L is for latin

CHARLES HOPKINS
Volume 1, Issue 3 (Originally Published 12 March 2012)
The week before last, the name of the newspaper was decided by popular vote: De Minimis. ​

Should this have surprised me? The only faculty in the university to have their own newspaper (I assume – I have no evidence to substantiate this claim) and we pick a Latin title.

The pretentiousness of this newspaper-initiative is reaching critical mass. All we need now is to hire Monash students to hand-make the paper on which De Minimis is printed, and the ostentation would open the gates of pretentious-hell; out would spurt organic fruiterers, 60 year-old Brighton women driving Porsche Cayennes, and anyone who buys aloe vera tissues. Just buy normal tissues! They’re only at your nose for like, half a second before you’re blowing air out of your nostrils! By that stage you can’t smell anything!

I mean Latin? Really? Who uses it now apart from opportunistic private-school kids and wankers? Or to rephrase that question: who uses it now apart from wankers?

The JD student who proposed the Latin name did so because he’s “a huge fan of revivalism”. You know who else are fans of revivalism? Misogynists and racists.**

De Minimis mark one was first released in 1948; and I’m not criticizing the namers of that publication because maybe it was cool back then, like Andy Warhol and smoking; but times have changed. That stuff isn’t cool anymore. Latin is dead, like journalism and the written word.

I think the real problem in arriving at the name was the democratic approach. What has democracy provided us with? Xenophobic immigration laws, marriage inequality and Guy Sebastian.

The translation doesn’t even justify its usage; it stands for “as the law does not concern itself with little things, it is the function of this magazine so to do.” Firstly, I’m suspicious of any language that can say that much stuff in one-and-a- half-words. Secondly, I find it patently incorrect; in my experience that’s all the law concerns itself with (cue two hour lecture on the meaning of “interview”). And thirdly, this publication does concern itself with the big issues! Have you not read my last two articles?

The only recourse now is to ditch the name and run with something less pretentious. Any of the following satisfy this criteria: ‘The JD Times’, ‘Only pick this up if you regularly eat wagyu’ or ‘JDs be better than all you bitchez’.

**Nick Baum is neither of those things, and ladies: he’s single. ​

Charles Hopkins has just started a music blog. He only distributes the URL to those trendy enough to already know it.