Spirit Bound Released

By Louise Burge
Spirit Bound was released on May 18, something I completely forgot about. So I’m very excited about the release and am looking forward to buying it on Monday, which is the next time I receive my Youth Allowance.

I’ve loved the Vampire Academy series since I first started reading it, and I’ve now read the entire series cover to cover. I’ve been awaiting the release of this book since finishing Blood Promise a few weeks ago. There were so many questions left unanswered in Blood Promise- will Rose help Dimitri turn dhampir again? Is there truly a cure for Strigoi? And if so, will Rose give the cure to Dimitri before he kills her?

Of course, not all the questions are concerning Rose and Dimitri. Some questions concern the other characters, such as Lissa, Christian and Adrian. Christian and Lissa broke up at the end of Blood Promise, and many people are itching to know if they get back together or not.

But not much can be said without spoiling the plot of the whole series so far. If you don’t mind spoilers, continue reading. If you do, stop reading now and race out to read the series.

In the first chapter of Spirit Bound, which is available for viewing on Richelle Mead’s official website http://www.richellemead.com/books/vampireacademy.htm Rose is about to take part in the trial to become a guardian. She wants to become Lissa’s guardian, protecting the Moroi princess from the evil Strigoi lurking outside the Academy grounds. This has been a theme all through the series, of Rose wanting desperately to become Lissa’s guardian.

If anyone has read Spirit Bound, please do not hesitate to leave a review about it. I so badly want to read it, but can’t until Monday. If I happen to buy and read the book before my next update on Wednesday, the next update will be my review of the book.

For now, though, the library is closing so I must bring my entry to a close. Happy reading and I hope to entertain you all next week with my review of the book or an entry on the Raglan markets.

What to look forward to

By Casey Macpherson

Bathurst TAFE showcase, December 3
Today we met with Paul Basha, a Cert 4 Multimedia student from TAFE Bathurst Campus. Paul is one of the students who will have work shown at the showcase. His short film is based on his Lebanese background, an attempt to show his culture in a much different light to how we know it from the media.

After being sat in front of our TVET Media class, he opened himself up to an array of difficult and some slightly intrusive questions on his opinions on the stereotypes and racism aimed at Lebanese people in Australia. From this I can tell you that he is an easy going guy who believes the minority let down the majority when it comes to setting an image of the Lebanese. He thinks the media presents stories in a predetermined way, but he isn't resentful, stating “It’s their job to twist stories”.

He is not a "fully-sick, doof-doof Leb", but a Multimedia student with a different approach. You can see his film at the Bathurst TAFE campus on December 3, alongside the work of many other TAFE students. All are welcome so come along and enjoy the variety of work from a variety of people.

New film confronts stereotypes - by Fran Vinall

Paul Basha is a 19-ish TAFE student filming a 5-8 minute movie for his class. He’s all smiles, attempting to coax conversation out of our awkwardly silent class, while our teacher runs around printing various things off. His friends stand in the corner, filming this interview, and they joke around, relaxed. "Are you a terrorist?" one mockingly asks Paul, who laughs heartily. Oh, and Paul is Lebanese. Don’t worry though, this isn’t going to be another "What is the problem with our Middle Eastern youth?" paranoia-infested article. Quite the opposite, in fact. Paul is filming a movie about his Lebanese family, in an attempt to disprove the prevalent all-Lebs-are-violent stereotype running rampant in Australia’s media.

The stereotype of the aggressive Lebanese gang has been around for a while, long before the Cronulla riots, but it was the riots which really sparked things up. It would be a hot day in July when the newspapers don’t present some story or another about a crime committed by someone of "Middle Eastern appearance." Yet when the perpetrator is Caucasian, his description of race in the papers goes mysteriously missing. There is a problem in many Sydney suburbs, with the Lebanese demographic being worryingly overrepresented in crime, yet the problem, caused by the media, is that this results in people assuming all Lebanese people are out to get you. Which, when you look at people like Paul, is obviously not the case. As he puts it, "There are some who ruin it for the rest of us, who are honest and hardworking." He maintains he and his family are not the "fully sick ones with the doof doof music."

Paul’s grandparents migrated to Australia before the civil war began tearing Lebanon apart. They moved because they wanted a change: "To raise the family in a non-third world country was probably good," says Paul. Paul himself wants one day to visit Lebanon, calling it the "Paris of the Middle East."

"It’s a very picturesque country," he says – but don’t worry, he has his priorities straight, citing the food as a good reason for visiting his grandparents homeland.

Paul believes the stereotyping of Lebanese in the media is due to a bad attitude by the media – they must have a story in their minds before they go out there, he says. A fair point, and somewhat true – journalists are often told their angle before they go to investigate a news item. How many times do you think one has been told, oh, it’s a Lebanese crime, go for that? He also says that his culture is an easy target, especially after the neurosis-inducing riots.

Paul himself has been relatively free from racism growing up – he attended Stannies (St. Stanislaus College) in Bathurst, and says he only ever received anything race orientated from friends, as a joke. Still, sometimes people will ask him where he’s from, and when he replies that he’s Lebanese, the reactions can be starkly different. The majority will be cool with it, but there are the occasional bad apples who will treat him with him a disdainful "oh," and walk away. "Sometimes it’s ok to say you’re Lebanese, but sometimes you’re ashamed," he says. "Most of the time, I’m ok with it." Since he is generation Y, Paul believes he has escaped much of the racism of earlier times. His uncles and grandparents however, received some trouble fitting in in a new country. "Too Aussie to be Lebanese, too Lebanese to be Aussie," Paul says.

His movie is a documentary about his family and Lebanese culture, which he has been working on for about a term. His migrant grandparents will be a particular focus of the movie. "I wanted to do something completely different," says Paul. The movie can be viewed on December 3, 2009 at the TAF Campus on Panorama Avenue, Bathurst, as part of the Bathurst Information, Arts and Technology Showcase.

Every country has its idiots - by Nick Wade

Today we were given the opportunity of interviewing Paul Basha on the subject of his short film which is currently in production. Paul’s film deals with the sensitive issue of racial stereotyping in Australia, in particular towards the Lebanese culture and people. Now before you turn away or stop reading thinking to yourself “yes, yes I’ve heard it all before”, what separates Paul from the rest of the drab crowd who constantly whine and bicker about racism is that Paul makes some damn fine points.

The point that hits closest to home for me is his reference to the minorities and basically how they are the root of all negative stereotyping. I can easily relate to this because when the world looks at Australia what do they see? They see middle aged men with beer guts and sausage stained singlets living in the middle of the desert and keeping kangaroos as pets. How many of us are actually like this? This was Paul’s main point, that because some drongos in Sydney with too much testosterone sparked a riot and because America is at war with the Middle East does this make every Lebanese person within Australia a criminal? His exact words were: “It’s the minorities ruining it for the majority.”

I can sympathise with this point of view as I’m sick to death of tourists coming to Australia and being disappointed that I don’t know how to surf, I don’t have a tan and of course most shocking I don’t have a pet kangaroo.

Of course for an interview it wasn’t actually what was being said that sold Paul's case for me, it was the fact that Paul entered with his two mates laughing and joking being able to talk about the sensitive issues calmly and with good humour. When asked, “What in your opinion is the biggest difference between Australia and Lebanon?” he was unable to think of an answer but instead gave similarities between the two saying “they are good people, easy going”.

While I don’t doubt there are Lebanese people out there who I wouldn’t understand and wouldn’t particularly get along with I’m certain there are just as many Australians that fit into the same category. At the end of the day Paul's point is that every country has its idiots and we have to all try our best to not them tarnish our nationality's reputation. This is what Paul's film aims to do and can be viewed on the 3rd of December at the TAFE Showcase.

Newspaper extinction - how sad

By Chelsie Webster

I just read an article that claimed conventional media such as newspapers and magazines will be "dead", as technology is taking over, and people are turning to reading the news online, blogging and of COURSE the awesome twitter updates - LOL!

Yeah, maybe. I don't really know how to respond to this. Lets face it - Australians are bloody lazy. I don't know many people who leap out of bed at 6am to go fetch the paper to be read over brekky. Okay, so maybe we get it delivered now - but I haven't put much faith in the deranged man who drives that crappy little red car around Bathurst, hurling the paper at targets. Personally, I read the paper - 3 kinds of paper. The Blayney Chronicle which is of course an exciting read, the Daily Telegraph for all things sport only, and the Western Advocate for laughs.

So the internet is a great place to access blogs - but blogs don't have the facts, and newspaper stories are most of the time 70% fact. How do we know that some random nobody blogger is telling the truth? Television has been around for a long time, if we wanted to get rid of newspapers, we would of decades ago when we started accessing the news on television. I don't believe that newspapers are going to go "extinct", many people love to read the paper or magazine of a coffee during their lunch break. No blog or internet will ever replace that.

But once again, I really don't care. As long as the TV is feeding me my sport news, I wouldn't care if the paper went extinct. But then again...how would we get the tab guide?

Kyle at it again! Chelsie Webster

I'm sure you've already heard. And if you were unfortunate enough to hear it live on air, then I think you're an idiot for listening to Kyle Sandilands in the first place. Naturally, Kyle has obviously become bored with his miserable, greasy life, and has decided to bring down the hard efforts of Magda Szubanski's weight loss, by saying she could lose more weight in a concentration camp. I must admit, he's really outdone himself this time. Not only offending one person, but the survivors of Hitler's concentration camps, any Jew, Jewish group, families of those who died in the concentration camps...oh the list goes on! Well done Kyle! You've successfully managed to get the whole population of Australia to vomit in our mouths a little.

But I must think to myself...does Kyle sit around, while eating 3 family sized pizzas, and think of outrageous things to say on air to offend people? I think he's playing a game with us Australia...the more people he offends, and the more media time he gets, he gets more points! And maybe his crappy singer wife will feed him a little more dinner at night! Or maybe its some geniuses at 2day fm who come up with these awesome ideas?

Honestly Kyle, you are fat and greasy. Since you think Magda could go lose a little more weight, maybe you can become the new face of Jenny Craig? No, please don't. Nobody likes looking at you - maybe that is why you are on the radio.

Hitler still killing years later - Nick Wade

A new advertisement set to be released on German television depicts Hitler in a steamy encounter with a woman and a tag line that reads “AIDS is a mass murderer”. The ad campaign is aimed to counter a fall in public awareness about the virus and promote safe sex.
For those of you who don’t find this to be utterly hilarious and stupid, stop reading now you obviously don’t understand basic humour. For those of you who wish to learn, listen closely. AIDS is tragic, and by itself is not funny, Hitler was a meanie and by himself is not funny. However Hitler + AIDS = Very funny. So you see this is my proven formula that two wrongs make a funny.

Dirk Silz creative director of the Das committee agency is quoted as saying “We asked ourselves what face we could give to the virus, and it couldn’t be a pretty face”. Well Dirk Silz your right, up until now I myself thought aids was a walk in the park, but if Hitler’s concerned it must be bad. On the bright side we may now have a cure to the deadly virus, I’m pretty sure last time Hitler got up to his devious old ways we rounded up an army of Allied troops and marched right on over there to give him a slap on the wrist. By my reasoning this trusted solution ought to work like a charm on the pesky old AIDS virus.

As if the topic of AIDS and Hitler wasn’t serious enough this whole situation could actually be breaching a much larger and in my opinion far more important issue. I speak of course about the age old debate of “how soon is too soon?” This question has plagued comedians the world over for generations and in a recent poll has been discovered to actually be a much more pressing issue than finding a cure for aids.

You see Hitler and his holocaust was roughly 70 years ago and yet it’s still not funny, where as the untimely death of Steve Irwin was a mere 3 years ago, his family lives on without him and despite this the situation is already hilariously funny. In my opinion the solution to this problem should be next on our scientists list of things to do, a quantifiable formula to determine exactly how long it takes before a tragic situation ceases to be heart rending and starts to be laughable.