I've been off work for the past week as the radiation treatments left me too exhausted to do anything at all other lie around in various absurd poses.
So I go back to an office I can't stand (I figure this is a safe blog as no one from my office knows about it or any of the other ones for that matter) and I need to vent.
My co-workers are dull. They don't read. They don't go to the cinema or the theatre. They do watch TV but have learned not to tell me about it. They know nothing about art or culture. They are middle-class drones who actually believe in what they are doing (we are Disability Support Services at a large community college). They make work jokes...ha-ha! They like coming to work. They want me to like coming to work. I come to work for the paycheck...I get job satisfaction when these do-gooder harpies leave me the hell alone so I can waste the taxpayers' dollars surfing the Internet or reading books on line. I have learned that it is not important to get anything done, but look like you are accomplishing something. Looks are everything when you work for a bureaucracy.
As for the students who attend this enormous exercise in remedial futility, you think this country is fucked now, just wait until these mindless bags of protoplasm are running the show. You'll think the past 9 years was The Golden Age.
But mostly I deplore working for a living...it is such a waste of a perfectly good life that could be spent in scholarly reflection and curiosity or creative abandon. But no, our ridiculous "everyone must earn their way through life" system prevails year after year and we all celebrtae it instead of calling it out for what it really is: a soul-sucking, exploitative means of control. Think about that as you sit down first thing in the morning to that stack of papers sitting on your desk.
Me? Part of my personal revolution is not to get involved in anything other than what maintains my needs. Our budget just got cut 36% by the governor...wiped out our tutoring program among other things. So long as it doesn't touch my paycheck and benefits, I could care less what transpires. Oh, I'll put on my sad face and say all the appropriate things about what a terrible debacle this is, but the reality of it is I DON'T CARE. I care about me and mine. That is what working for a bureacracy of epic proportions will do for you.
Aside from the first paragraph - best of luck to you on the fuck off disease front - I could've written this, though it would have been less coherent. Although I don't think our budget was slashed to quite the extent that yours was.
Posted by: Randal Graves | August 10, 2009 at 08:17 AM
Nothing like spending the vast majority of your waking hours doing shit you hate, among people you would otherwise have nothing to do with, all for the privilege of not living under a bridge.
It's okay though, because you're lucky enough to have a few hours between the time you leave work and go to sleep to eat and watch television.
Fuck life.
Posted by: Dear Leader | August 10, 2009 at 03:14 PM
I'll admit, most of my co-workers are slack jawed organ banks with the intellectual curiosity of a doorstop, and listening to them drivel on about mundane and inane things does tend to suck the life out of me. I survive by being as subtly cruel to them as I can be with out them knowing it, exposing and exploiting their hypocrisies, mocking their failed belief systems, and other distancing exercises. Life doesn't suck, capitalism does, so you might as well make a game out of it, otherwise, you'll just drive yourself crazy.
Posted by: LewScannon | August 11, 2009 at 01:57 AM
it's too late for me, but i hope to help my kids avoid the trap.
Posted by: Montag | August 11, 2009 at 09:05 AM
I've tried my best to embrace the Spectacle, roll with the shit in my path, and I am happier for it.
Posted by: Agi | August 11, 2009 at 10:33 AM
You go Agi----how about placing a plate of viral cookies next to the water cooler and watch the matrix handle that Spectacle?
Posted by: mandt | August 11, 2009 at 12:38 PM