Editorial | Issue 11

Editorial | Issue 11

So here I am again, filling in for another editorial. No sooner had I walked out the Critic door than I was abruptly yanked back through it, sustaining slight damage to my right rotator cuff in the process. No matter; the role’s sex appeal makes its menial pay and questionable social value worthwhile, my days as a promising sportsman ended some time before they had commenced, and the ability to service myself with my left hand was a skill long in need of cultivating.

This week is Critic’s “travel” issue. Travel is one of those concepts that society deems irresponsible, nay treasonous, to dislike, somewhat like apple pie, diversity, and pacifism. But I’m one of those pesky naysayers. I say, “Nay, apple pie’s gluten quotient makes me fart, celebrating diversity for its own sake masks the fact that some people are less enlightened than others, and pacifism only works until it gets pancaked by a tank.”

Many New Zealanders yearn to voyage beyond our pristine shores to the wondrous places beyond. Peer-reviewed sources like The Movies tell us that foreign lands hold great wisdom that will make us better people. But in contrast to the pervasive travel-agency propaganda that fills young, impressionable New Zealand minds, Critic is here to douse your romantic assumptions with the polluted waters of misadventure.

This is no starry-eyed, New-Zealand-as-Godzone paean – let’s face it, this country is boring and often quite shit, and I don’t blame people for wanting to leave. The problem is that young Kiwis are all too eager to buy into superficial overseas adventures that often amount to little more than taking drugs on a beach. (But hey, at least you got that sweet new cover photo for your Facebook page, amirite?)

Perhaps this bitter tirade is merely the product of my own underwhelming overseas experiences. On the whole, my foreign adventures have been relatively few, relatively brief, and relatively tame. I went to the US for six weeks when I was nine. I remember it largely as an indistinct blur of canyons and relatives, interspersed with Disneyland, which, while great, was hardly the point. I went on a school trip to France when I was 16, to which my parents contributed at least $2000. The trip introduced me to marijuana but not, disappointingly, sex. My last international sojourn was a week-long trip to Sydney to visit my then-girlfriend, a trip from which I returned broke and single.

The point is, if you’re going to travel, do it right. Do things you’ve never done before (#YOLO and all that), come back with great stories, and don’t just do the same shit you can do at home. Brittany Mann climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro (page 16) and it was the worst eight days of her life, but hey, at least she can tell people about that time she was shoved up a mountain while covered in piss and blood. My flatmate has a friend called “Jack the Crazy Italian,” who can allegedly spin a good travel yarn. I’ve never met Mr. Crazy Italian, but I’ve heard some of his stories second-hand, and if they’re true, his name is well-earned.

Pure hedonism is all well and good, but don’t waste a ton of money on something you can do at home with all your friends (unless you’ve got a ton of money to waste, in which case more power to you). Dunedin’s got some beaches. Go take drugs there.
This article first appeared in Issue 11, 2013.
Posted 2:26pm Sunday 12th May 2013 by Sam McChesney.