job + job
I have a job stocking shelves at a retail store. I spend a lot of time thinking about global capitalism and how this job connects me to millions of impoverished sweatshop workers around the world. I was stocking hideous plastic christmas trees on a shelf and wondering what the woman worker from China was thinking about when she assembled it. She probably makes 40 cents an hour and I make $8. Which of us is more valuable to the system: the person who makes the thing or the person who puts the thing on the shelf for american housewives to buy? A middle aged white woman approached me and wanted to buy 40 of the ugly things for some reason or another. We didn't have that many, but she took the entire supply of stock we had. Amazing. Oblivious. The store probably makes 30% to 40% of its annual income off of this one holiday. Our economy is based on selling plastic crap in retail stores and retail stores are based on selling plastic crap at christmas time. Christmas. Celebrating the birth of a god by buying plastic crap. Wonderful.
[Two nights ago I dreamed that I had enormous arm muscles with big throbbing veins. The kind of veins that inspire wetdreams for phlebotomists. The kind of veins I wish I had so nurses wouldn't prick me three times before they can draw blood. And the kind of muscles that would be useful for pulling heavy boxes off of high shelves and filling empty racks with plastic crap and putting slightly less heavy boxes back on high shelves. When I woke up and looked in the mirror I was dismayed my muscles and veins were gone.]
Today I agreed to be a book monkey for my advisor for 12 hours a week. She will pay me almost, but not quite, twice my retail wage to read books and take notes on them. Yes, I am being paid a graduate student wage to read books. I do that anyway. All the time. Everyday. It almost makes up for retail and christmas. Almost.
Susan Sontag made me laugh today. I was reading her book about AIDS. This is a sign about my brainwaves right now and about the authorial quality of Susan Sontag.
[Two nights ago I dreamed that I had enormous arm muscles with big throbbing veins. The kind of veins that inspire wetdreams for phlebotomists. The kind of veins I wish I had so nurses wouldn't prick me three times before they can draw blood. And the kind of muscles that would be useful for pulling heavy boxes off of high shelves and filling empty racks with plastic crap and putting slightly less heavy boxes back on high shelves. When I woke up and looked in the mirror I was dismayed my muscles and veins were gone.]
Today I agreed to be a book monkey for my advisor for 12 hours a week. She will pay me almost, but not quite, twice my retail wage to read books and take notes on them. Yes, I am being paid a graduate student wage to read books. I do that anyway. All the time. Everyday. It almost makes up for retail and christmas. Almost.
Susan Sontag made me laugh today. I was reading her book about AIDS. This is a sign about my brainwaves right now and about the authorial quality of Susan Sontag.