a right balkan
morale. like all vaccines, it needs a booster shot now and then. i feel this may be my legacy in this office, along with the odd bit of paper someone read once. maybe it's the short term of my contract, or maybe the phenomenalogical goodness of biscuits - which i consume in great numbers - but i find it hard to get angry or upset with my job. (I just ate a piece of digestive shaped like Bulgaria.) with my elf and how i do my job, perhaps, but not the job per se.
among my colleagues though there is more frequent grumpiness. from tutting over how the office is run (and it's run pretty well) to feeling out of their depth and brickwalled in the presence of yet another set of skeptical politicians. "Fuck Bosnia, man" is quote of the moment, but it's nothing personal. they just have such a complicated political system, and it's all changing, again. largely it's hiccups in the very mundane bits which cause the bulk of the exasperation, and they're mostly in Slovak, so i am able to avoid being drawn in; sadly, such mundane obstavles infect most interesting jobs nowadays. (in cautioning against going into neurophysiology, my parents pointed out that i'll find more than my share of funding applications and disputes, regulations, interpersonal politics and so on there, which has put me off for another couple of months.) many things could be to blame, but there is a case to be made for blaming agriculture. although entirely Calvinist, the essay is a good read, and for anyone interested in escaping from the handcart to hell of life shared with people who are different, give me a decade and i'll meet you in the countryside to never look back.
to finish today's schizophrenia (i have the attention span i usually have when i'm getting ill), a nice picture of america (which is passing another post-cold war milestone by having its population overtake that of the USSR at its peak):
and as for morale, if i keep the banana cake coming, we will survive. [edit thurs: and today things were taken up a notch. everyone is headless. i am a sea of calm. the council of what now? took over my office][edit fri: tomorrow, everyone will be happy. wish them luck]
among my colleagues though there is more frequent grumpiness. from tutting over how the office is run (and it's run pretty well) to feeling out of their depth and brickwalled in the presence of yet another set of skeptical politicians. "Fuck Bosnia, man" is quote of the moment, but it's nothing personal. they just have such a complicated political system, and it's all changing, again. largely it's hiccups in the very mundane bits which cause the bulk of the exasperation, and they're mostly in Slovak, so i am able to avoid being drawn in; sadly, such mundane obstavles infect most interesting jobs nowadays. (in cautioning against going into neurophysiology, my parents pointed out that i'll find more than my share of funding applications and disputes, regulations, interpersonal politics and so on there, which has put me off for another couple of months.) many things could be to blame, but there is a case to be made for blaming agriculture. although entirely Calvinist, the essay is a good read, and for anyone interested in escaping from the handcart to hell of life shared with people who are different, give me a decade and i'll meet you in the countryside to never look back.
to finish today's schizophrenia (i have the attention span i usually have when i'm getting ill), a nice picture of america (which is passing another post-cold war milestone by having its population overtake that of the USSR at its peak):
and as for morale, if i keep the banana cake coming, we will survive. [edit thurs: and today things were taken up a notch. everyone is headless. i am a sea of calm. the council of what now? took over my office][edit fri: tomorrow, everyone will be happy. wish them luck]
posted by chris at 7:31 AM
7 Comments:
funny that it seems Calvinist, (and by this I am guesing at a strictness and righteousness - I don't actually know the precise definition of Calvinist - though of course I do love Calvin and Hobbes) cos I reckon that Clive would just love everyone to be running about naked around camp fires having sex and taking mind altering substances - but for now I guess he has to live in the real world.
It's kindof like how in a perfect world all I'd do would be make art about philosophy and emotions but I am forced to have to bung in boring old politics because of the reality of the situation.
Anyway glad you liked it.
Sorry the morale around you is lower than it should be, believe me I doubt it is as bad as the morale in my Library... oh boy, thats a sinking ship where the rats are chained up - wow. Good job I took a few days off sick or I'd be sick from it all.
Looking forward to seeing you hopefully when you are in london soon. I was goning to stick it on the last blog but I took to long and so now I write it here.
If you feel like leaving a comment, I'd love to hear what you think the train station of the future will be like.
x
I'm comparing Clive's view of the development of agriculture with Calvin's view of the fall of man/sin - both terrible things, which are irreparable and which seemed like a good idea at the time. (Do you know Nina Simone's song, I think it's called Forbidden Fruit - she for one has no regrets..) But it's the irreparable/until-judgement-day, self-flagellating aspect which links Clive's essay and Calvin's view in my mind - not that I'm attributing such to Clive, but it was the thought i had following reading his essay.
Must go - parting thought = Calvins diggable for their honesty. Am thinking about the tube station. You hit dystopia nicely. I am less negative, or rather, I have more faith in the ability of evil to hide its face.
Cheerio,
Chris
I like that more faith in the ability of evil to hide its face. I guess that I just think that it hides by becoming familiar. Someone in the 50's migh have seen now as distopian. we don't cos we're used to it.
I think the nina simone song might be Strange Fruit. In which case you should bve listening to the Billy Holiday version for it is better and came earlier. Beautiful.
Interesting thoughts on the irreparable aspect. I guess its true that you can't repair what has gone before. But hopefully (though not likelily) you can change what happens now.
toodle pip
x
it's the perfect world bit that's a problem. whle Calvin's problem with sin is eternal and irreparable due to its divine nature, ours with abandoning It's the perfect world bit that's a problem. While Calvin's problem with sin is eternal and irreparable due to its divine nature, ours with abandoning Civilisation is almost eternal and irreparable due to our being so deeply attached to the big C and the parts we like (such as, I’m somewhat ashamed to say, international air travel), to its coverage of almost all the world, to its annihilation and assimilation of all other forms of organisation. The most most people can hope for is a bit of escape, like-minded people, and at the extremes self-sufficiency somewhere with a visit from the tax man once a year (have you seen ?). Roll around the apocalypse (nuclear, not Abrahamic) and the survival of only nice people… and so it goes.
I was in fact thinking of >Forbidden Fruit>, by Nina Simone (original by Oscar Brown Jr.?). Strange Fruit is also an amazing song. I know it by Cassandra Wilson, though I suspect the Billie Holliday version has even more impact.
You may be well right about evil, an anagram of veil. It creeps in under the guise of good, and then arrests peaceful protesters at arms fairs under anti terrorism legislation. And few people have the energy to take on the massive violence of the state in making these things happen by pretendy, lies-and-bluster-based democratic processes (or indeed, less democratic processes…). We do notice the changes, but they happen despite our voices of protest and next month there is something new drawing our attention. It does make you wonder who the ‘we’ in that sentence is though, and why it is so weak. Is ‘we’ really that useless? Or does we all have husbands and parents to look after and the opportunity of promotion if we works hard for another eighteen months?
I have an ID card in Slovakia, which is novel and fun because for me (though not for Slovaks) it’s voluntary, and I don’t carry either it or my passport around anyway. Do you know what Clive feels about the German situation? Most people I know from ID card countries don’t have a problem with them, and my primary objection in Britain is that everything was functioning fine until the government decided for nasty, exclusionist reasons that people will be forced to buy a card from the state to prove they aren’t an asylum seeker. I’m seriously tempted to go into business faking them to help asylum seekers beat the system, if they are introduced.
Na nasej ulica je slobody – Slovak must have the ugliest word for freedom of any language.
Sorry about the links there - i could explain but it's not interesting. The film referenced is Off the Map.
Yeah, its the people who come in illegally that generally need the hope, the sanctioned imigrants who we will bless with ID cards come from countries that need their skills to ones that under-value them.
Also its the DNA aspect to ID cards that I find particularly worrying.
Also maybe ID cards would be okay but for the fact that when someone nasty gets into power they won't be.
Not sure what Clve thinks of the German ID card thing but he is generally pretty critical of germany, tho he prefers Berlin to most cities because it doesn't feel like a city.
x
see http://theyhavedestroyedme.blogspot.com/
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