Columns

So here’s the last issue of the year! Oh golly gosh, I have so many people to thank!

I’d like to thank my mum and dad, for raising me to be the editor I am today. They were so proud when I delayed entering the workforce to take on an eternally Google-able, man-child job involving prodigious uses of the words “fuck” and “cunt.” They assured me that the weekly, concerned phonecalls from my grandmother did wonders for my dad’s blood pressure.

I’d like to thank Zane “Lothario” Pocock for his handsomeness and intimate knowledge of Dunedin’s dating scene. Though we’re never quite sure what he’s listening to when he disappears behind his earphones and blocks out all the insults we hurl at him, I’m sure it’s something predictably bro-y, like dubstep ringtone remixes or play-by-play analyses of Jonah Lomu’s greatest tries.

Zane will be a brilliant editor next year, and assured me that Critic will definitely step up its attempts to pander to the mainstream. “I probably won’t turn Critic into an abstract art project discernible only to me and my circle of friends, all of whom I flat with,” he said. “Probably not, anyway.”

I’d like to thank Jesus, for giving me the inner strength to succeed. Thank you baby Jesus, for your service to this country.

I’d like to thank our fantastic designers, Sam Clark and Dan Blackball, who somehow knew what I meant whenever I looked over their shoulders and told them to “make it more thingy” or “boop it.” In exchange, I let Dan wear the same pants every day and Clarky photoshop his face everywhere, so on balance I think they’re happy.

Thank you also to Sarah Macindoe, Brittany Mann and Maddy Phillipps, for making Critic the most error-free student publication this side of the Leith. All year I was flooded with congratulatory emails praising our correct semicolon use, our abandonment of the em-dash, and our forward-thinking adoption of the Oxford comma.

Thank you to our ace news sleuths Claudia Herron and Bella Macdonald, and our interns Jamie Breen, Josie Cochrane, Jack Montgomerie and Thomas Raethel, for their dedicated couch-burning and ODT-baiting coverage. Thanks also to our feature writers Brittany, Maddy, Loulou Callister-Baker and Ines Shennan. Without you, many students would have made it through Monday morning lectures undistracted.

Thanks also to Alex Lovell-Smith. Face it, Alex, you work for Critic.

Finally, thank you to our great volunteers, including but not limited to Baz Macdonald, Basti Menkes, Rosie Howells, Tristan Keillor, Charlotte Doyle, Josef Alton, Lucy Hunter, Raquel Moss, Kirsty Dunn, Guy McCallum, “Dr” Nick Erskine, Elsie Jacobson, Hannah Twigg, Bryony Leeke, Jessica Bromell, Campbell Ecklein, Elsie Stone, Phoebe Harrop, Josie Adams, M and G, Jacobin, Gus Gawn, Jonny Mahon-Heap and Jess Cole. You suckers are willing to work for free. That’s cool.

- Sam McChesney