These comments pertain to the recent release of Art Work by Temporary Services. They apply to the project as a whole, but a link to them was left on Julia Bryan-Wilson’s essay “Art Versus Work” as it is a central organizing essay. I apologize in advance for the scatter-shot nature of the response. I level these criticisms and objections with great admiration of, and humility toward,  Art Work, its organizers, and its contributors even if I don’t always maintain that tone.

Anything but work: Call Me a Slacker – NEVER a Worker.

“My father taught me to work; he did not teach me to love it. I never did like to work, and I don’t deny it. I’d rather read, tell stories, crack jokes, talk, laugh – anything but work.” – Abraham Lincoln

Julia Bryan-Wilson does an admirable job presenting a historical overview and theoretical foundation for those who embrace the notion of the artist as worker. What leaves me a bit cold, not just in her piece, but in Art Work as a whole, is the lack of any substantive dissent from this notion. At the very least, a sketch of some counter-theorizations, and a survey of key figures advocating against the valorization of work and labor would be useful. The slackers, quitters, idlers, loafers, drop outs, and leisure theorists have their own history, many providing a scathing critique of the lefts embrace of the proletarianization of human activity. I, being one of these good for nothings myself, hope to provide just such a sketch, but it will remain just a sketch as anything more would feel too much like work, and I’d rather read, tell stories, crack jokes, talk, laugh…

On work, labor, and old man Marx

“I think that there is far too much work done in the world, that immense harm is caused
by the belief that work is virtuous…” – Bertrand Russell

Julia Bryan-Wilson writes, “Drawing on Marx’s theoretical work, and prompted by a desire to make art legitimate, necessary, and meaningful, artists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries tried to erode the distinction between art and labor by insisting that their actions, and the products of those actions, were indeed work.” The idea that calling what you do “work” makes it “legitimate” or “meaningful” is the crux of the problem I have with much of what one finds in Art Work. This sort of thinking is everywhere on the left and Marx does in fact provide the theoretical mirror in which many self-identified “cultural workers” (I always shudder at this phrase) see themselves. Jean Baudrillard, the still mostly Marxist incarnation of which Bryan-Wilson cites, moved very quickly into a position not easily integrated within her piece or this newspaper as a whole. In his book The Mirror of Production he writes “The critical theory of the mode of production does not touch the principle of production.” That is to say that Marxist analysis too readily embraces the terms of the debate and therefore provides a mere functional critique, one that Baudrillard might note, “…deciphers the functioning of the system of political economy; but at the same time it reproduces it as model.”

Like Baudrillard I see a certain kind of of Marxist theoretical fundamentalism at work here. Art, like everything else in life apparently, becomes just another form of work. The proponents of artist unions and art workers appear to see labor and production everywhere and thus we find ourselves talking of wages, compensation, and professional practices. Let’s keep in mind though that just as the id, ego, and superego are organizing myths of psychoanalysis, Marxism has its own myths. Mapping the world using these specialized tools is certainly useful in certain contexts, but I’d just like to keep in mind that they are specialized, very partial, and historically bound views and that they are maps after all. Or to return to Baudrillard in reference to Marxism:

“Historical materialism, dialectics, modes of production, labor power – through these concepts Marxist theory has sought to shatter the abstract universality of the concepts of bourgeois thought…Yet Marxism in turn universalizes them with a ‘critical’ imperialism as ferocious as the other’s.”

“…Thus, to be logical the concept of history must itself be regarded as historical, turn back on itself…Instead, in Marxism history is transhistoricized: it redoubles on itself and is universalized.”

“As soon as they [critical concepts] are constituted as universal they cease to be analytical and the religion of meaning begins [or what we called theoretical fundamentalism].”

Giles Gunn, not writing specifically about Marxism puts it this way, “Theory of this sort is always in danger of reifying itself – or, what amounts to the same thing, of treating everything it touches as mere epiphenomena of its own idioms. [emphasis mine]” So where does that leave us? What does employing these terms do? It seems many contributors here find them liberating. I feel it gives too much ground, too readily cedes a particular view of what is important about what artists do. I’m not sure that Baudrillard doesn’t have this one right:

“Failing to conceive of a mode of social wealth other than that founded on labor and production, Marxism no longer furnishes in the long run a real alternative to capitalism.”

And:

“And in this Marxism assists in the cunning of capital. It convinces men [sic] that they are alienated by the sale of their labor power, thus censoring the much more radical hypothesis that they might be alienated as labor power, as the ‘inalienable’ power of creating value by their labor. [entire quote in italics in the original]“

I see in Bryan-Wilson’s apparent acceptance of Marx a failure of imagination of sorts, one that leads us reductively to seeing the world through a narrow, economic prism. Much like the psychoanalyst sees libidinal drives and frustrated sexuality in everything from their morning coffee to flower arrangements, many in Art Work, see money, labor, and production everywhere. This strikes me as unhealthy and teeters dangerously close to the history of conceptual imperialism employed by Western ethnographers when they interpreted other cultures through their own cultural matrix and mistook this reading as transcription rather than translation. Baudrillard, again in The Mirror of Production is helpful here:

“…it [Western culture] reflected on itself in the universal, and thus all other cultures were entered in its museum as vestiges of its own image. It ‘estheticized’ them, reinterpreted them on its own model, and thus precluded the radical interrogation these ‘different’ cultures implied for it.”

Continuing:

“In the kindest yet most radical way the world has ever seen, they have placed these objects [so called primitive art] in a museum by implanting them in an esthetic category. But these objects are not art at all. And, precisely their non-esthetic character could at last have been the starting point for a radical perspective on (and not an internal critical perspective leading to a broadened reproduction of) Western culture.”

If we substitute “esthetic” with “economic” it should become clear why this is pertinent. By seeing something that looks like what the West calls economic exchange or labor and calling it such, we miss the opportunity to observe something deeply challenging to the very premise of economy, value, and work. To extrapolate then, we should think long and hard about how readily we want to place art within the conceptual spreadsheet of capitalist vocabulary, or as Baudrillard would say, its mirror – Marxist vocabulary.

Art work or Art leisure?

“…with art-relaxing art comes to you with a greater simplicity clearness beauty reality feelingness and life.” – Gilbert and George

“…there is no art without laziness.” – Mladen Stilinovic

Leisure, Joseph Pieper, the “intellectual worker,” and de-proletarianization

“Leisure has had a bad press. For the puritan it is the source of vice; for the egalitarian a sign of privilege. The Marxist regards leisure as the unjust surplus, enjoyed by the few at the expense of the many.” – Roger Scruton

“Work does not make you rich; it only makes you bent over.” – Russian proverb

One doesn’t have to look very far to find alternatives to the worship of work. Josef Pieper’s book Leisure, The Basis of Culture provides a road map to rethinking many of the founding assumptions of Art Work. Tackling head on what he calls the culture of “total work,” Pieper argues for leisure as an organizing principle for culture. He is especially scornful of the notion of the “intellectual worker” from which the easy leap to “art worker” should be obvious. He writes, “…the takeover…of intellectual action…and its exclusive possession by the realm of ‘total work’…the most recent phase of a whole series of conquests made by the ‘imperial figure’ of the ‘Worker.’ And the concepts of intellectual worker and intellectual work…make the fact of that conquest especially clear and especially challenging to our times.”

He goes on to provide a historical summary of how the idea of effort, work, and labor came to be equated with knowing and how this transformation omitted the very basis of intellectus, the passive, listening, visionary, effortless dimension of knowing at the expense of ratio, the mostly discursive, active form. As he describes it, many in this publication seem to have followed this same path of over-valuing effort and difficulty. So in Art Work it becomes clear that “…not only the wage earner, the hand-worker, and the proletarian are workers; even the learned man, the student, are workers; they too are drawn into the social system and its distribution of labor. the intellectual worker…is a functionary in the total world of work, he may be called a ’specialist,’ he is still a functionary…nobody is granted a ‘free zone’ of intellectual activity…” In this I sense a sad resignation to proletarianization, but what if we sought rather de-proletarianization?

Pieper defines being proletarian as “being bound to the working-process.” This he argues leads one to become a “spiritually impoverished functionary” – and it is this that rings loudly when I see one embrace the term art worker. For once again it seems like a failure of imagination, a spiritual failure (knowing full well how unfashionable that must seem) to adopt, if even tactically, the rhetoric of total work, or “to fall into line as ready functionaries for the collective working-state.” What is the alternative? Rather than expanding the reach of work, its colonization of existence, its imperial nature, perhaps it is better to tame it, refuse it (to the extent one can), and most easily, reject its measures. As Pieper says de-proletarianization “would consist in making available for the working person a meaningful kind of activity that is not work – in other words, by opening up an area of true leisure.”

Slack

Another prism through which to read all of this is through the “paradoxes of slackerdom” – an online conference I co-organized with Stephen Wright here. In its own way that (international) conversation stands as a kind of rejoinder to this one, or at least a necessary supplement. I urge those who have found their way here to look not only at it, but at the legions of lazy sods, slackers,  and others that reject work altogether as the (only) measure of human worthiness – those that seek  to define their lives relative to, and in, leisure – what Paul Willis calls “the hidden continent of the informal.”

The worst part of my day is usually biking home after going to the gym. The gym is located in the basement of a huge building, filled with many restaurants, bakeries, and a whole food court. How is that fair, life? How? Why did you put the gym under the movie theatre that always smells like delicious popcorn?
Plus on my route home I have to bike past that new poutine restaurant.

—
Dear boys that work at Film Buff,

You are so, so cute. And always able to make me chuckle, giggle, blush, or smirk. But why were you so mean to me last time I was in? Were you weirded out by my yoga pants, bike helmet, and the fact I rented ‘Diner‘? I can’t always be wearing nice dresses and renting Katherine Hepburn movies. Katherine Hepburn is way more intimidating then Kevin Bacon, by the way!!
Were you upset because when you pointed and said the movie I was looking for was by Clint Eastwood’s face, I didn’t know which row to look? Did you assume I don’t know who Eastwood is and then decide to judge me?
You are crazy, attractive FilmBuff boys! Perhaps you were disappointed because my cute step-sister wasn’t with me this time? I don’t know what it was, but you were inexplicably short with me, and I didn’t appreciate your tone. It made you not so high on the hot-schedule.

Please go back to being charming and helpful next time I come in. Which may be soon – I need a Garbo fix.

Yours,
Meghan.

–
A few Thursdays ago, I was cycling home from class, over the DVP bridge, when a fellow biker pulled up beside me to say, “You’re an amazing biker! You own that road bike! I was behind you thinking wow, she’s really fast and she’s wearing jeans and hilarious 80’s flats but you seriously own it!”

I told him it was my first road bike and he said “Well, you really know how to ride. You have amazing leg speed!”

Thank you kind sir.

–
Dream analysis tells me my dreams have been saying this:
“You’re feeling exposed, or forced into a vulnerable situation in real life somehow…someone is crossing your boundaries, taking advantage of you, or “intruding” on your life somehow in real life.”

I’ve had dreams that represent “the health and well-being of [my] mind, body, or spirit—especially through cleansing and releasing of the old, decaying, or toxic elements in your life” but that the “cleansing and releasing outdated or toxic thoughts, emotions, beliefs, judgments, or physical toxins or decay” needs more attention. I am also apparently “thinking about a frank, straightforward interaction with someone in [my] life.”

This was all from the Curious Dreamer, which reminded me “the subconscious mind may not see much difference between a seeing a person in the media and talking to them in person.”

–
NEW LIFE GOAL: become the Lady GaGa of Canadian Theatre.

–
I like this:

most tweeted words

–
My scene for this Thursday’s class is from The Royal Tenenbaums. Parfait. I’m Margot Tenenbaum. The adopted daughter/playwrite. OOOHHH WAAAIT A MINUTE.

–
I want this song to be a tattoo on my body.
(blue, songs are like tattoos?)

I am in a blog funk.  It’s like unto a writer’s block, but much less important in the scheme of things.  Blog funk for me means that I have a bunch of topics, but am uninspired or simply unmotivated.  Therefore, I leave it to you, my two readers, to provide me with random topics.  I promise to blog – likely, horribly – on whatever topic you provide.  If you provide no topics than I simply reference you back to my last post, which ended a reasonably-inspired October somewhat uninspiringly.

from my observations, all guys can be seperated into categories, and depending on the category, their behavior is easily determined. because I love you, I’m making a list! it will have type, phrase, behavior, and more. (if you have objections or additions, leave it in a comment and ill add or correct it)

type: THE SKATER (also: SURFER, BLADER)

behavior: skates… a lot. main concern is skating, the weather (sunny is the best skating weather, snowy/rainy the worst), and new or better parts for their board. if you date one, even if your an awesome gf, they will ditch you for skating if the conditions are perfect.
how to get him: be chill, don’t ask him to ditch his skater friends, like skate related things, know the names of skate moves, be a fan of weed and skater style
pros: balanced, agile, nice style- most of the time, knowledgeable of skating moves, cool with a lot of guys, easy to shop for
cons: typically likes weed, alcohol, partying, unabashed ditcher, not to smart, slacker, likes to watch skate videos all the time, can sometimes dress crappy
where to meet him: where else? skate parks. or anywhere there is a place to ollie, a smooth street, outside your school
common phrase: “Wanna play S.K.A.T.E?”

type: THE SPORTY GUY

behavior: is there a game on? ask him, he will know. sundays are holy days for a completely different reason to him. he loves to watch sports, play sports, play sports video games, wear his favorite teams jersey, decorate his page with [insert sport here] widgets and scores and pictures. his god is his teams coach/star. good luck getting him for Sunday dinner.
how to get him: if you already like sports your 10 steps ahead of the girls who don’t. ask him the score of his favorite team against their rivals but only if you watched the game and you know they won. or, if you know squat about homeruns, touchdowns and goals, ask him to explain, which he’ll be happy to. ask him to your schools game of his chosen sport, or if he’s on the team, go to his game and tell him he did a good job, make him a sign!
pros: good at sports, knowledgeable on sporty areas, if on a team-in with the other sporty guys, athletic
cons: easily angered if bad is spoken on his team, concerned with the game a little too much, always busy, forgetful, fierce
where to meet him: school sports games (in the stands and on the field/court), in front of the TV, at his friends desk discussing last nights game
common phrase: “Did you catch the game last night?”

type: THE BANDIE (also: MUSIC GEEK, RAPPER)

behavior: you say hi, but he doesn’t answer. why? he’s listening to his iPod – like always. his band is just getting started, but don’t worry – they’ll make it big soon. and even though this is about his fifth band (he left the last 3 cause they were “going in a different direction” and the other 2 he got kicked out b/c he sucks) and he picked up a guitar/bass/drumstick/touched a keyboard/touched the turntable only a couple of months ago, he’s the best EVER. his favorite band is either very generic or incredibly obscure. and its also the best band/rap group since the rolling stones/run dmc/devo/whatever and he knows this. and won’t hesitate to tell you. his notebooks are full of lyrics/raps he’s written, and if he let’s you read them, your in.
how to get him: ask him what he’s listening to. if you like them, tell him, and if you don’t, tell him playfully and it’ll start a debate. if you haven’t listened to them tell him and ask if you can share an earbud (ignore the earwax – ew!). later, comment or post on his wall or whatever and tell him what you thought, and segue into an actual convo
pros: good at choosing music, can make you an awesome mix CD, can charm you with words easily
cons: can be snotty, if you offend his favorite band or his musical effort, he will be mean to you. didn’t you know [insert band/group name here] is the best ever? god.
common phrase: “Their first album was better.”

type: THE BAD BOY(also: THE PLAYER)

behavior: wow, what does this boy not do? every word he says is charming, his hair is in the cutest and least amount of effort needed style, his clothes are cool, this boy shouts cool. too bad he is hardly in school cause he doesn’t like authority. he’s a loose cannon who plays by his own rules. his future shouts drug abuse and early demise, but he doesn’t care. after all, you can fix him… right?
how to get him: I have no idea! I imagine you’d have to appeal to his innocent side that sits in a corner too in awe to move in the face of so much awesome. bake him cookie or something, I don’t know.
pros: what isn’t good about him?
cons: oh yeah, his constant getting-in-trouble, his disregard to the rules, the fact he can’t meet your parents unless you want them to kick him out upon entrance, his scars that he won’t explain, girls underwear you find in his room the next day even though last night he said he was sick, the fact he’ll be stuck in his current grade forever, but that’s alright cause your gunna fix him.
where to meet him: outside during lunch smoking a cigarette on school property, selling drugs to anyone, in the housemasters/principals/headmasters office
common phrase: “hey”

type: THE VIDEO GAMER also: COMIC BOOKER

behavior: this guy loves games. a little too much. all guys have their vice, some healthy, some not. this guy is definitely not healthy. he knows every date for the newest game releases, and he has every system released. he’ll beat you easily in any game worth playing with one hand behind his back. his room has posters of games (oh yeah, they make them), and he even has shirts with his favorite characters on them.
how to get him: be interested in whatever he likes, or at least know a bit about them. challege him to a game and try your best to beat him. if you win, he likes you.
pros: great hand-eye coordination, knows the best places for Mountain Dew, good multi-tasker
cons: pimply, sometimes fat, knows the best places for Mountain Dew
where to meet him: Taco Bell, convienence stores, fast food places in general, gaming stores, the gaming section of Wal-Mart or whatever
common phrase: “owned!”

type: THE GEEK also: THE QUIET GUY

behavior: incredibly smart. alarmingly so. doesn’t really care about fashion, so he wears shorts. all. year. round. knows all formulas everywhere, can tell THE VIDEO GAMER how exactly his game was developed, and beat him with his own codes. can jailbreak your phone or anything really.
how to get him: ask him for help with homework. done.
pros: can help you with your homework, best defense in an intellectual argument, future winner of Jeopardy
cons: won’t hesitate to correct you-ever
where to meet him: school. the calculator section of the store, any place with electronics
common phrase: “No, actually, the correct thing is [phrase to correct you]“

hope this helped!
by the way, guys can be multiple things. for example, my crush is sporty and video gamey.

xo,a

Browsing through the files on my external hard-drive looking for some Bright Eyes records, I stumble upon a whole map stuffed with old drawings. I never knew I’ve drawn this much. The best thing is  it contains all the original scans and illustrator files. Like this one:

30 Years + I’ve Lost Count of the Days…

***

Yes.  That’s right.  I am not dead.

This is a lame apology to anyone who has still kept some hope alive that I would come back.  From quitting my job, to moving out of my place and becoming *technically* homeless and leaving the country for a month I’ve totally slacked on this blog.  I’m not proud of it.  The topsy-turvy turmoils of 30 year-old-hood are still alive and well and I will absolutely be back in a big, badass way very soon.  I’m out of the country until December 16th so between now and then I’ll try and get a few posts up (as I also have another blog that is travel-related in the current mix).

Please don’t give up on me.  Trust me.  I give great make-up…blogs.

Be back soon…

A post compiling some of my favorite USA TODAY portraits. All, except one, taken for the Wednesday print/video/photo “Talking Tech” pieces.
Below: Sonic Solutions CEO Dave Habiger

Demand Media CEO Richard Rosenblatt

Roku CEO Anthony Wood

Sorenson Media CEO Peter Csathy

Behind the scenes @ Netflix

Google CEO Eric Schmidt

Animoto CEO Brad Jefferson and 2 Spidermen on Hollywood Blvd.

The gang from Baja Sharkeez, Hermosa Beach

Growing up a Slacker has lead me to my current predicament. Being a rock solid student in high school doesn’t allow one to be invincible at the college level. In fact it’s quite the opposite. Unless one has severe (SEVERE) dedication, easy classes, or is extremely intelligent, college is a brutal bitch. Getting your ass kicked by classes while compounding a debt no man, woman, or child should have to endure, leads to a stress level expected only of middle class America. Growing up a Slacker has lead me to some poor choices. All of which have surmounted to my current predicament.

Here’s one of many Slacker’s who is hoping for a better tomorrow!

Well, to the untrained eye, it would appear The Vest is a slacker. No new posts in a couple of weeks would lead the layperson to make that conclusion.

However, The Vest is anything but a slacker. In the blog’s idle time, The Vest has taken a trip to cajun country, endured a three day ISO audit, lost a much loved cat, adopted a new, insane cat, took a day trip off-roading with some gun nuts, and sprinkled in a few beers here and there. So, here come some more posts and gambling scumbaggery. Enjoy.

…comes via JenX67 (as if I even had to say it — all bow down to the goddes off all things Generation X).

And thank God too, right. About time.

I know, I know! I change my featured blog about as often as I change the sheets, that is if I was the one who changed the sheets — wifey does that, and quite regularly too. But I’m just saying, if I was the one doing the changing it wouldn’t be often and thus the joke would work. Still, I change my underwear quite regularly, you know, when I think of it.

Anyhoo…

The new blog is called The Slacker Factor, and looks to be very promising. Be sure to check out the About section because JenX67 was spot on when she said that the authors bios are quite clever.

I for one am quite please to know that their are other GenXers out their who are not only are not ashamed of their slackerdom (eh?) but embrace it even proudly flaunt it.

This from the AP:

“A federal judge ruled Wednesday that the Army Corps of Engineers’ failure to properly maintain a navigation channel led to massive flooding in Hurricane Katrina.

U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval sided with five residents and one business who argued the Army Corps’ shoddy oversight of the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet led to the flooding of New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward and neighboring St. Bernard Parish. He said, however, the corps couldn’t be held liable for the flooding of eastern New Orleans, where one of the plaintiffs lived.

“Duval awarded the plaintiffs $720,000, or about $170,000 each, but the decision could eventually make the government vulnerable to a much larger payout. The ruling should give more than 100,000 other individuals, businesses and government entities a better shot at claiming billions of dollars in damages.”

Now, it would be tempting to heap tons of blame on the Bush administration right about now. After all, he was the Commander in Chief when  the storm hit, and had been so for a good five years prior. If I were diligent, I would look into the budgets of the Corps of Engineers during the first five years of Bush’s reign, and see if he cut it, like he tried to do with so many other federal agencies. If he did, well, that might lead to a good sucker punch for him, and the government’s liability in the case mentioned above – as well as the thousands that are likely to follow – could very accurately be laid at his feet.

But alas, I slack. Hell, that’s the name of this blog. It implies a certain lack of motivation, and in this case, I’m pretty unmotivated to spend the time finding hard facts that may or may not put the blame on our previous leader. So, no, I’m not going to look into that. But if any motivated reader wants to do so, I would love to know. As I’m sure millions of other Bush haters would as well.

Every now and then, some schmuck writes up a column about how to do good at the most important task most workers encounter at their jobs: sucking up to the boss. As an accomplished, purposely-underemployed slacker, I take offense to these articles on principle because they, in essence, encourage overachieverdom, my antithesis. But these articles bother me in other ways as well.

Primarily, they insinuate that sucking up is the best way to “get ahead” at work. If that’s true – as opposed to, you know, being good at your job, doing it better than others would do it – then that says a hell of a lot about the futility of actually working hard at your profession. In this “real world” that these articles purport to reflect, it doesn’t really matter how good you are or how hard you work…what matters is who you know and whose butt you kiss. In my mind, that’s just a shitty world to live in, and I am glad I have no part in it.

Today, this gem showed up on Yahoo. It’s basically a list of five ways in which one can improve their butt-kissing skills, written by one Alexadra Levit, author of “New Job, New You: A Guide to Reinventing Yourself in a Bright New Career.” Here’s the basics, along with a slacker’s interpretation of it. (My comments in parentheses.)

1. Be humble. In other words, be mindful of the fact that it’s not all about you. Says Levit, “Don’t approach your boss with a sense of entitlement, as though he is personally responsible for furthering your career. Instead, focus on learning what you can do to make his life easier, contribute to your company’s goals, and make him look good to his boss.” (Be a rug. Let others walk all over you. Don’t stand up for yourself. Do your boss’ work for him, and make him look good. God knows, the life of a supervisor is difficult….besides having to do nothing all day, they have to yell at the people actually doing the work.)

2. Be honest. Everyone makes mistakes — and you’re no exception. Be forthcoming about it from the start. “Admit if you do something wrong, and then ask your boss how you can rectify the situation. Don’t allow yourself to get caught in a maze of lies or excuses that will result in a loss of credibility,” she advises. (Take the fall. If any project you are involved with does not come off without a hitch, blame yourself. It doesn’t matter that the fault might actually lie with the supervisor…tell him it’s all your fault, and beg for forgiveness.)

3. Be respectful of the boss’s time. If you think your plate is full, consider that of your boss. Use your time together wisely and efficiently. Levit suggests, “Appear in her office with a checklist of things you need to cover, and don’t dwell too long on any particular subject. Your boss will be more receptive to meeting with you if she knows you’ll be in and out of his office quickly.” (Indeed, your supervisor is busy…playing Solitaire, that is. Middle management is universally known as the least productive sector of the organizational chain…but God forbid, don’t bother your supervisor with silly little questions, especially ones that would make the project go more smoothly… and if you do have a meeting, be sure to spend hours of your own time boning up for it so that any bit of innovation/insight you might have can be swatted down without a second’s thought by that super-busy supervisor.)

4. Be self-sufficient. Be mindful of the fact that your supervisor doesn’t have the bandwidth to hold your hand through every crisis or help you make every difficult decision that lands on your desk. (Understand that your supervisor knows nothing…he has no answers to your questions. In fact, he probably doesn’t even really know what you do.)

5. Be a “can-do” employee. Redefine the concept of a “yes man” (or “yes woman”) at the office. She advises, “When your boss asks you to do something, accommodate him, if possible. The words ‘I don’t have time’ should never escape your lips. If you know something needs to be done, do it without being prodded, and if your boss asks for help in a group setting, be the first to volunteer.” (That’s right…bend over, whenever possible. Something need to be done because the person in charge of doing it ain’t doing it? You do it. That ball game you promised to take your kids to? Forget it…not important. Do everything and anything your supervisor asks/needs done, because that way, his ineptitude won’t be able to taint the outcome of the project…on this last part, I might actually agree.)

Gee…Doesn’t climbing the corporate ladder sound fun?

“Why would an ex-artist potentially bring more creativity, more imagination or more self-responsibility to natural sciences and medicine than anybody else. I think Richard Rorty (whom we both admire) would actually support me here. If artists merely become social scientists or long-distance runners, or if they do become social scientists or long-distance runners “as artists”, would sound for him a) as really hard to distinguish, b) unclear what this distinction is good for, and c) sound like an attempt to find something essential about what artists are, exactly in the very moment of their disappearance, whereas my theoretic proposals of the artistic dropout try to contribute to an anti-essentialist perspective on that disappearance.” – from an amazing interview here.

It’s funny how much being stuck in bed can still make you productive in other ways. I cleaned up my computer. (saved myself some space) I ran the usual items for making my computer efficient. The major step I took before that really did me some good. I FINALLY organized my music, movies, tv shows, and photos. I also did something I’ve been telling myself I’d do for the last 6-7 months, I backed everything up and transferred all my larger folders to my external hard drive. It seems like a simple enough task, but  you have to add the 3 or 4 months I told myself I’d buy one for this exact purpose. I won’t lie, since I had neglected it for so long, the entire process took about 6 hours, and was a bitch. I do feel much better about it. I’m naturally a bit of a neat freak and health nut so it only seems logical to keep my laptop clean and healthy. Another goal I’d been putting off is switching my go to radio station from itunes and the crap that they play to slacker radio. I don’t know why I didn’t do it sooner. Other than streaming local stations in the MD/DC area the only thing I had in my wheelhouse was itunes. Denver radio is ok, but I swear most of them have a playlist with maybe 12 songs. (I’m being generous with my estimation of 12) I think that it took me a while to convert because I gave Pandora a try and the stream was just too choppy. Let’s face it, music and choppy don’t go well together. I’d have to say that the overall experience I’ve had with Slacker is a solid 8 out of 10. The only reason I shorted it the 2 points from being perfect is that I’ve only used it for 2 days. I’m sure that number will change, hopefully, for the better.

Check out Chamillionaire rebelling against his label’s wishes by making his video embeddable.  Oh, the horror of allowing your indentured servant artist to make a video embeddable.  Oh, the horror of letting a video you’ve just dropped a ton of money on to go viral so it can be seen by its audience!  If I were a record label CEO, I certainly would never want as many people as possible to see my artist’s video.  No, I’d certainly want a music video to make as little impressions as possible…

Good for Chamillionaire.  Those who rebel against the the traditional ideas of the record industry will survive.  It’s past time to break the rules.  I think most of us in the radio and records industry know we have to change; we’re just not sure in which ways me must change in order to survive.  We need rebels to lead the way and prove something works before we come up with it.  (Sorry radio, but it’s true).  We drag our feet at any impending change and react or adapt too late to things such as satellite radio, iPods, or online radio.

The artists know they have to keep their music in front of people and it’s harder than ever.  Nobody cares about the traditional methods of delivery like MTV or radio.  All that matters is reaching the audience, and the delivery methods are many: UStream, Facebook, Twitter, iPod/iPhone apps like Slacker, imeem, or just plain ol’ being on the mailing list for your favorite artist.  (Just love getting those Coldplay & U2 updates in my inbox).

Very rarely do I see a new music video for the first time while watching Vh1 or MTV.  I’d guess 90% of the new music videos I see are online.  Just sayin’.

Big Lebowski, The (1998)
★★★ / ★★★★

I usually don’t like screwball comedies because the characters are stupid without any sort of redeeming qualities, the jokes are rude and sometimes mean-spirited, the story has no idea where to go, and I quickly get bored watching them because they fail to get me to think. Strangely enough, I enjoyed “The Big Lebowski,” written and directed by the Coen brothers, because of such qualities except for the fact that it is far from mean-spirited. Jeff Bridges stars as The Dude, whose real name was Jeffrey Lebowski, a guy who was mistaken by two miscreants as the millionaire Lebowski. Since the two didn’t get what they wanted from The Dude, one of them decided to pee on his carpet. What started off as a story about a slacker who wanted compensation for his carpet ended up being about a lot of things: a kidnapped woman (Tara Reid), an artist who had intentions of her own (Julianne Moore), nihilists who craved money, and the dynamics among bowling buddies (Steve Buscemi and John Goodman). All of such disparate elements came to together in a way that didn’t necessarily make sense–in fact, sometimes I had no idea what was going on–but it was very funny because each character was driven by well-defined motivations (no matter how strange they might have been). I did not expect this kind of movie from the Coen brothers because I’m more familiar with their thrillers (“No Country for Old Men,” “Blood Simple”) and dark comedies (“Intolerable Cruelty,” “Fargo”), but after watching the film I was glad that I got a taste of their lighter side. The only real complaint I had with this picture was it had no reason to run for almost two hours long. Somewhere after the half-way point, I began to wonder when it was going to be over because at that point it still did not try to put the pieces of the puzzle together. The characters were still too busy running around like children and it made me restless. Nevertheless, despite its flaws, I still enjoyed watching this movie because of the characters’ funny fixations and interesting mistaken identities. And considering I detest stoner comedies, I think it’s a solid accomplishment.

Thinking more deeply about the politics of leisure. Jerome Segal calls it “graceful simplicity,” but we basically mean the same thing. He states, “A politics of simplicity seeks a world that is not hectic, not filled with anxiety. It is a world in which people have sufficient time to do things slowly and to do them right, whether what they are doing is building and enjoying a friendship, working on sculpture, or studying scripture.”

I know today is the day I post my progress on work, but I have little to show for myself this week.   I could feed you excuses, but I won’t bore you with the details of why I don’t really have any in-progress work to show.  All I can do is promise to show you all something great next week!

been slacking on posts
but work has been real crazy
hope this one will do

It’s actually sad to look at the date on my last post. Can it really be that long since I’ve written any kind of poem? Not even a haiku?

Speaking for myself, since there is nobody else to speak for, I often wonder if I should keep it up or not. Perhaps I should just turn it into a personal writing site and forget about trying to force poetry to come. It’s either there or it’s not. As you can see, it’s not been there.

“I should know. I’m a medical doctor. I own a mansion and a yacht.”

-the Yacht Lady in  Richard Linklater’s Slacker, 1991.

From this year’s National Novel Writing Month novel  in progress.

Chapter Seventeen

I should quit.

Or maybe, I think instead I should run away.

But that’s too much trouble.  I’d have to figure out where I want to go first.

And besides, didn’t I already do that at least once?

Maybe I should just stay here and make things better, instead.

I should run for office.

Or better yet, maybe I should just run around the block, I could use the exercise,

But I’m running out of time.

So I should do something important with my life, something with purpose like Oprah says in her magazine.

At least I could throw away some of these old magazines that keep getting in the way of the refrigerator door.

It would be nice to see the floor again, but there’s way too much dirt.

Hey, I should do some gardening in this floor dirt. Grow potatoes.

I might as well plant weeds in this dirt.

I might as well stop worrying too, then maybe I could stop talking to myself.

Maybe I should listen to somebody else for a change.

I should change. No, I mean, I should really transform myself.

And I should start by counting up all these things I should change.

And I should start by changing my mind.

And if I changed my mind, I might start making some kind of sense at least when I write so that I don’t embarrass myself so much when I finally get around to reading it.

And don’t ever, ever, ever let me allow you to read any of this mess.

What a waste of time.

Besides, it’s time to start cleaning the mess that I left in the kitchen.

I should have put away that poor, cold chicken who never saw the light of day.

I should have washed my hands before I started messing with this borrowed computer.

I should buy my own computer.

At least if I’m going to write on the computer with chicken grease all over fingers, I should have bought organic.

I should have bought free range.

I should have bought fair trade.

I should have bought wheat grass.

I should become vegan.

I should have grown my own.

I should quit eating.

I should quit eating and become food for somebody else to eat.

I should become raw, candida, and gluten free so somebody can come along and eat me up without feeling guilty and they wouldn’t even have to cook me.

I should invent a food source that doesn’t kill anything ever and just keeps us thin no matter how much of it we eat and that meets all our nutritional requirements and that tastes like chicken and that never runs out.

I should become an activist who cares about larger causes and complex situations and world issues.

I should get a nose job.

I should quit my job, but then I’d have to get one first and then I’d have to tell my boss.

Maybe I should just send an email.

I should have gotten out of bed earlier and stopped dreaming so much about zombies who scratch their way out of graves in the middle of the night and then come running after me and grab hold of me and shake me and wake me up and then it’s noon.

I should have dreamed of a good future, a hopeful time, a life of destiny, a life with purpose.

I should have given up all the bad things when there was still time, coffee,  cigarettes, double butter burgers, whippets, the water, the moonlight, the cheap music, the Bingo parlors, the pimento spread, the Little Debbie snack cakes, the roller rinks, the Tetris, crossword puzzles, the Benny Hill.

I should have quit a long, long time ago and I should have listened to the inner voice chit chatting away, telling me not to do this that I wasn’t good enough to do that.  I should have listened so that I could remember what it was I wasn’t good enough to do, because now I can’t even remember what it was and now look at the mess I’m in.

I should have dumped all the dumpable people who stayed  undumped in my not-quite-ready-to-be-dumped pile.

I should have quit listening to you and I should have kicked that guy off my couch and out of my apartment before it was too late.

I should feel guilty.

I should learn how to do more than one thing at a time.

That way I should be able to cut my should list in half.

I should be doing what I am here doing and I should be doing something else too.

I should work faster and make more money and be more beautiful and lose more weight and reverse the clock so I can look more beautiful and I can have more opportunities and do more things.

I should do whatever it is I do very well and then I can learn how to be fast at several things simultaneously so that I can get much more than ever done.

I should be more mindful.

I should be present.

I should slow down.

I should slow down.

I shouldn’t even think.

I should just become mindful of my breath so later I worry about more important things.

I should earn credit for doing the laundry.

I should learn from my brother who found that if he turns the vacuum cleaner on and hides behind a bookshelf he can get away with making his wife think that he is doing chores for a little while, when all the while all he is doing is goofing off reading from some old book.  Too bad she caught him.  I should invent a contraption that would push the vacuum cleaner back and forth a little so that the drone isn’t so constant and so it sounds more like my brother’s really cleaning when he’s not.

I should do just one of the things I keep threatening to do.

All right then,

I quit.



Att somliga svennebanan dyrkar rastafarikulturen förbryllar mig. De skaffar dreads, lyssnar på Bob Marley, röker på, börjar tala om kvasiflummiga livsfilosofier. När man påpekar för dem att rastafarikulturen hatar homosexualitet och dessutom är otroligt kvinnofientlig så rycker de på axlarna i äkta rastafarianda och säger att det är “kulturen och inte åsikterna som de lever efter”. Men herregud, om så är fallet,  åk till Malmö och Göteborg istället väl. Det är lite samma sak fast i svensk tappning, med jämställdhet och öppenhet. Schysst gung, billig öl, mycket röka, slackerkulturens mecka, goa gubbar, sköna människor.

Själv bara ääälskar jag den mytomspunna personan bakom Hitler, Hitlerkulturen. Attribut som hitlermustasch, bruna uniformer, svastikan som symbol får mig att rysa av välbehag. För att inte nämna den sköna stajlen med disciplinen, hitlerhälsningen och paraderna. Sen är det ju synd att han hatade alla folkgrupper utom “de ariska”, att han ville döda alla homosexuella, förinta alla handikappade och tyckte att kvinnor skulle fungera som barnmaskiner. Men det är ju inte den nazistiska värdegrunden och åsikterna jag gillar – det är ju kulturen, stajlen. Eller?