One Sorry Blog

One Sorry Blog News Service

Buenos Aires – Today marks the end of American Paul Rivas’s first week as a life artist, a week in which the former translator failed miserably at two new weekly activities and missed the deadline on the one thing he was supposed to do.

At the top of the list of things Rivas hadn’t been up to snuff on since the weight of a 40-hour work week was lifted from his shoulders was the operation of the Buenos Aires Desk of One Sorry Blog, as evidenced by the lack of new content this week.

Rivas had come to regard the Tuesday edition of the One Sorry Blog News Service as, “as solid as a 5-star pick by Ace Cummins”, but failed to deliver the much-awaited and widely-read news service article by its Tuesday deadline, prompting this first-ever Thursday edition.

How does a reduction in paid soulless work hours lead to a drop in the production of unpaid creative endeavors?

“The thing is,” said Rivas, “all the work I did on One Sorry Blog, I did at work.”

To be fair, one reason for the One Sorry Blog News Service not meeting its Tuesday deadline was that Rivas made his Argentinean indoor soccer debut early Tuesday morning. Rivas has signed on to play in the “Monday night at 3:30 a.m.” league, a less serious and less violent option than the 8 p.m. league or the beer league, respectively. Taxi driver and friend to gringos Luis Ramírez had invited him to play and assured him that his complete lack of soccer skills would be tolerated by the other taxi drivers and night crawlers playing at that obscene hour.

“I watched a lot of the Premiereship this year,” said Rivas before the game, upbeat, “and for a while I was playing basketball on Saturdays in Barracas.”

And how did that work out for him, soccer-wise?

“Not so good,” the life artist conceded after the game. “Terrible, actually. I felt like Ashley Hames on the episode of Man’s Work where he just shows up and tries to be an Alaskan king crab fisherman.”

Ramírez had this to say: “He looked like he was trying to play basketball, if you can imagine what a guy trying to play basketball on a soccer field looks like. I kept congratulating him on his four goals, but the truth is that he must have allowed at least 12 goals all by himself. He had one golazo, but even that one was all me.”

On the goal in question, with Rivas streaking down the left side of the short field, Ramírez passed him the ball from midfield, hitting him in stride. Without pausing to collect the pass, Rivas took the ball mid-bounce and pissed on it with his left foot, sending the small ball past the goalkeeper’s ear and into the upper netting. Rivas tagged the golazo the highlight of his first week as a life artist, adding that he “totally would have youtubed it” if anyone had caught it on video.

“I’m counting that one as a moral victory,” Rivas said, in all seriousness. “And my goal for next week is not to be the worst guy out there.”

Also on the schedule for Rivas in his second week as a life artist is an improved showing at the weekly poker game he and his beloved Clare Nisbet joined. That should be almost guaranteed, given that Rivas lost 70 pesos in the Wednesday night game and next week, the format changes to a single 60-peso buy-in.

“Obvi that wasn’t what I was referring to,” said Rivas, “I was referring to playing winning hands instead of folding them and not betting on losing hands out of spite.”

Rivas was knocked out of the game when the full house of kings over tens that he held after the turn was rendered useless when the fourth king on the board turned up on the river. He bet his last few chips to see his opponent’s ace-seven take down his jack-ten, but left with enough spite in his gut to make it all worthwhile.

“No one said being a life artist would be easy,” shrugged Rivas. “But hey, I won 50 dollars on the Cavs minus 2.5 Monday night and got three months added to my visa in less than 30 minutes at the immigration office Tuesday morning. All in all, a good week.”

“Whatever,” said Nisbet. “He can call himself a life artist if he wants. He can call himself Jack Bauer, for all I care. He just better start making me some dinner. That was part of the deal when he quit working: he was gonna make me some dinner. All he’s done so far is walk two blocks once to pick up empanadas once.”

One Sorry Blog News Service

Buenos Aires – With only three days left on the two weeks’ notice he gave at the translation company where he works, Paul Rivas is visibly excited at his impending unemployment. In a move that elicited strange looks from his 23-year-old careerist workmate, sales team member Tyler Shahriary, Rivas is not leaving his cushy position as a translator in favor of another, better job. Instead, Rivas plans to dedicate himself full-time to being an életművész, a Hungarian term that roughly translates to “life artist”, or, as described in the book from which Rivas learned the term, “someone for whom work itself was déclassé.”

When asked if he wasn’t concerned that the man who called himself a life artist, the one from the book, was also known as the Whiskey Robber, and spent his days getting drunk on Johnny Walker black, robbing banks and post offices and blowing money in casinos on gambling and expensive hookers while ostensibly serving as fourth-string goalie for one of Budapest’s storied hockey teams, Rivas simply said, “Nem.”

However, he later added that wasn’t going to be that kind of life artist. As for the 40 hours per week he had heretofore spent translating, Rivas now intends to spend them taking walks down streets he’s never been, asking questions of old people sitting in parks, and putting in long hours at a few choice corner cafes where something interesting is liable to happen.

Yet his girlfriend has other plans for his period of self-imposed unemployment.

“Are you kidding me?” Clare Nisbet laugh-spoke. “Paul’s gonna be my house husband. He’s gonna do all the shit I’ve been doing for him since we came to this sodding country so that he could ‘follow his bliss’. He’s gonna make the bed in the morning, wash all the dishes, schlep the laundry back and forth to the cleaners and fold it when it’s done, pack me lunches, make me dinner and download my shows.”

“Unfortunately,” conceded Rivas, “those are the terms to which I’ve agreed. But this is Argentina, where what one agrees to do is often a far cry from what one actually does, and I think that applies to people with tourists visas, as well.”

The would-be life artist maintained that the world would be a better place if he were permitted to just do his thing.

“Just look at the life artist Bubba Ray Robison,” Rivas said with a tone of foregone obviousness. “He, like me, has yet to find a job that can keep him interested and, eventually, working at said job just makes him miserable. Maybe he’s an extreme example, in that he’s a mechanical engineer, and when he’s not paying attention at work people could die, but it’s the same idea. I plan on doing good work; just not for pay.”

Rivas claims he plans to do great things in his time off, things more valuable to the world and to his own peace of mind than translating advertisements for the Argentine version of Slingbox, but declined to disclose what those things might be.

All he said he could offer in the way of explanation was that: “Being a life artist is serious business. If it were easy, everybody would be doing it. You don’t see many life artists.”

Faking work is the art of feeling, looking and, for all intents and purposes, being very busy performing tasks that have nothing to do with those for which one is receiving regular remuneration. In contrast to slothing, slacking or mucking about, faking work is itself hard work.

The young graduate often enters the world of work with high ideals and much energy, two things which generally have no place in today’s working world. He or she soon finds that there is not nearly enough work to fill the eight hour days required of him or her, discovering that a method of keeping one’s mind sprite must be found, and that right soon. Herein lies the art of faking work.

How exactly to fake work:

1. Drink water from a very small cup. This way, keeping hydrated will require no less than 20 trips to the water cooler in a day, more if the cup is only filled two thirds full in order to diligently prevent spillage, a workplace hazard.

2. Make many trips to the bathroom. The natural consequence of (1), and an iron-clad excuse for not being at your desk.

3. Take laps around the workplace. CTU is the only place in the world where employees are reprimanded for not being at their work stations. Go to the water cooler, go back to your desk, go to the bathroom, go back to your desk, go to the far end of the office, say hello to whoever may be about along the way, go back to your desk by a different roundabout route, fill up at the water cooler… It never has to stop.

4. Write personal emails in the work email interface. You’re busy. You’re writing emails. Do not send them from your work email, there’s no need for that, but write them there, then take 30 seconds to send them from a personal email account. Should you be interrupted during the latter, write this or any other type of blatant non-work activities off as time spent taking a break. You’re a hard worker. You’re too busy to take a proper break, and can only manage a few such 30-second respites per day.

5. Keep busy! No, not with work! There is no work! With faking work! Amuse yourself, keep your mind active and stay fresh for that day when you get a job that requires your full attention by keeping busy with your own projects. As to how to do this without being censured, see (4). Anyone bursting into your work area will find you hard at work and ask, for fear of sounding overbearing, “Are you busy?” The correct response is to pull a “busy” face and say, “Quite”.

Finally, remember Robert DeNiro in Brazil: “We’re all in it together.” If you have found success with other methods of faking work, please post them in a “Comment”.

2005, iron-on transfer on 100% cotton, limited edition available exclusively at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art shop, US$900.

2007, crocheted, yarn, single shoulder strap, Che Guevara coin clasp, private collection, US$3000.

Detail Cuban 3 peso Che Guevara coin, “PATRIA O MUERTE”.