Takin’ it from the man…again.

My plan to avoid the working life has failed. It’s not that I’m lazy, but everything I like doing is unpaid. So now I’m in this office doing nothing and getting paid quite well for it. Perhaps this is my destiny, to sit in an office and be the smiley receptionist typing frantically at her computer even though she hasn’t been assigned any work. Maybe they think I’ve found some work to type up, but really I’m just ranting away. Hmm. No fooling? < you have to hear the way Frank Zappa says that to understand. So i guess it’s an inside joke with myself.

 Yesterday life after work was a ben stiller movie – dumb stressful crap kept happening on the way back to the burbs. Mikey and I took 2 wrong trains which means we took 4 all together. it just went down hill from there. things like losing the car keys and getting lost once in the car were all part of it. Luckily we had a nice dinner waiting for us back at home – we listened to some bob dylan records and had an early night.

Today I am moving into my friend’s studio apartment in Kings Cross. It will only be a 15 min walk to work rather than an hour on a stinky crowded train. So I can sleep longer and cuddle Minx, the fuzzy grey kitten that lives there. She always wears MC Hammer pants and always pees in the bath tub - it’s too cute. I think Jackie and Bill Conway would love Minx if they met her.

It is absolutely insane how little I do at this job. I have done about 20 min worth of work since 9am and it’s now 12:30. WHAT! They have to give me letter (pre-written) to type up, that’s really my only job as the Admin. Assistant here at Art Exhibitions Australia. So if they don’t give me anything, I don’t have anything to do. Oh and I also get to go for a 30 min walk every morning to the post office. Quite nice, really. It’s been beach weather ever since Monday when I started this job. Figures. I had a few cloudyish cool days until i start work, and magically it’s the hottest days of summer. Real funny, stupid atmosphere.

Does anyone else find it slightly unnerving that we sell and consume everything and anything? I was thinking about this when I cut through Circular Quay (where the opera house is) to the post office. There are always a group of Aboriginals with their religious face & body paint on. They play music and do traditional Aboriginal dances while the tourists watch and throw coins their way. The more I thought about it, it became a strange concept to me that those dances and songs meant something so different to them before Australia was westernized. They were what they celebrated with and believed in. They started as spiritual songs and dances and have ended as a theatrical money making act. I mean, good for them, making some cash, but in a society where we are all forced to work for a living they can either get a crap office job like mine, or hang out in the sun, entertaining tourists with things they used to believe in, or maybe still do. hm. I need to think about this more to come up with a concise decision on where i stand. right now I haven’t got much of an opinion.

Actually, as I sit here typing this thought out it all seems less strange to me. To put it in perspective, most performers are generally very passionate about their art, or at least believe in what they do quite strongly - so why not perform with religious and tradional dance and song? Any street preformer would probably say they believe what they are doing is an important form of art. Is there a fine line between art performance and exploiting religious beliefs in this specific situation? Hm. Anyways, I just found it an interesting thought. Enlighten me if you have an opinion on the matter. For now, Kirk Out. (my highschool art teacher, Kirk Paulson, signs all his emails like that. He’s the best dude ever).