Dolphins & monkeys

Visited Seaworld

I caught and ate a dolphin

Best holiday yet

Mark received: 82/100


Soon, I hope to quit my job. And when I actually get around to doing this (hopefully at some point after I have another job all queued up and ready to party), I shall be expecting kittens and fucking rainbows. It's fairly unlikely I'll actually receive these from my current place of work/place of blogging, in fact I probably won't even get a car. It's possible in fact, that no one may even notice. The upside of this of course, is I would continue to be paid. But anyway, back to the point, which is more or less that I'll instead be expecting such acts of gratuity from you, dear reader. Here's a list of things I like to get you started:

Kittens
Cake
Chocolate
Chocolate Cake
Broadband
Fruit Pastilles
Lobster
Krus Traps
Mail
Peter Harvey
...Canberra (not to be confused with the city of Canberra)

So, with that piece of distraction from the obvious (read: oops, I haven't posted for a while, aren't I naughty? NO UR! FAIL! Fail? FLAIL! What? FLAILCOPTERFACESNAP!) out of the way, lets move on to more important matters, like the bold fucking theft of an hour of my sleep.

Some fucking cunt decided that it was a really fucking good idea to steal an hour from us Victorians last weekend, only to hand it back some time in fucking April. Now, it's not so much the whole idea of Daylight Savings Time that gives me the shits, because lets face it, if it was, then I'd be no better than those fucking morons up north who seem to think that DST will fade their curtains and upset their cows. The thing that actually gives me the shits about this is that it's made so much bloody worse by occurring so late in the year that I'm used to the fucking sunrise at 2am in the god damned morning. This is not something I want to be used to, and was, I'd have thought, a significant part of the reason we choose to not live like mad Queenslanders who appear to thrive on broken sleep in full sunlight.

DST clearly needs better management and better PR. Where are the awareness booklets that we get every other time the government so much as scratches its arse? Where are the billboards, posters, and special news bulletins alerting us to change our clocks and helping us clear the confused haze we can potentially live in until we rock up to work an hour late on Monday? DST will never be fully appreciated until every person in the state receives a helper monkey with a news-ticker on its side to frequently remind them what it is, and what they have to do. The monkeys would adjust our clocks for us while we sleep. They would make our dinner. They could dance and make my housemates much happier. They would do my tax for me, make me a cocktail and massage my feet. Clearly, monkeys are not a solution to DST - they are the solution - Hell, we could even replace John Howard with one (although it would need freakishly large eyebrows).

Alternatively, we could just hire Marcus Westbury, a.k.a. Captain Smug. Not only would it give him any excuse he ever needed to wear an oversized clock around his neck Flava Flav style, but it would also penetrate the idea that DST is just plain good into our minds with the sheer power of smug coolness. DST will become art, and shrug off the entire notion of being hung in a gallery, because that would just invalidate its moral fibre - nay! It's entire being! DST will itself become hailed as the next big thing, but remain so shrouded in secrecy that only the really-cool-important-arts-people-in-the-know will know when to change their clocks. Going by that theory, then everyone will want in on it.

For those of you who have no idea who Marcus Westbury is and why I'm banging on about him in a less than pleasant manner, let me fill in the gaps. Marcus is a man who indulges in the arts to earn a crust. My experience with Marcus was part of the NextWave festival a couple of years back. He was commonly referred to as: 'oh, that Marcus? No, you couldnt've met him, that man is a genius!'. He makes arts students swoon. Arts wankers fall at his feet at an extremely frequent rate. Seriously, they're like some kind of human carpet. Most recently, the ABC threw a handful of cash at him to produce a series, which is currently screening and you may have heard of. If you did indeed hear of it - Not Quite Art - the title should probably give away the intention of the show. And if, by some chance, you were intrigued by this and decided to watch the show on the grounds of either the title or the umpteen reviews & synopsis of it floating about out there, chances are you're interested in what I suppose can be summed up as 'alternative art' - and herein lies the problem.

Our household settled in to watch the show last week, knowing that our good pal Kipper would be making an appearance. Now, as a household, we like our art - alternative or otherwise. There are paintings on our walls, and there are stencils in our laundry - and frankly, I think this would be typical of the audience for this show. What unfolded however, was a half hour of terribly artsy camera shots, the most painfully thorough and introspective explanation of street art I've ever come across (again, for an audience who would have to already know a fair whack of all this), some interviews of absolute tossers, but then, some interviews with really interesting people who actually had something to say which didn't sound like wankwankwankwankwank, such as Tom whatsisface & Kipper. Needless to say, we spent most of our time yelling at the TV and declaring that arts wankers deserve every last syllable of their title and more.

With that said, I know of other people who watched it, enjoyed it, and even found it interesting and not in the least bit patronising. Maybe our house is an intolerant one. Maybe, we'd much rather beat posturing pretentious tools creating 'art!' with their own spraycans than indulge their self pitying whinging about how they're not appreciated for once second longer. Actually, yeah, I'm fairly sure we would like to do that. But as for my two cents on alternative art, well, street art really isn't that alternative anymore. You can reject the galleries as much as you want, but the fact is that the hottest thing in this city right now is graffitied laneways with pleasant cafes, dj's and imported beer and/or coopers longnecks. It is art, it's recognised as art, and yes, pigs are still fucking stupid and will arrest you for it given half a chance - but then again, if you were a Muslim, that would be excuse enough too - so maybe just count it down to being young and not from Toorak, eh?

And just to reiterate - I don't hate Marcus Westbury... if anything, I think he's probably contributed to a fair whack of funding towards arts projects that otherwise may've been lost for a little while longer. Hell, he's probably had a fair bit of influence on the ongoing recognition of all that art we commit outside of our work and school hours, whether it be stenciling, graf, pasteups, zines, stickers or other fun stuff, and that's a good thing. What I cannot fucking stand though, is the total cliqueism that comes with all this and the art world in general. It's disturbing how quickly and easily office-workers-cum-'artists' fall into this shit. The stench of self pity and the clinging to thine saviour Marcus is fucking old and unnecessary. There is real & valid discussion to be had about alternative art - christ, just speak to Kipper about the games industry if you have an hour or two up your sleeve - but these important conversations are totally lost in all the posturing wank that seems to come with any sort or recognition of it as art, formal or otherwise.

I think a swap is in order. Marcus & his charm can head up to Queensland to educate the masses on the wonders of daylight savings, and in return we'll take the big pineapple and give it a bit of a Melbourne laneway revamp. It would be fucking huge (both physically and scene-wise), and who the hell wouldn't want to smoke a spliff on the upstairs bar of a giant fibreglass pineapple? Fuck yeah. I'm not sure where the monkeys would go, but I'm sure we'll sort something out.

With ideas like this, I can't understand why the job offers don't simply fall at my feet.