I thought I had purged all my media bile this week, until someone reminded me again how bad Grok (Curtin Uni Guild Mag) has become. It claims that, “Grok is Australia’s biggest and best student-focused news magazine…” It’s not. If they substituted limp wristed for good, then maybe.
Although Murdoch’s Guild rag is fairly laughable, with apparently a call to give Communism one more go, at least it still has some fire. Passionately held but ridiculous views, wild condemning of the administration and the government is what student publications are supposed to be about, not a forum for Sizzler and Braziliano Coffee ads which are the highlights of Grok these days.
The Page 3 editorial begins, “Chapters. You hear people say they go through them all the time, but how do you define a chapter..? ” (Even Paul Murray wouldn’t cut and paste that.) The piece meanders on with gems of wisdom such as “Chapters are like pages of a book: The more you read, the more pages you turn, the more you know…”
That’s just drivel. You won’t believe me, but the line “An old American Indian told his grandson…” comes up later. I half expected Jesus to make an appearance in this piece too, but mercifully no. Perhaps next month.
There’s a half decent bit on Indian rag pickers later on, something about bumper stickers, but really, what happened to the old Grok? Someone has kidnapped it and is holding it hostage somewhere. Possibly at the New Idea Offices. Someone needs to get a posse together and rescue it.
Please.
The Worst of Perth 
Oh, for the early-90s glory days of Grok, under the stoned yet steady hand of Nathan Lynch.
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Nah Bento, it was teh mid 80s when Grok really shone… wish I could remember who our editor was… but I was quite impressed when he tapped me on the shoulder at a Go Betweens / Hunters gig in London a couple of years later… very fucking small world.
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Was that big “Shuts” Mike Shuttleworth? Did Ray Purvis edit it once? Peter Bonner wrote some fine reviews. Think those guys are bailed up in Freo these days!
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Ray Brindal was a great helmsman at ‘Grok’; Shuttleworth was a fine scribe; Bonner some kind of witty iconaclast. Don’t forget Chris “KK” Wright — he could string a few good words together. Shutts is in Brunswick; Bonner’s in Darwin; KK is at Dada Records in Perth.
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I was lamenting this to a visiting british student today. All I saw in this month’s issue was ads, terribly written reviews (that gave The Guru the thumbs up!?), and more glossy, irritating ads. And what was with the fashion shoot that had a terribly photoshopped rainbow saturated over the length of it? How can we tell how the fashion looks (not that I could care less) if there’s a tie-die of colour splattered over it? Disappointing.
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Were they ads for bad fashion, or some kind of features?
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I Paul Nurry at first blush would definitely cut and paste that line. How dare you? If Armstrong’s Mummy suddenly allowed him to sack i Paul Nurry, I paul Nurry could see myself editing at first blush Grok. we would begin by exposing the role of The Sunday Times in Wa Inc. Teh kids are still seething about how that shit went down at first blush.
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Student culture is currently so sanitised and pacified by massive overheads & fees, that no-one has time or could be bothered challenging anything, writing anything vaguely anti-establishment or expressing anything new because they’ve largely all turned into stunned mullets and become captives of an unsustainable education system that teaches irrelevance!
The only thing worth teaching anymore is the fine art of scone making, permaculture and knitting smocks.
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@7 B.C.F.
This was all part of a right wing plot to distract the population as a whole from the fiscal fascist movement that has spread its suffocating embrace across the whole of the planet.
The trouble is, in part, the reluctance of
average mug punters to accept the fact that they are being scammed in almost every facet of their daily existence.
WTF are people working so hard and for so long in a world that is steadily disintegrating around their very ears?
We’ve been (and are still being) successfully CONNED.
Here endeth todays rage from Methuselah’s great-granddad.
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Rolly, do you write for Metior, by any chance? That’s certainly not the sort of smash-the-state firebrandism Grok would touch, these days.
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@7 BCF
I don’t think you can knit a smock – you have to actually smock one which is another dying art.
Maybe the fact that so many students take a gap year to travel the world or work for a living these days makes them realise what a great lurk being a student in Australia is.
The don’t want to complain in case someone notices what a fine time they are having and make them stop.
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Hey Cimbali thanks for the heads up – Damn I’ve been caught out smocking behind the shed!
I thought for students it was all hard times and Ivan Denisovich!!
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“Oh, for the early-90s glory days of Grok, under the stoned yet steady hand of Nathan Lynch.”
Bento, that’s exactly who and what I was thinking of!
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@3 TBCF – it was Graham someone… circa 1985… black wavy hair, glasses, kinda George Costanza looking. Sorry Gra Gra if you’re out there.
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@9 Bento
Write for the Metior? Me? Surely you jest.
Murdoch Uni wasn’t so much as a twinkle in the eye of the State Planner when I was of an age to attend such an august institution.
No, it is really just a sad case of me being an angry *old* man. Heh! Heh!
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Your avatar lookks like it could still write for Metior Rolly.
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Your avatar looks like the top of Marx’s tombstone.
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Yeh, maybe, Bento, but it’s of an altogether more illustrious individual: Edward Lear!
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I thought graham senders was a guild pres not a grok editor – not sure!!
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Marx has Lear’s head on his tomb? It’s a political struggle…
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I believe Mr Senders is a TWOP reader. I don’t know his N de P though.
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Workers of the world unite. You have nothing to lose but your runcible spoons.
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I’m sure it was Mr Senders who 1. tapped me on the shoulder at the London gig (or vise versa) and 2. Edited teh Grok…
@the BCF – obviously the Costanza reference twigged it for you?
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@12 Hughie – I had the pleasure of being Tim Brooke-Taylor to Lynchie’s Bill Oddie at a Student Journalist’s Association end-of-year fancy dress bash.
Ahh, undergrad humour. Tis ever the same.
Still, not being and Engineers’ do, we were at least spared the always hilarious spectacle of football players wearing frocks.
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Bento@21. I think workers of the (WA) world have quite a lot to lose just now. Their McMansions and big screen TVs are just two things that spring to mind.
The question that needs to be answered is what have the workers got to gain?
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@24 margeryx,
A bit of time for actually living, perhaps, instead of wasting their lives on “lifestyle” and its concomitant alienation from all things of real value.
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Sorry Rolly, ‘actually living’ just won’t cut it. What does that really mean? What kinds of activities make up actually living?
We’ve been sold the ‘lifestyle’ and we’ve bought it.
I can’t remember what we used to do before Gloria Jeans and retail therapy.
I went to the forest recently, it’s still there, but now it has a nice coffee shop tucked next to a golf course.
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I would say go back to russia, but it would have to be go back to Murdoch these days.
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Or Fremantle.
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I alway thought Carmen Lawrence would retire to a Dacha in Fremantle. I originally wrote Dascha, but that seems to be the name of a porn star.
http://www.dascha.com/
I could see Peter Dowding retiring to a Dascha, but not Carmen.
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Murdoch have Rabbits roamin wild around the grounds man! (crack!) come teh revolution we’ll be needin’ dem rabbits!! Better start practisin’ your fricasee Marg! Now thats livin’ :)
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There was some talk of poisoning or shooting them when I worked behind the limestone curtain at Murdoch.
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[Murdoch have Rabbits roamin wild around the grounds man! (crack!) come teh revolution we’ll be needin’ dem rabbits!! Better start practisin’ your fricasee Marg! Now thats livin’ :)]
Hire an Italian to round them up and make a profit selling em to all the Comare and Compare to feast on :-)
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Aaahh bugger! so probably toxic infested inedible wildlife, oh well better go back to escargoe, latte’ & golf then!
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@26
There ya go margeryx, you’ve obviously not had the time to work that out for yourself. ;)
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LA, I don’t need to go back to russia or Murdoch. The bank loaned me some money for my own slice of Tuscan on Perth.
It’s warm inside the hive and all the other bees are buzzing so loudly you can no longer hear the approach of doom.
Well, sometimes I still hear it’s echo, but I just crack open a bottle of SSB and flick over to Two and a Half Men.
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Rabbits go delightfully with a full bodied Cab Sav Marg :) bzzzzzz…!!
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Thanks for buzzing BCF, but if I ever find myself hunting and stewing wild rabbits I shall know that doom, or the glorious revolution, has arrived.
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Hey, margeryx,
How the hell else do you think us poor pensioner persons get a bit of extra protein, Eh? Eh?
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……and are they delicious slightly melted upside down toffee apples on your avatar marg? They look rather exotic and damned tasty! We are getting very off topic here sorry!!
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Those are toffee apples, BCF, they are real, you can buy them in Vegas for US$4.00.
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Pingback: Ixnay on the Untcay « The Worst of Perth
Senders was indeed Grok editor in the 1980s. He wasn’t Guild President though. Lucky you, Cookster, being touched by the Hand of Grok at a Hunters gig.
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The bizarre thing about that gig was that hardly any of the local Londoners knew Hunters, so it was just a few stray aussies gathered around at the feet of Mark Seymour.
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I remember the editor of Grok in the early 80s as being an amiable fellow by the name of Ray Brindle. Anyway, the old rag certainly went downhill since 1982-83 when I used to contribute cartoons to it. Probably.
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The problem was that Brindal was a bit too amiable. To borrow the cliche, methinks Grok was never as good as it used to be. I vaguely recall it being briefly rebranded for the 1990s as “Alowa” or similar, allegedly the traditional owners’ name for a student newspaper or something equally PC. Who was the editor then, Cockster?
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[…..methinks Grok was never as good as it used to be.]
Alas, nostalgia isn’t what it used to be ;P
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Ray Brindal edited Grok until the end of 1983 – I think he saw the writing on the wall when Ken Gibbons started taking over the guild again.
Carolyn Thomson was then in control circa 84-85. She and a few others there were also eventually pissed off by the looney right who were running the guild.
Unlike the above two, the entertaining Graham Senders (1986-87) kind of thrived in that environment – he thought they were just a bunch of self-deluded kiddies playing politics. He also spent some time in London and has a massive record collection, so it could well have been him at the concert. Unlike some of the others who ran the paper, though, he didn’t smoke pot.
Haven’t seen Grok recently, but surely one of its low points was in the early 1990s when Steve Cannings ran it. I could never figure out how a guy who came so close to being thrown out of the English department because he was a lazy plagiarist could be employed by the guild to write its rag.
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“No you cant fool the children of TEH revolution” no,no,no, bullshit!! they’ve all been totally fooled!Come on Rolly – I feel a protest rally comin’ on!!
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Overheard at Murdoch Uni today and said without any sense of shame –
“It’s good to see that America’s finally got a nigger president.”
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Apparently there’s an opening for Grok editor. Let’s hope the new editor sacks the new bastards.
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“Passionately held but ridiculous views, wild condemning of the administration and the government is what student publications are supposed to be about, not a forum for Sizzler and Braziliano Coffee ads which are the highlights of Grok these days.”
Oh Please! The new kids on the block aren’t interested in these things – and why should we be? Let’s be honest, life is pretty sweet for most of the kids reading and writing for their uni mags.
Secondly, student publications don’t have the benefit of compulsory fees to call upon anymore. Those Sizzler advertisements are basically the only thing keeping the diminishing number of student rags ticking over.
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Grok can kiss my creative works.
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A rejection, Ljuke??
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Saving my best stuff for Woman’s Day anyway.
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I’m the new editor of Grok for 2012 and am keen to restore Grok’s good reputation of its ‘glory days’. I’d like to know what you thought made Grok great, and where you’d like to see it head in the future – if you’d care to contribute. Thanks!
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Good luck Hayley!
I would like more news.
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Yeah, good luck Hayley. I haven’t actually seen an issue for some years, but I’m probably in the wrong part of town. And the wrong demographic anyway.
Rotto, you would say that wouldn’t you?
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More news.Heh.
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He’s just pitching for a second job.
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a real job.
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I’ve sent Hayley my CV – fingers crossed…
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Could you edit creative corner?
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agony uncle?
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Photographing and writing up the page 3 girl?
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Surely you should look at the thing before sending in CV. It’s no Western Toerag.
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An out of focus page 3 girl? That might be fine in Pravda…
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I can do anything. Good DAY, sir.
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Come back here while I’m talking to you.
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It might be old, but it’s still news.
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Monty Python quotes.
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My terms of employment probably restrict me from saying, “Drop the Vice Chancellor”, so let me say “More Vice Chancellor please. The whole thing including creative corner should be totally Vice Chancellor copy.”
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You’re talking like you have a CB on your Onkyo
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Just write shit n stuff and set up your office full of alcoholics. Work strange hours, wear strange clothes, get horrendously drunk at student events. Swear in your articles. Don’t publish annoying whingey articles by young liberals. That’s what I wish I’d done.
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Apparently they are going to scan and upload the last 40 years worth soon.
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Every edition should have an op ed by Mark McGowan. He’s in Labor, Labor is left wing, and students are still left wing, right?
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I gave up on students in 2001, when the undergraduates couldn’t work out why the post grads were collectively annoyed (okay, maybe just me) when the Student Union arranged for Nestle to sponsor events. I mean,..?!
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I used to think – now I just read The Economist.
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Still open minded I would say Ning , before the concrete sets, and RubyRuby you have to reason with the suckers : informing them of Nestlé’s perfidy.
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