“I’m kind of glad I didn’t go camping”
So said one of the people I’m living with on his return from the Folsom Street Leather Fair. I think there’s a joke in their somewhere. Anyway, he told us about some of the entertaining things he had got up to, or simply witnessed, at the fair, which I won’t go into except to remark that one of his stories ended with the classic line, “and then she pulled down her pants and got out _her_ dick.”
In other news, if you have access to an academic library and fancy a laugh, I suggest you check out Local Players in Global Games: The Strategic Constitution of a Multinational Corporation, the funniest piece of work about capitalism since The Office. An epic tale of heroes and villains in the world of dairy processing equipment. Thrill to:
> The result was a highly flexible organisation in which many types and variants of
> pumps, valves, and fittings could be manufactured in small batches to customer
> specifications with low overheads and short lead times.
Gasp as we discover the shocking secret of:
> Ambitious experiments with work reorganization and ‘win-win’ bargaining, orchestrated
> primarily by local actors.
And find out what happens when:
> The Lake Mills plant was therefore able to enhance its competitive position within the
> MNC, bidding successfully for work from group facilities which had been closed, winning
> the right to participate as a junior partner in the manufacture of a new generation of pumps,
> and becoming the corporate leader for a new family of locally developed ice-cream
> freezers.
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You say ‘The Office’ was about capitalism? I’d be interested to hear some thoughts on that, initially it feels like an “overreading”? How is the situation/set/cast of characters “representative” or otherwise critical of systemic capitalist problems or aspects?
cheers
Comment by steff @ 10/1/2005 3:23 am
I’ll try and write a fuller response if I get time but, generally, it seems to me the Office is about post-Fordist power relations, particularly in the way Brent both disavows and abuses his power as manager. So, not so much about capitalism in general, but about certain feature of its specific current presentation (to clarify, I’m talking about the BBC version; I haven’t seen the US series).
Comment by Tim @ 10/2/2005 3:09 pm
Oh, also, there’s definite evidence against the way I’m reading it in the way we are apparently supposed to sympathise with the ‘real’ bosses (Brent’s boss in the first series, and the guy who gets ‘parachuted in’ from the other office in the second series), who, unlike Brent, accept their authority and seem to be shown as using it ‘wisely’.
Comment by Tim @ 10/2/2005 8:23 pm
Ok, I understand this better now. Looking forward to your elaborations.
Comment by steff @ 10/4/2005 4:31 pm