Brief Exchange

Of course you can exchange

Boxing Day brought so much joy for The Artswipe in the shopping stakes. I don't really think my loved ones know me well at all! Otherwise they would have bought me presents I wouldn't have to exchange. Thank The Good Lord Above they kept their receipts. Actually, my mother has taken to wrapping presents in a collage of Christmas receipts. Not only is it saving on paper - and therefore good for the environment - but it saves on the rancid gift economy bullshit of Christmas. Because really, the receipt often looks a whole lot better than the crap purchased at its expense. Once the disappointment of Christmas subsided and the trainwreck of family departed after a long day of eating overcooked turkey, drinking VB shandies and watching repeats of National Lampoons Christmas Vacation, I ended the day soaking in a long hot beauty bath - it's the perfect place to ponder what the Boxing Day sales might bring.

I got up early on Boxing Day. My shopping circuit was thoroughly mapped out over a breakfast medley of leftover roasted meats. The Artswipe's Boxing Day Shopping Cartography: Myer, DJs, JB HiFi and Target with a couple of Gloria Jeans chasers thrown in for good measure. Maybe the gift-shop at the MCA would be a good place to get a new sex toy? Surely they have merchandised a whole range for the Julie Rrap show.

Start at Myer first because the teaming crowd of Dawn of the Dead extras lining up outside hours before opening is perfect material for examining the human condition. The ethnography of shopping is one of the first things on my mind before participating in consumer whoreticulture. Moreover, the crowds clamouring for their Myer mystore TM fix are always peopled with such hot snatch that you can score at least a year's supply of shower nozzle masturbation material.

The salivating throng of crowds lusting for homewares and haberdashery makes Boxing Day my favourite day of the year. But if you're going to make post-Christmas a sexy time, you need good underwear. You know, mix it up a bit at Bras and Things before checking out the stench of cheap cotton maxing out Men's underwear at Target. Maybe even take a chance on a few items left over in the change room, like a tasty little seamless microfibre low rise number or some comfortable odor controlling fabrics from Calvin Klein. Why bother trying them on beforehand as nothing makes for better souvenirs of festive cheer.

The Artswipe
Specials, 2007
Found objects

Christmas Wish Fulfillment

Betti Pugh of Wales is responsible for climate change

Artswipe has really been going down on the silly season, so apologies if you've been experiencing abandonment issues due to my irregular movements here at blogspot dot com. As most of you have really learnt a thing or two from my special brand of pedagogical blogness, I have been feeling real pressure to come up with something new in a world so secondhand. And all I can think about is some Christmas commentary.

I love this time of year. Christmas albums emerge and you watch middle-of-the-road American singersongwriters deep throat new arrangements of Sleigh Bells for Santa. Suburban street electricity gets amped up while neighbours war over whose fairy light studded anal rope looks best with or without climate change chic. Inhale those greenhouse gases baby! Then there's shopping for presents you want for yourself but try out on others so the novelty can wear thin before doling out the cash for a repeat purchase in the January sales. Carols by candlelight is always moving and this year I will dedicate everything I sing to Belinda Emmett.

Christmas is all about family, and this year Artswipe is going to try harder to workshop lifesize replicas of the family I want to call my own next year. They will be cut from goldleaf and glue with just a little twist of papier-mache. I'll arrange this family like a nativity scene and cradle their mild-mannered muteness. I can't decide if I want to be kin to Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes or Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. Of course it would be nice to let Madonna and Guy take me in but Kaballah is Jewish which means no Christmas presents. And since my art cave rebirthing experience has unleashed what my therapist calls "infantalised eggnog flavoured wish fulfillment" I may as well enjoy Christmas the way I used to when I was actually a child. Meaning, I will fucking scream if I don't get a new fucking iPod or fucking palm pilot this year you people who have taken it upon yourself to call yourselves "parents." You're not my parents! If you were, you'd cut the crap about Santa not feeling so flush this year and spill the consumer culture booty somewhere near where the world is cut in two by what is usually called an "equator", but what I call plain old fashioned self-centredness.

So what will be my new year resolution this year? As I've been negotiating newness and emergence ever since I saw the youngmeat Primavera exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art this year, I have decided that Artswipe resolves to be the next NSW young Australian of the year. As art openings are just too cool for cocaine these days I'm not sure if any art anyones have a chance of being any kind of young-anything-of-the-year.

When I think of those three words "of the year" I feel compelled to make a list itemising every goddamn good thing I witnessed in 2006. Come to think of it, journalism actually gets really clever this time of year with the writerly kind clamouring for attention in the taste stakes with their end of year best of lists.

And as I failed journalism at uni but excelled in new media, I've blogged the best things:

1. Bindi Irwin's starmaking funeral speech
2. Ian Thorpe's coming out of the water speech
3. Lindsay Lohan's Robert Altman speech (and she thinks she can play Stevie Nicks onscreen)
4. Paris Hilton vomits on stage while trying to sing her own song
5. Oprah episode entitled "Oprah's Favorite Sandwich in America"
6. Jason Donovan announcing his 2007 comeback album
7. Tuning into TVS and other parallel universes
8. Britney Spears' vagina falls out
9. Naomi Campbell hitting her maid on the head with a mobile phone
10.Celebrity racism ala Mel Gibson and Michael Richards (especially as seen on YouTube)