimicking everything she said. I think I went on too long. By the time I stopped she was in tears. Oh God. If you’re reading this, I’m sorry. It was the gin. Drunks do the darndest things.

My cellphone started ringing as I finished the story. It was my mother. We exchanged pleasantries, but it wasn’t long before she was asking my advice.

“I had too much brandy last night,” she began. She then questioned whether it was okay to ask the awkward, mumbling student if he’s gay because of his patent leather shoes. I held my tongue and told her about Grace and the cupcakes. She seemed reassured.

I hung up and looked around at my grinning friends. Life, we had realised, is just the stuff in between moments of intense humiliation. Embarrassment haunts us from the first time we wee ourselves at school, to the last time we fall off our shower stool in our old age.

There was a choice to be made. Were we to sit, wallowing in shamefaced guilt for the rest of our Sunday, or were we to forget the previous night and go to the Adelaide for a drink?

We went to the Adelaide. I think I had one drink too many. There was a bus shelter on the way home. Enough said.

I waited patiently for my grandmother to come back into the room. She put a glass of peach juice in my hand, and took a long draught from her tumbler of schnapps. She carefully studied what I held out to her in my hand. She didn’t say anything, but just looked at me with a sort of wild and fierce pride.

There it was, crisp, straight, and beautiful. I was eleven, and I had just rolled for her my first perfect cigarette.

Ninny, as I called her, was not your average grandmother. She couldn’t knit or bake, and when you jumped on her bed you could hear wine bottles rolling about underneath. None of this mattered to me in the least; I liked that she was different. I preferred the smell of booze and cigarette smoke to talcum powder anyway.

The pub took her life in the end. Quite literally—she died of a heart attack whilst cleaning one. I never felt sorry for her though. She was 70, and lonely without Grandy. The way I saw it, if she wanted a bloody drink she was quite entitled to have one.

I thought I saw her again this Sunday. I noticed her as soon as I walked into the Adelaide. She looked out of place there—too colourful in her turquoise two-piece suit. She liked my dress, she said as she sat at our table. We introduced ourselves. It wasn’t Ninny; it was an Adelaide local named Barb.

After our third or fourth drink we had learned quite a lot about her. When Barb was our age she was eighteen stone and desperate to be married. In her day it was scandalous, she said, to be single for so long. This changed for her after a mixup in Wellington hospital. A nurse had come to her bedside with a glass of iodine and popped off to watch the news. It was the day that Kennedy was shot. Barb, obedient as she was, drank the whole glass. She doesn’t remember much of the next ten days, but you can find her before and after photographs in medical textbooks. She lost half her bodyweight in ten days.

Barb stopped her story, took a long sip of wine, and said “You’re not planning on going are you? Get another drink”. We obeyed immediately; she had us captivated. “You know, in my time us girls all had curfews. If anyone came home after ten-thirty the whole street would know. The neighbours would call you a tart”. She winked and savoured the word tart, as if she’d thwarted the neighbours once or twice in her youth.

As she continued, it became clear that she would have been better off eighteen stone and scandalously unmarried. She and her husband had parted ways years ago. They were driving to his therapist one day when he said “Before I park the car I’d better tell you, when you get home you’ll see a ‘For Sale’ sign. I’ve gambled everything away.”

Shaking, she entered the therapist’s office. Her husband grumbled “If she bloody leaves me, I’ll kill myself.” The therapist told Barb to go home to decide what she wanted to do. Before she met that therapist, Barb didn’t realise that she had a choice. She left him. Brave woman.

Barb was sipping on Sauvignon Blanc. By the end of the afternoon I was swaying on my barstool, trying to stomach a glass of wine that she’d bought me whilst I was in the bathroom. I heard about her daughter having kids to a priest, her wonderful mother who also liked a drink, and about how the wind in Wellington used to be so strong that there were ropes on Stout Street for passers-by to hold on to.

The bar staff started cleaning up around us. She nodded her head at me as I was expertly rolling a cigarette, and launched into another story. She was in the army corps when she was younger, she told us. She had saved every cigarette she was rationed and returned home with a suitcase full of them. Her mother gave it straight to her uncle. I got the feeling that Barb has never quite forgiven her for this.

The bar was closing, we had to leave. “I like you”, she said as we parted. I like you too Barb.

I lit my cigarette and stepped out onto Adelaide Road. It was perfectly rolled—crisp, straight and beautiful. Ninny would have been proud.

But what about the rest of us? You know; those of us who aren’t prepared to undergo a sexy (albeit submissive) bad-girl makeover in order to prolong our essentially unsatisfying summer fling? Summer is ending, we’re off to university and we’re left, at this time of the year, with nothing to do but to become reacquainted with our favoured hand. It’s this time of the year which has made me realize that to achieve a perfect summer romance you need more than the ability to pash and dash. It is an art.

The start of summer saw many of us leaving Wellington for the bright lights of our hometowns. I left Wellington last year as a runaway from a year’s romance with an odd, but brilliant boy. When things get tough, it’s best to run away. I don’t like this ‘‘confront your issues” nonsense; it’s easier and far more enjoyable to escape.

In an unfortunate move, I made my escape to Christchurch.

There’s nothing romantic about Christchurch. That is, unless Burger King, big exhausts, and solvents are your answer to a rose and a sonnet.

I started my time in Christchurch as I should have continued it: sleeping through most of the day, half-heartedly job hunting, and having nostalgic moments over a glass of cask wine with old friends. After a few weeks this started to grow old.

So, with this column in mind, I decided that it would be prudent to put my days of boredom to good use. In the name of research, I started observing what Christchurch’s youth did to fill their summer days. It soon became clear that leisure time was generally spent doing one of two things: binge drinking or, not coincidentally, fucking.

I decided to follow suit. All in the name of research, of course.

And there he was. “Summer lovin’—happened so fast.” A perfectly nice, fun young thing; he was everything a girl could ask for in a summer romance.

He was also fucking one of my friends.

That didn’t happen in Grease.

It was time to check out some other sources; Grease, it seems, had misled me. I thought my summer days would go by in a whirl of dancing and ice-cream sundaes, but at this point it became clear to me that a lot has changed since the 1950s.

In the attempt to learn the tricks of the trade, I looked at the tangled web of romances going on around me. Turns out I wasn’t the only one whose summer romance turned sour. As the days grew hotter, all of them were falling apart for one reason or another. Sure that this was unrelated to temperature, I got out my notepad and started jotting down the reasons our Sandys and Dannys couldn’t last a summer without heartbreak.

There were lots of cases like mine! One person involved was having summer romances—plural. These flings usually ended with two or three miffed parties battling a confused Casanova. Out of the lot, the dramatic end to these romances seemed to be the least painful. It’s easier to leave your fling miffed than in love, after all.

Worse off were those who found their perfect match over summer, only to have to leave them in January for geographical reasons. I hope, for your sake, that you don’t have one of these lovelorn, broken creatures in your hall or flat. One glass of wine, and they’re crying muffled “Why-y-y oh why”s into your lap.

At the other extreme were those who bedded everyone and anyone, because, you know, “It’s summer.” I saw morals, manners, and sexuality thrown aside in fits of passion which were later excused with those two precious words.

The perfect summer fling, I realised, needs a passionate beginning, a happy middle and an amicable end. I left Christchurch before I had discovered a couple who managed all three, but I didn’t come back jaded beyond my years. I came back instead with the recipe for a perfect summer romance.

Firstly, take a lesson from the Casanovas and find someone who drives you bloody crazy. Then, look to the piners and add some warmth, romance, and sincerity.

Finally, as summer ends, wake up from your summer fling as you would from any one-night stand: confused, sexually satisfied and happy to be going home.

And for those of you who, like me, got it wrong this year- get a column in Salient. Then at least you can bitch about it to 12,000 students