Columns

As a stereotypical arts student, I’ve been feeling besieged lately. The government is talking of tying education funding to job opportunities, smoking is being made financially crippling, and now they’re onto booze. Art, durries, booze: all of the vices that make life worth living are being attacked. Now I’m left staring into the dregs of my coffee cup of goon, and wondering when so many carrots found their way up so many asses.

Being consistently titted and living in a smoky haze, I’ve no doubt that my liver and lungs are in just as sad a state as my wallet. But health must not be confused with wellbeing. While I hold no doubt that the chance of my living into my 90s is slim, I’m determined to enjoy whatever more natural lifespan is available to me. Being drunk makes that a lot easier. It’s an essential escape from the crushing boredom of normality, that spiritual deformity all too often misdiagnosed as common sense, diligence, or even wisdom.

At university, the cause of this boredom is simple. We are rumbling along the tertiary conveyer belt in an institution that is increasingly putting profits ahead of ideas. We are compelled to produce larger amounts of mind-numbingly dull internal assessment every semester. More and more people are crammed into ever more congested courses. And “cleaning up our act” really means cleaning up the Otago brand. The hum of the intellectual market place is being drowned out by hawkers trying to sell shares in the god of growth.

Now, I know that one day I’m probably going to have to stop spending my time talking shit about Plato, Picasso, and Pound. One day I might have to sober up, butt out, and kneel before the god of growth. But university isn’t that time or place. I’m going to continue to maximise my wellbeing, no matter what my liver, lungs, wallet, or self-nominated guardian angels may have to say on the matter.

Issue 16’s diatribe suggested that we don’t like ourselves. That’s not something I’ve been accused of before. I’m a big fan of Dan. I’m an even bigger fan when he has a drink in his belly and a smoke in his hand. When other people don’t share the same tastes I don’t mind. But when they try to stop me from enjoying myself, whatever their motives, then I mind. I’m not trying to push you into the pubs, but I’m sure as hell not going to let anyone push me out of them either. It’s not the not drinking – it’s how we’re not drinking.

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