Quite a few people took me to task for that last post. Basically ’stop being such a big woman’s blouse’. (This puzzled THE WIFE no end. “But you’re not even a woman”. Although she had to admit I was perhaps big.) No – friends and post punk survivors – I spoke on behalf of us all. Is a man not entitled to be photographed in long pants? No, says the man in Washington, the pants belong to the art establishment. Or something like that.
For all of you who said “Fuck You Ellard, I ain’t even got my 15 minutes”, just remember Kandinsky who was a law lecturer until he was 30. You never know you might get your 15 minutes in your 70’s. Just keep on law lecturing and fantasising about the day you are going to quit and be a painter.
A tort.
In an effort to continue to be a lecturer this week I have been in further training. This basically involves being locked in a dungeon with 20 other lecturers and branded with hot irons for a month. No exaggeration! Well it was kind of like that.
Really we were confined in a room most of the week as if performing jury duty, which I guess was designed to stop us from getting lost or drunk or thinking that we were butterflies dreaming we were lecturers or actually I have no idea why they do that. There were three of us from KUNST KAMP alongside fellows from MILITARY INDUSTRIAL KOMPLEX and various burrows within the DEATH STAR itself. I won’t get too far into the procedures suffice to say it was like a gentler, kinder Scientology meets Stockholm syndrome.
My favourite bit was when I got to sit up the back of a large lecture hall browsing Facebook on a laptop and ignoring the lecturer in a simulation of the average student experience. Damn, I can see why they do that. Except for Facebook. We were asked for our thoughts on engaging the students but my suggestion of a long stock whip was not accepted, so I sulked the rest of the week.
Today I was released and staggered out into the light, clutching my training manual with new scout badge burned into my forehead – a more evolved super lecturer retrofit with bio enhancements – withering disdain for students’ feelings, able to read two PowerPoints through each eye, able to slam rulers at maximum speed on benches – A Living God.
On the phone about 50 messages from THE WIFE about we’ve run out of toilet paper.
I now have a raging headache. Oh stop your whining!
You people who have worked for large employers are already used to this, you’ve been through performance reviews and retraining and bonding sessions before. Forgive me for being new to it. Think back to the first time your boss shot you with a paint ball and you didn’t know whether it was a good idea to fire back. All I have are old episodes of Bewitched where Larry would invite the boss and wife to dinner and then get turned into a poodle.
Actually earlier this week we had our final year screening of student works. That went well, because I spent the whole night in the projection booth staring at the Blu Ray player daring it it go wrong in some way. My first time at authoring Blu Ray, and that has not been a smooth process so I was anxious. Afterwards the winning students wanted to celebrate and the losing ones to drown their sorrows so we were off to the local for some attitude adjustment. Most of the time I spent with one of my masters who probably can’t remember what he said or even where he was that night. This was really the payoff for the whole damn year, staff and students equally blotto singing the KUNST KAMP anthem and celebrating FINE ARTS in the time honoured tradition. Now THAT isn’t in the training manual – but by god I’ll write it in in biro.