Full Circle

Today, as the first birthday of this blog falls, I plunge violently from the brilliant experiences of Wellington and the Overlander back into work. Eleven of the next thirteen days will be spent working in the factory, where I will be constantly asked "Did you go to Erotica?", and then face technically incorrect accusations of homosexuality when I give the answer that I didn't.

The up-side is that at the end of all this I should be free from debt to my parents and able to buy my first CD in a long time. I've already made my mind up as to what it is.

Elaborations on my experiences come when more convenient pictures come.

On Track

I'm so glad I got those assignments out of the way. Only just, mind you, but I did it.

So I'm going to Wellington on the Overlander tomorrow. I'm off to bed pronto -- as in right now -- because mum and I are getting up at five o' clock tomorrow morning to get to the station excessively early for the train. The goal: to get seats in one of the carriages with gargantuan windows rather than the little portholes.

This is the first and probably the only time I'm going to get to do this trip that I've been wanting to do for years. And boy, am I going to enjoy it, especially since I've got all my assignments out of the way. To boot, that's just the train trip -- then there's the experience of Wellington...

Pictures on my return, hopefully. Hooroo.

At Least The Weather Was Nice

It's been interesting to see how hard it can be to perform supposed bum jobs in a factory, to the point that you are chronically hassled by factory workers who openly refer to themselves as "scum" -- jobs like reading five two-digit numbers on a piece of paper and adding them together with a calculator to find out how wide you must cut a piece of steel; or like holding a cylinder in position against a metal plate whilst a menacing, formerly-dangerous machine (it once took the end of a guy's thumb off, but then OSH came in and insisted a safety guard be put on it) puts a crease in it. Factory workers must think in a completely different way to arts students -- obviously to such an extent that my apparent intelligence does not allow me to perform the most mundane of physically tangible technical tasks, that even a high school drop-out can carry out with ease.

It's also been annoyingly interesting to discover how deceptively hard my last two assignments that I want to complete before Saturday are. I've been stressing out of my head today, trying to find Web sites -- it was specified that my sources must be Web sites -- about the traditional and contemporary music and dance of a Polynesian island group of my choice. It turns out that just about all of the Web sites about these island groups are tourism Web sites, that approach the music and dance on a very shallow, yuppie self-indulgent level.

What's worse is now that I've got the idea into my head that it could be possible to finish all of my assignments before I go away on this trip, it's going to feel extra-bad if I don't finish them, and there would be definite potential for it to harm the experience for me. I am gruff.

Yeah Yeah Yeah

Two assignments started and finished in one day! I'd say that's pretty good going wouldn't you? Especially considering I've never before completed an assignment more than a week before the due date. These weren't due until the eighteenth and the twenty-fifth.

I wanted to get them done because I'm going away to Wellington on the Overlander on Saturday the nineteenth. Then I'll come back on the twenty-second. I want to be able to enjoy that trip as much as possible so that's why I'm trying to get all my assignments out of the way.

I hope uni's going well for those of you who are there.

Why is the reception for bFM on my pocket radio stronger out West than it is when I'm in town?

It makes you think.

Berlin

The High School Womb

The Telegraph Road.

I Know What I Like.

GET YA HAND OFF IT.

(i put the pro in airpro)

Latinam 201 mate.

To Get The Seat

The secret to getting a window seat on a Western Line train bound for Britomart is to get in closer to the front of the train.

The rear part is full of more characteristically patient individuals, hunkering down for a long trip, and thus very few of them debark from the train early on at Henderson (where I get on). The front, however, seems to inherently contain most of the Henderson High School students, most of whom do get off at Henderson.

Still, my seat I got today was going backwards, but it was on the correct side of the train for the interesting views. The indie girl who got on at Glen Eden didn't sit next to me, because a seat closer to the door was free.


I don't like Fridays. Four hours of non-stop classes is bad enough. Three of those being Latin American is terrible. But worst of all, I've had to call off drinks after uni to take part in a filming for my sister's sixth form media studies film... about a monster that terrorises a school or something.

And then I have work tomorrow, where I will doubtless again be hassled for not having handy hands or for not being able to perform masculine tasks.

What about the arts, y'know?

But one of my sister's friends who is coming to film the film is one of only two Genesis fans I know in the offline world, the other being Mat, so that's good.

I was staring at the Ricies bag this morning. I don't think it's right that amongst all of the edu-factual hooey about rice that is written all over it (1/3 of the world's population eat rice doncha know!) it has a picture of a globe, on which New Zealand occupies the entire Pacific Ocean. What are we teaching our kids? What has happened to the values of this society?

Next thing there'll be a pedophile rights movement.

Airy fairy. This is what happens when you listen to too much talkback. Log on.

Art as Idea as Idea

I went to the lecture. It was mediocre. I imagined I was eating a chocolate muffin. That was good. It was probably purchased from Pak 'n Save but I don't know.

I'm quite the airy fairy one today. Voila -- a tighter than usual chain of bog entries (mispelling intended) (please see them below).

I briefly contemplated driving to Hamilton tonight and meeting the Overlander train (one of the last) that I would subsequently chase to Auckland. I decided against this when I took into account that I would have to eat dinner at an uncomfortable speed in order to make it to Hamilton in time.

This, of course, is in turn not taking into account that the train will probably be late.

Marcus Lush -- Radio Live -- seven until ten, weeknights. Thoroughly good. He brings me closer to the infinite and the sublime. You don't even need a radio -- log on.

If I am truthful, I did pay attention in the art history lecture -- hence the title of this blog entry, derived from a series of conceptual art by one Joseph Kosuth (see below) -- other than the time I spent formulating this particular paragraph, and all those amongst whom it is situated. They are alive too.

Please close your pompous boobies. And get me a cup of coffee while you're at it, you Marxist bastard.

We Keep To The Left In This Country

I noticed something intriguing as I walked through the Britomart Transport Centre today. The vertical sides of numerous steps on an escalator that I passed were labelled "KEEP LEFT". It's about time too.

It's a shame that the escalator was downward bound, and thus the signs would not be visible to people using the escalator and achieve the effect desired. Also, generally people travel in one direction on any particular escalator -- so what is the relative importance of the KEEP LEFT proclaimation, other than perhaps to clear the way for those impatient individuals who insist on running up or down escalators?

I should go to art history now -- not that, of course, I have any positive feelings about being about to attend it. Interesting course material? Yes. Elitist snobbery? Also present.

POLITICS.237SC ANNOUNCEMENT: Lecture today for Politics 237 has been cancelled

It's things like this popping up in your email whilst you stand at the kitchen bench, eating Ricies and watching Marcus Lush's Off The Rails at ten to ten on a sunny Thursday morning, that create those little moments of ecstasy that you're constantly waiting for in life.

Provisional. Basic. But good.

Did you know that the cups created by New Zealand Railways and used on their services in the golden days of long-distance passenger trains can now be worth three hundred dollars?

Of course it's not nice that the lecturer is sick. But this means that I don't have to catch the bus for another three hours. I've just picked up a bunch of extra time.

Break Away

It's not so much that I'm not liking the Internet at the moment, rather that I just don't feel compelled to be on it all the time as would usually be the case. There seems to have been a drop-off in activity in much of what I know as my blogosphere. I don't feel the need to check the Pink Floyd, Genesis and Sigur Ros news so often anymore, given that it has all consisted of announcements of European tour dates and obscure, crappy ex-vocalists' album releases anyway. Using MSN has seldom been a rewarding experience at any stage in my life, and the recent stint was no exception. Simply, there's better things to do offline. Now I'm still spending similar portions of the Internet hours, but that time isn't being spent at the computer -- I've begun to use P2P again and I'm using it to collect Pink Floyd b-sides and various other bits and bobs. I just start the downloads and walk away, to the sofa which is actually about a metre away but there you go.

I've also been having great difficulty putting images into my blog entries for the past month at least. Blogger's been pretty uncooperative. I find it interesting that I'm having this trouble whilst Hannah is simultaneously turning her clog into a photo album of sorts, a lot of which is quality. In my case, the Syd Barrett photo was only appended to the relevant entry after over an hour of struggle -- I wouldn't want to spend that time on any other picture; here it was simply that it would have been disgusting not to include a photo of Syd. I'm still dissatisfied with my recently imageless entries, though.

Working at the air conditioning factory is semi-officially my part-time job now. I say semi-officially because I'm not necessarily secure in the position -- if the current inundation of work the company's receiving dies down, then I'll be laid off as an unskilled worker; the other young guys there at the very least did well in metalwork at school, whereas I sucked. But I've settled into a routine of working fourteen hours a week now, pleasantly padded out -- four and a half hours before uni on Monday and Wednesday mornings, and five hours on Saturday morning -- and earning a good amount of money with which I can progressively pay my parents back for the various things I owe them.

I was going to do an entry about the scrapping of the Overlander passenger train service between Auckland and Wellington -- for a brief time I was even set on creating a blog to provide a commentary on the state of New Zealand's railways -- and I may yet, but I soon realised that I felt too strongly about the issues to evoke them in writing in such a way that I would find satisfactory afterwards. I've found this has been the case with a lot of things recently. I don't know what's happened, but I have a feeling it's got something to do with my thoughts being organised much more spasmodically than they ever have been before, now that I'm moving into a new phase of my life. It's not a bad thing at all -- I feel far freer. Not allowing myself to be controlled by the constraints of what other people may think of me if I do something has made me a markedly happier person. These are the virtues of selling out, of being a hypocrit, of being incoherent or of being extremely angry or ecstatic about anything -- this is authentic human expression not about dumbing yourself down so that other people may understand you better. If you understand yourself then that's all that matters.

Lastly, about the train: the Labour Party has failed this country and proved its short-sightedness in letting money take prevalence over the interests of New Zealand developing an efficient transport infrastructure in the build-up to Peak Oil and by not recognising the Overlander's social value. John Broadwell put the argument for the retention of the train forward best, in a succint form.