The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Future as a

Taxidermist
Good morning--you're Die-Sandra or...oh, Deathandra? Whatever--what can I tell you about today? Taxidermy? Right, I heard about your art project. The art teacher still on stress leave? I guess you're probably cut out for this sort of career. It may have a few bumps along the way, though.

First, you'll no doubt continue to play with roadkill while you steal the occasional fetal pig from the biology class. At some point after high school you'll take a taxidermy class or two, but it will be a learn as you go kind of thing--you'll eventually meet up with some redneck outdoorsman who's mastered the art and he'll show you the finer points of making that deer's head or bearskin look lifelike.

He's old, though, and probably drinks a bit more than he should. It will be while under the influence that he tells you the truly troubling details of his own taxidermic background. It will come back to haunt you later.

You will move on from the small town where he showed you the ropes to the bright lights of the big city--I'm assuming that stuffing dead animals or not, you probably need to be somewhere big enough to have a lively underground culture where like minded freaks hang out and share their dysfunctions for a few hours on weekends.

The city will be slow to embrace your vision of taxidermy for the masses--you'll likely have to work in a variety of piercing/tattoo places to make ends meet for a bit--but eventually you'll strike gold in partnering with a funeral home for pets. Dowagers will, in their heartbreak over the loss of Fifi, agree to have you stuff and mount their dearly departed animals.

One particularly wealthy, but odd client will bring a variety of creatures for your special care and attention. Each time she'll seemingly be more interested in you than the fruits of your labor. You are confident enough not to be intimidated by her, or by her odd requests. For instance, you readily comply with her wish to put a lhasa apso on wheels so she can continue to tow it through the park just like she did when it was alive.

Then one night she phones you late, and demands you come to her home. She seems a bit shaken, but then composes herself and leads you into her study, where the body of her most recent husband awaits. You cringe at the thought of what she asks you, but you call your old mentor and ask for his help. His stories about what he learned while in the army from some nazis he was assigned to guard after the liberation of concentration camps now come in handy.

A week after her assignment was given, you present the woman with her preserved husband and an exhorbitant bill. She pays it gladly, and then informs you that she has two other ex-husbands in cryogenic suspension and she'll pay you double to process those bodies.

You make enough from her to take some time off and fulfill your lifelong dream to tour Transylvania. When you return the police are waiting--seems you have interfered with a murder investigation by destroying the evidence of her suspected poisoning of her most recent husband--plus there's the whole legal problems created by messing with dead bodies for profit--seems there are laws about such things.

Ahh well--you can work your magic on the rats in prison to help pass the time.

The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Future as a

Medium

Hey kid, close the door, would ya? It feels like an icy wind just blew in here. So, what do you want to do with your life? A medium--like the seance kind? Well, that's a first. I don't need to contact the netherworld to predict this one:

You'll take a job after high school in one of those creepy little "aquarian" book shops--you know, the kind with crystals and pentagrams everywhere, and you'll spend far too much time reading the obscure material that few ever wander in to purchase. You'll become an expert on people like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Houdini and other spiritist freaks. Eventually, after pestering a working medium who buys the odd piece of paranormal paraphernalia you are admitted to a seance, and you are fascinated. Soon you've become an apprentice to "The Amazing" this or "Madam" that, but as you are admitted into the sacred inner circle, the sad truth comes out--it's all a scam.

You are heartbroken, but you've invested a lot of time and effort in learning to talk the talk, so you suck it up and go into the cynical business of hustling the bereaved. Bad lighting, incense, dark eye makeup, and some well placed speakers fool those who wish to be fooled. The skeptics you can simply dismiss as creating a "bad aura" and refuse to perform for them.

Then one day, you hit the jackpot. You've recently branched off from your mentor and are working alone. You are hired by a particularly intense well-dressed man of Italian descent. He first comes to talk to his mother, and you manipulate enough information from him to feed him the lines she might say. Soon he's coming to confess all manner of guilt to his mama, and you're becoming privy to the dirtier secrets of the local mafia. You are uncomfortable, but the money he's paying you and the damage he could do to you combine to keep you from stopping the weekly sessions.

Then comes the big test--he asks you to contact a recently-departed colleague. It seems your client has a conscience and wishes to apologize for liquidating a friend. You are happy to oblige, but then he adds that he'll be back the following week to ask the dead friend about the exact location of some stolen diamonds.

You panic; he could kill you if your scam is revealed. You go to the police, and they decide to wire you with a microphone in hopes you will hear more crimes confessed.

Unfortunately, as they hide just outside your building, they communicate over radios set to the same frequency as your wireless microphone that you use to speak for the dead. Your client hears what's about to go down and sneaks out a back door, but not before promising you a death worse than anything you can imagine.

I'd love to tell you more, but at that point my crystal ball just kind of gets foggy. Have fun.

Poetry by Dythandra

I See You When You're Sleeping, I Hide When You're Awake...
It comes but once a year,
I can hardly wait--
My father's office party.

He's third in command,
But our house is best suited for a party
(so his bosses tell him)

For two weeks they prepare
Calling caterers, baking, buying booze
Putting a padlock on my room for safety
Of all who might glance in.

It's really a matter of taste;
I've decorated in Nouveau Nihilist,
With a touch of goth, although my mother's
"My god what's wrong with that girl?"
Catches the essence of my design.

As the party approaches, my plan is executed.
They know what is coming--
My eating meals with them is one of the signs
...of the coming apocalypse.

"So Daddy," I smile, hiding the fangs for his comfort,
"How will I tell the 'stupid slut' from the 'menopausal cow' again?"
He blanches. I continue:
"Your boss--will it be awkward for him
To have both wife and secretary here--
Considering everything...?"

"How much?"
His hand shakes as he pulls a wad of bills from his wallet.
"How much for you to go out?"

I shake my head
"I wouldn't miss it for the world--
I even have new makeup and jewelry for the occasion."
I swear he palpably shudders.

I hide in my room for a few more hours,
Then come down with a list of my... 'requirements'.
The last vestiges of a curfew surrendered,
The garage given to my band--he can park on the street,
And my own key to the liquor cabinet.
(We both know that taking the lock off
Would be a bad idea--have you met my mother?)

He looks relieved, surprised I didn't take the cash
That can wait--after all
This year Christmas is at Grandmamas.

writer's block...

I've got nothin' folks.

I was going to write a rundown of the NY trip briefly, so maybe that will suffice for now. I'll probably do it in a couple/three installments so as to reduce the boredom.

We left late Wednesday night (dec. 7) from here--flew to Vancouver, then our plane to Toronto left late so we missed our connection to newark and got in to around 10:30 a.m.--about two hours late. Our guide met us at the airport and we were taken to our hotel--the Bentley on the upper east side near the queensborough bridge. Problem was, even though we'd been awake for more than 24 hours (aside from a lucky few who could doze on the flights) we couldn't check in--we had to stow our stuff and head out.

We rode the subway for the first time--something we were to become very used to. We headed to the big tree at Rockefeller Center, next to the skating rink, and turned the group loose (following the minimum of 3 with at least on cell phone rule).


We came back to the hotel eventually, checked in, unpacked and then eventually headed ck downtown to eat--"barbecue" for our first meal. That night, it was the Empire State Building--and a couple of our group actually witnessed a guy go onto one knee and propose there.

What struck me was that the security there is pretty much the same as at an airport and also how amazingly quiet it is up there, above everything. It is kind of an amazing view. Unfortunately it was bloody cold up there that night, and the cameras didn't do justice to the view, on the most part. Here's a little example, though:








Friday morning we woke up to 3 - 4 inches of snow and some of the biggest flakes falling I've ever seen. It was actually quite pretty walking around Manhattan in it.



When we had eaten breakfast (most of us at a deli near times square) we then headed to a two-hour improv workshop in a studio right near times square. By the time we were finished, the sun was out and the sky was blue. We had great weather for the rest of our trip.

I'm tired, so I'll post more later...

Actually I am still alive...

Just a post to say a real post is coming soon. Here's a few random pics from the New York trip:















Central Park last Saturday

















Statue of Liberty last Sunday


















Van Gogh's "The Olive Trees" on Tuesday

More to come soon...

The pedestal was uncomfortable, but,
You'd been on it so long it seemed natural.
Stretched out, balanced on a fine point, spotlights bright.

When the bumps would come, a slip, a fall--some cracks...
It took time to repair, and then you were back
Balanced once more.

It didn't look very comfortable, but we accepted it
As the way things were--lots of people liked the pedestal.

Then one day, after another bump, I heard the other sound
The falls hurt, more than I had realized.
There had to be a better way.

There was a chair. It wasn't on a pedestal, but it was comfortable.
Friendship instead of perfection
No spotlights to blind, and in seeing without the glare,
We realized that comfortable and safe were better
Than living life as an icon.

Every so often, I see you step towards the pedestal,
Perhaps I even push without realizing.
Tomorrow I'm going to smash it.
We don't need it any more.


I don't normally ever write anything that isn't tongue
in cheek when it comes to poetry, but maybe I'm just
maudlin tonight. Sorry if it's not relevant for most--
I hope the intended audience can relax and feel safe.

and on the 2nd Sunday of Advent...

Some opinions:

1) Dumbledore isn't very good--the actor, I mean. I know some have problems with various of the kids in the Potter movies, but really, Michael Gambon has neither the power nor the twinkle in the eye that one expects from Dumbledore. I never was all that keen on Richard Harris's casting in the first one either. Now--attack me if you must--but I would have given the role to Patrick Stewart. I know his recognizability from Star Trek and some other things might not have made some keen on him, but I think he could have been made to "look" enough like the character and he would've had the fire in his performance to bring more life to Dumbledore.

2) Christmas pudding. I don't really hate it, nor like it much, but if you're going to eat it at all, make sure you've got the sauce and maybe a little of the really expensive vanilla ice cream.

3) Turkey--if you're a vegetarian I may love you but I won't eat Christmas dinner at your house. I will find you something to eat if you come to mine, though. Crackers, perhaps...

4) "Elf" is not yet a Christmas classic. Neither is the Jim Carrey "Grinch". Sorry. The only movie made in the last 30 years that has made it into that elite category is "A Christmas Story" with Peter Billingsly--I love so many moments from that movie.. They played a clip from "It's a Wonderful Life" at church this morning--I still think that's my favorite.

5)Egg nog--it's a good thing. With rum it's better. With nutmeg... well--that's a personal preference, I suppose.

6) ICICLE LIGHTS!!--Please please take them down. Seriously. Especially if you have a string of colored lights and hang the white icicle lights over them. You are no longer allowed to decorate or dress yourself if you do that.

Three more sleeps 'til we leave for New York...

The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Future as a

Comic Book Store Owner

Hey kid--interesting shirt. What kind of t-shirt is that? Bangladeshi Death Ska? Right--Yeah, you probably are the only kid who's cool enough to know their music. So you want to be a music... Oh--comic book store, huh? Right, I know NOT like that guy on The Simpsons. I think it might be interesting...

You're someone who is going to have to overcome one of the most challenging handicaps when it comes to starting a business--your overall disdain for the human race. You've always been that trendy hipster who takes unhealthy obssessive pride that the music, movies, literature, and--dare I say, comics--that you like are a sign of your superiority. Yeah, right--anime is literature. Podiatrists are doctors, too.

Your problem is your love for the esoteric, and your smugness about it. You'll need to actually be nice to the people you approach to help finance your comic store, but your overbearing nature will make it difficult for you to avoid offending them. (I remember the time you threw your drink on that girl who asked you to dance just because she was wearing a "Samurai Pizza Cats" t-shirt.)

Eventually, though, you'll manage to get a lease on a small, mildewed store located in a bad part of downtown. You'll beg and borrow from everyone you know and slide into further debt to stock the store. As much as you hate it, you'll stock the "popular" comics--anime series you spent most of your high school years sneering at. You'll bite your tongue every time some fanboy or fangirl comes in to purchase the overhyped crap that is your store's only chance of survival. Meanwhile, your own favorite series--an obscure comic written in an odd dialect by a former Shinto priest who lives on a tiny Japanese island--languishes untouched on its huge display in the center of your shop.

You become even more frustrated when your taste in J-pop is completely rejected by your customers as well. You up selling off the cds to giggling Japanese tourists for a quarter of their original worth. The tourists smile at your taste in music, and look almost disturbed at the odd flotsam of their culture that fills your store.

Meanwhile, you descend further into misanthropy; even your parents find it difficult to stomach your company more than a few times a year. You are so wrapped up in your fascination with your own passions that you know nothing of politics, hit tv shows or any of the other interests of the common man. Your consciousness is completely dominated by your particular anime obssession--the story of a gentle but wise clam who has the magical ability to shift into another dimension where he solves domestic disputes by telling traditional Shinto parables.

You stave off bankruptcy by tapping into the lucrative social misfit market--you begin staging and supplying various animecon and comic expo events. Although the anime community flocks to your store to outfit themselves for these events, you still creep them out. Your pathetic attempts to "chill" with some kids in their ersatz Cardcaptor costumes just results in derision: "What's with the creepy guy in the clam suit?"

Still, their money is good, and eventually you save up enough to realize your dream--you fly to Japan and go to the island where your hero still lives. You get off the boat and make the long trek up to his simple home--the place where he drew the clam stories that fill your consciousness. He is surprised to see you, but then seems almost a bit frightened when he realizes you are the same person who has been sending him letters on an almost daily basis for the last eight years. Still, over a cup of tea he relaxes, and begins dispensing his wisdom.

Eventually, though, you can't take it. You really had no idea what you would hear from him, but you certainly had not expected him to essentially tell you to "get a life". You begin weeping and run to some cliffs and consider throwing yourself into the sea. The old man follows you and tries to convince you your life is worth living, but he simply angers you more and you push him over the cliff instead.

Japanese prison will not be pleasant. You won't get to keep your clam outfit. The good thing is, though--no one will miss you.

The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Future as a

Civic Official

Hi kid--what's your interest today? "Civic official?" Oh yeah, I saw that guy at the press conference explaining why the mayor wasn't really drunk at the boat show last weekend. I suppose, if that's what looks like a good way to spend your life, I could give you some ideas...

There's a fundamental flaw with municipal politics--or with most politics, really. You see, the people need a mayor to be someone who can understand the finer points of political discourse, study issues and look for resolutions, and pay attention to the minute details of governmental policy. Problem is, the characteristics that get you elected--charisma, broad appeal, making issues simplistic and polarized--are all antithetical to those characteristics that will make a good mayor.

That's where you will come in. You will be the one who does the boring background work on every issue. If there's a contraversy about a new housing development being built in a sensitive environmental area, you get to poll all the ecofreaks about their concerns. If the city sees the potential financial windfall from a legalized prostitution district, you're the guy who will have to sit down with the local priest and be harangued about your filthy lack of morals.

You will become a familiar fixture at the city archives, and your intimate knowledge of so many previous political decisions and all of the implications of any future legislation make you the mayor's first choice when he or she needs to be advised on what position to adopt. If you give wise counsel, the mayor will claim all credit and you will languish in the shadows. If you make a mistake, you will be sacrificed to the media, pilloried for your stupidity while the mayor disavows you repeatedly.

The mayor gets to attend all the galas and soirees, while you bring home stacks of briefs and position papers each night to further wedge distance between you and your longsuffering family--oh, didn't I mention you'll get married young? You'll do so shrewdly; binding yourself to the unattractive but well-connected daughter of a long-time political bagman.

Eventually your frustration with the stupidity of the elected officials around you leads to one of the three solaces of the smart but disillusioned civic official: drink, adultery or corruption. No matter which you choose, it will be a further descent into the loneliness that makes you daily question the worth of your existence. And when you are finally fired, whether for drunken incompetence, inappropriate office romance, or reckless embezzlement, you will silently rejoice that your career has ended.

Your new life, whether living in a cheap motel, sleeping over a tawdry bar, or hiding from libidinous fellow inmates, will still seem far superior to the walking death that is civic administration.

The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Future as a

Librarian

Hey--don't just stand there; it's okay to come in. That's right--sit down. I won't bite. Okay now, you tell me what career you want to know about. What's that--speak up, okay? A what? Ohhh, a librarian. Actually, that makes a lot of sense.

So you'll need to go learn "library science" at some university or college someplace. Don't let them fool you; there's no science involved. Oh there will be computers, microfiches, security scanners and such, but really, things haven't changed much since the library was a bunch of parchment scrolls in some monastery. The principles are still the same.

Here's the thing. On the outside, books are flat, lifeless and boring. Your job is to blend in--and you look like you're cut out for it--no offense. Your wardrobe will continue to be simple sweaters and conservative skirts, maybe the occasional daring foray into a plain drab suit of some sort. Under the migraine-inducing flickering of defective fluorescent lights you'll squint your way into the vision problems that will soon have you sporting the de rigeur horned-rim glasses hung round your neck with a chain.

The library is your refuge. Just like you hid from the other kids in a corner of the elementary school playground, or handed out the sports equipment at lunch so you'd never have to use it, so now you retreat from the social challenges of normal human interaction to cloister yourself among novels, encyclopedias and magazines. Oh you'll have friends of a sort--the fish on your desk rely on you to feed them once a day, and you'll name them after some of your favorite authors, and you'll think it somehow darkly humorous when you flush Herman Melville down the toilet but you will have no one to share the irony with you.

You won't be the only librarian, of course, but you'll quickly become the one who embodies the essence of the library's loneliness. The others may date or even marry, but you will languish among the imagined passions of victorian romances because you never encounter anyone in the drab routine of your life who could make those stories real for you.

That's not to say you won't have suitors--every time a new entry in the adult classic "Hot Librarians" series is released some oversexed admirer will stalk you through the stacks, slipping horribly-graphic propositions inside the dust jackets of DH Lawrence novels left open at meaningful passages. Over time, to avoid the humiliation and asthma attacks (book dust will play havoc with your respiratory system) you leave the public library system and move into the even more isolated realms of the law library. Then only creepy attorneys will make your life occasionally difficult when they show up in small herds after overimbibing at expense-account luncheons to have a laugh at "that librarian who blushes all the time".

Fortunately for them, you'll be too mortified to ever consider a harassment suit.

At some point you'll fulfill the ultimate librarian life destiny--you'll move in with your ailing widowed mother to care for her in her twilight years. While she may be ailing, she'll demonstrate a tenacious cling on life for many years, and her longevity may well mean she'll be there to scowl through your retirement party. Throughout the quiet desperation of your life with her, she'll criticize your every clothing choice or hair cut as branding you a "wanton hussy", even though you likely will never have a real date in your life.

Don't look so sad, it doesn't have to be this way. At some point you may go crazy and take an axe to the old lady--it's the quiet ones who usually snap in the end.

Poetry By Dythandra

My Nightmare Before Christmas

Grandma wants your christmas list, dear
Certainly, Mother (I'm difficult to buy for, apparently.)

Grandmama won't like my part of the record store--
Those closest to the crypt don't celebrate it much.
She means well--but the road to hell is paved
With the souls of those who bothered me.

I suggest a gift certificate to my favorite shop
"The Lycanthrope's Temple--Tatoos and Piercing"
(They never check ages)

It's always a festive season around our house
The fake tree, festooned with lights
The family decorations collected over the years
And mine, borrowed from the butcher's alley dumpster.
(Hook and Eye aren't just sewing terms)

No stocking for me--my torn fishnets are too porous
Even for the threatened coal
They long ago learned the dangers of giving ME fuel
And when I left Santa my specially-prepared "cookies and milk"
A stomach pump was de rigeur.

My class prepares a hamper for the needy--
There's a girl they say, just about my size.
But somehow my garments end up on the reject pile--
How metaphorical, I think to myself
(I should think scary would be an asset
For those with little else.)

But now I must run--
It's time for my favorite holiday pastime
A few photos snapped of the mall santa,
Then photoshopped and voila!
I've created a warning poster--"Registered Sexual Offender"
So fun to plaster them around the parking lot.
Even better to watch the parents explain,
As they whisk their toddlers away.

If they're smart, they'll board the chimney up this year.

The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Future in

Glass Repair

Glass work? You mean where you blow up those bottles on the... oh, okay. Really? That's your ambition? Yeah, I guess I can.

You'll go to work for some company that has a two-inch square ad in the yellow pages and promises 24-hour emergency service. Once they've trained you--which means you are told many times a day "Don't drop anything" and they teach you how to use the glass cutters--you are then the "qualified technician" and you get to wear the pager that interrupts all manner of meals, celebrations and romantic moments. Usually it's because some crazy ex gets drunk enough to forget the court order and you get to fix the window on the double wide.

Car repairs are also a specialty of your shop. You have the "innovative" technique that means a car windshield doesn't have to be repaired it can be fixed. Thing is, every glass shop has being doing that for decades. Your particular shop won't have good ventilation and days of inhaling the car window repair fumes will give you short term disorientation and long term illness.

You will watch yourself age badly in the customer service area--the fluorescent lights and a few hundred mirrors surrounding you allow for a daily self-analysis that simply depresses you as time takes its toll. Also, inhaling miniscule airborne shards of cut and broken glass for decades can't be good for one's lungs.

Then of course, if you're at all superstitious, is the cumulative 1456 years bad luck you've earned by breaking mirrors. Have fun with that.

Y'all come back now, y'hear?

Hmm--no other choices?

Your Linguistic Profile:

55% General American English

20% Yankee

15% Dixie

5% Midwestern

5% Upper Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

And look at this:

You Passed the US Citizenship Test

Congratulations - you got 9 out of 10 correct!

Could You Pass the US Citizenship Test?

Okay, I guessed on one or two, but still, try it yourself and see how you do. (I'd expect all the H-burg kids to get perfect, being smart and living near the capital and all...)

Poetry by Dythandra

Your Secret Admirer

You shouldn't be surprised; being so very... trusting.
I mean, you left your backpack just sitting there
When you went to the office to get the message.

You didn't understand the message they gave you--
I didn't mean you to--just call the number your "mother" left.
I know what you will hear--and how long it will take.
I worked hard on that recording.

Your mother should have checked in the back of her van
When she and her boss snuck away.
My recording skills are unparalleled,
And I can pick a lock in 20 seconds.

I should care that you were traumatized,
The sounds of her indiscretions captured and revealed.
But I will be there to comfort you eventually...
When I am finished with the last shreds of your confidence.

Your backpack isn't uncommon. I found 20 at Walmart.
I only needed one, and now it magically hangs over your chair
So no one notices my rummaging.

The treasures are considerable; some of the photos I recognize,
and then I cut out their eyes--they don't deserve to look at you.
I hesistate and then I program my number into your phone.
I name it "Destiny". You will understand soon enough.

You should've been more careful at the party last week,
Unattended drinks are so very inviting.
How beautifully you slept.

So very peaceful--the vial of blood around my neck,
Liberated as you dreamt.
Have you even missed the lock of hair?
My cousin's barbie wears it so well, hanging over my bed.

Now it's back--your belongings safely stowed,
My decoy again beneath my desk.
It's too bad just as you return to class,
Wiping the tears from your eyes,
The Vice Principal will suddenly appear.

How will you explain, the bag, its contents?
Surely there's too much there for personal use.
You must be a dealer--it's so very simple.

Don't be afraid--the contact number for your mother
Now rings my cell.
Trust me, my love.
Soon you will understand. Everything.

The Cynical Career Counsellor Predicts Your Future as a

Financial Planner

Investments? Let's see your transcript. Hmm... it's pretty clear you aren't going to be getting an honors degree in economics, but I think you'll be able to eventually work in this field. You'll be a financial planner.

You won't do it at first. Like most financial planners, you'll piss away the first eight to ten years after high school taking a variety of different community college courses--none of which lead to anything and most of which you drop before completion--and you'll try your hand at all manner of unskilled and semi-skilled jobs. You may be the guy at the cell-phone kiosk; you get to wear a suit and pretend to be professional, or maybe you'll work as a travel agent. It will be about jobs where you can act like you're white collar without actually having any real academic qualications and where you can fake your way through your day with a mediocre grasp of the fundamentals of your business.

Eventually after you achieve little more than a bad credit rating you'll decide to try yet another comission-based career, and that will begin your foray into the world of financial planning. You'll go to a weekend training seminar and be given a very basic introduction to the field, and then sent home with books and videos which you'll intend to read but never get through. All you will bother to learn is how to pitch the investment products and collect your comissions.

Transglobanationalamericorp Securities and Investments will provide you with glossy brochures with meaningless graphs and then you will enter the lonely world of the "cold call". You will go through your personal phone book and harass every friend and acquaintance you've ever had to let you come and give them a "free no-obligation financial consultation". Only the lonely elderly ones will let you visit; dozing through your prattle about some prospectus that even you don't understand is small price to pay to have someone finally listen to the stories of their latest hip replacement surgeries.

Luckily for you, some of these old folks will actually have money to invest, and you soon realize that soliciting the nearly dead is your best chance for success. After some time you realize that your beater Geo is not a suitable base for operations and you lease a small mall office you can't afford but gives you a more substantive presence in the community. This move begins to widen your client base and soon you can afford to hire a secretary and add a few more suits to your wardrobe.

Unfortunately, there are two pitfalls that destroy most ill-educated financial planners: stock market crashes and corporate crime. One or the other will come eventually, and whether it's an unprecedented downturn in the market that instantly halves the worth of all your clients' investments or simply the sordid tale of some corporate executives who vanish to obscure tropical islands after siphoning off almost all your clients' assets, you will never see it coming until it's too late.

There's a reason that the only people who are described by the adjective "registered" are financial planners and sex offenders. It's because when something awful happens, the lynch mob needs to know where to easily find you. You will have assured your clients that they are protected by the "International Investment Insurance Fund" which you discover too late is merely a phone recording in Nigeria.

You'll be thankful for your office's back door when your secretary informs you that the angry clients have arrived. You escape and get out of town as the unhappy investors have to satisfy themselves with trashing your office and defacing your photograph. Unfortunately you too had tied up most of your savings in the same funds you pushed on your clients, so you have no nest egg with which to finance your flight to Belize.

Your clients never recover most of their money, but they do develop a phone tree to make sure they inform each other when it's your shift at the drive through window and they all are sure to show up with their cups of urine to toss your way in memory of your financial planning career.

Poetry by Dythandra

Suicide Girl

The joke shop's going out of business sale
set the wheels in motion.
It was lovely--a human arm, soft, malleable--
A replica just made for mischief.

I planned the details with careful glee.
My webcam--listed on a creepy site
"Hot girls live" or some such trash
Trolling the net for degenerates.

I hook a few, size them up, throw a few back
I show them nothing, but tell them lots
Stories made up to keep them coming back.

My name? Of course, I say.
I offer them a name to tantalize:
Tiffany Bennington. She comes to mind so easily--
The prototypical cheerleader from down the street.

The Inquisition has nothing on
what my imagination inflicts on her...

The time arrives--I've prepared my watchers well.
"Something special tonight" I promise.
They see my lace and settle in to wait.

Preparation is my strong point.
The bottle of sleeping pills, emptied
Replaced with tic tacs.
And nearby the arm--my treasured find.

I tease them for a while--I know they hope...
But what I offer isn't what they dreamed of
Just a second--"it's showtime," I type.
Then I adjust the camera, down--focusing on "my arm"
The resolution isn't great, and time lapse is my ally.

The creepy pervs are likely halfway there,
When suddenly, the unexpected happens.
I disappear, then my arm, a blade, a cut...
A trail of "blood"

Next the camera shifts back.
I smile thinly,
the bottle opens, my hand extends,
I shake free the "pills" and down them
With a shot of my father's whisky.

"Ta da!" I type.
Then the camera falls
As I slip from chair to floor.
A moment later it ends.
My broadcast fades to black.

My experiment's begun.
Are these voyeurs beyond the pale? Will they?
Dare they? Might they call for help?

Minutes later, my answer comes.

Wake up Tiffany.
I see you have visitors.
Too bad the state finals are tomorrow morning,
You've got a long night ahead.

Poetry by Dythandra

Neighbors

The list is long
My sins, their bleating, my consequences...

The anger simply builds.

It spirals out of control--the house shrew next door
Screeches her antagonism to the one who bore me

"She's out there every afternoon, suntanning without..."

Well, can I help it if her Prince Charming's a perv?
I see him watching me and I just smile and wave.

Of course I'm not really there to tan. SPF 150 for me.
Pale is an investment.

Tonight I'm persona non grata. One step too far, the parentals say.
I guess when I sober up I'll either blush or giggle. Maybe both.

The tequila went down smooth, and the walk home was more a stumble
With a purpose.
I looked at their porch, bleary eyed,
And somehow recalled their weekend trip to the lake.

I'd seen their son--a pretty boy a year my junior--
Take the key from under the rock many times.
In the darkness I found it easily.
The lock was my silent ally, and I drifted inside.

It hadn't just been the tequila tonight, and so
The munchies took my hands, and placed them
on cupboard doors.

I tried a bowl of cereal, but it was dry and I hate milk.
The chips--promising, but salt and vinegar--too bad.
Then I found it--half a cheesecake
The purge will come later.

I eat my prize and wander to the tv room.
There it is--a game cube and my favorite challenge
And soon I'm blasting creatures with abandon.

Too much abandon, and the china vase is toast.

I try to pick up the pieces,
But bending over makes my head swim.

I stumble down a hall, find a bedroom
Posters of Rose McGowan stare at me
Strangely comforting.

An hour later--but a moment in my time
I hear a scream. Too slow I rouse myself
They are upon me.
I play at being confused--
"Why are you in my room?"
They call the gendarmes anyway.

Just before the uniforms lead me home
I hear the shrew calling the alarm company
At least they like me,
That's two new clients this month.

The officers pass me to my mortified parents.
"What's your excuse this time?"
That one knows me too well.

I look up at him and grin.
"I'm Goldilocks, dammit!"
Goldilocks.

Pity the bears.

Poetry by Dythandra

Note: Yes, this was once "Poetry by the Emo Child" but as Alex so accurately pointed out, she's not entirely emo. Another friend creatively assisted me in coming up with the nom de plume for our young poet.

The Hell It's Not Art

"Create" she said.

I looked at her, standing before us, self-assured.
So many before had stood there, in front of me.

Stress leave is often unexpected.

Still, perhaps this one isn't like the others...
She hasn't looked twice at the snakes,
twisting from the eyeballs of the corpse on my shirt

Maybe she'll be the first
Not to call my parents
(Like they'll be surprised)

I go home and begin my quest.
Art for shock's sake--Dali paved the way
And I know what works.

I get my sack and head out to the yard
It's been there, growing more artistic each day
So disrespectful to call it road kill
What once was crow.

Amazing, the power of a backyard composter
And a few of nature's most perfect little critters.

Ooze--my favorite.

I take my little avian pal,
And pile the parts that can be pried away from the ooze
Inside my bag.

Then it's off to my room.

My fine feathered friend
Provides all--the paint, the canvas, and...
Some new little friends who wriggle into my life
When I drop Mr. Crow to the floor.

I won twice with the masterpiece.
A hurried "A" scrawled as she rushed by and out the room,
And her bagged lunch she handed me later.

Somehow she wasn't so very hungry.
I think I will like being an artist.

Let the Hating Begin

I've posted the cast list for my musical on my school web site. There are a number of kids who had substantial speaking roles last year who are chorus this year. I know there's going to be a lot of disappointment among some--those who didn't get in at all and those who got smaller roles than they hoped--and some excitement among those who "won" bigger roles.

As of now, 19 speaking roles and 32 in the chorus. I think there's about 13 in the pit, give or take a couple.

Now if the strike ends soon we can get down to work. I wonder if I should hide my car the first few days back?

and still more

...of our silliness here:

http://www.oakbaytourism.com/palmtrees/palmtree.htm

Yes, my children. Palm trees.

It confuses the eskimos all to heck.

:-)

Uh yeah, about the climate

Methinks from the comments on my last post that it's time to clear up a few misconceptions.

According to this page, the climate of Harrisonburg gives temperatures something like this:

January average high: 40 degrees F
January daily low: 20 degrees F

It also gives average precipitation around 3 inches per month which would give about 36 inches per year.


My city, here in "frozen Canada", from this site.

January average high: 44.6 degrees F
January average low: 37.4 degrees F

We get an average of 3.7 inches of rain in the month of January and it drops to a half inch in July--averaging out probably to around the same as your rainfall, although by the university it's under 30 inches and out towards Sooke--which is an hour out of town to the west, it is more like 50 or 60 inches.

I can guarantee you get more snow than us, although I haven't looked it up. Snow is rare here. We just don't get as hot in the summer--July 2004 we hit 96 but that's very rare.

How can you stand it?

;-)

The Kid Who Sits Behind You Explains

The Lottery by Shirley Jackson

So this story's all about some hicksville fair and there's this woman who's there with her family and it's all small town crap like when I go to stay with my cousin at his farm and his family makes me go to the 4H fair and like I'm supposed to be all happy 'cause on account of I get a candy apple and to ride on some lameass ferris wheel. Plus all the decent looking chicks are like already engaged on account of they get married the day they graduate from high school.

Anyway, this fair has some sort of big lottery and I'm thinking it's for some pie or something but this chick in the story she's all not wanting to win, which I think is kind of generous of her and all, but then her family gets picked and she wants her kids to win and stuff and I'm thinking nice mom but then... Wh0a!

This lottery kind of sucks--and I don't mean like that draw we had in grade 7 to ride in the cop car with officer "needs some deodorant" sucked, but it really sucks. I guess it would be kinda wrong to tell you how it all ends because then you won't even bother reading the story.

But whoa--I've been stoned at a fair before and all, but this... I mean, it was a rock concert, dude, but there ain't no headliner.

I wonder if that's too big a hint. Oh well, you ain't gonna read it anyway, or you wouldn't be botherin' with this.

Thoughts that flit into my head for a moment

First of all, in addition to the crap Kate went through in that recent post on the way home from the concert that never was she was driving her dad's new car on the interstate and a tire blew out on her--could've been very bad news indeed. Oh, and I forgot to mention the uncertainty about where she will live if her dad's job moves since his workplace was destroyed?

Send her hugs.

I've updated my photobuckets a bit, and am in process of updating them more. If you already have the addresses and password, feel free to stop by and if you don't, and want to see them, just email me and I'll send you the info.

Heavy and/or tough things happening in a variety of friends' lives right now, but I can't go into details entirely here--here's hoping this doesn't become Fall 2004, part 2.

I was a bit relieved not to be asked specifics about some of my examples by the parents of my English students on last Thursday night's open house. For instance, I was explaining the difference between "count nouns" and "non-count nouns" and how you can say there are "fewer" students in the class but in order to say there are "less" students you'd have to put them in a big blender and liquify them first...

Yeah, I got a few looks. Yes, I'm strange.

We had Vicki Gabereau as our guest speaker this afternoon. (I'm not sure if that's the right spelling of her name.) It's an odd phenomenon this "speakers' bureau" approach to professional development activities. Other groups she's spoken to recently include both a neurosurgeon's convention and a nurse's conference. She's somewhat of a minor celebrity as a journalist/talk show host for many years, and I must admit, she's an entertaining and engaging speaker. Truthfully, though--nothing we did today really was more valuable than simply getting some marking and planning done would have been.

Yesterday, we took my inlaws up to this year's "dream home" being raffled off as part of the big annual cancer society lottery. Quite a crowd going through, and as always, it looks nice but there's so much impracticality about it. Here are a few pics:

Waiting for the anvil to drop next

So here's Kate's situation at the moment:

Hurricane rips roof off building where she lives--when able to move back to her town with suitable services restored, she'll have to move into a different place.

Her senior year of high school is completely messed up and vacations will be reduced to make up for the lost month of September.

Becomes very... fond of new friend staying together at her mom's--friend is supposed to go to Coldplay concert with her tonight--last minute bailout.

Was supposed to fly to the concert--No New Orleans to fly out of, so it's the long drive to Alabama .

At least she has the concert to help her escape things for a few hours. Oh wait--now she's in Alabama for the concert tonight and she finds that Chris Martin is sick and THE CONCERT HAS BEEN CANCELLED.

Those of you who read and comment on her blog occasionally--Jatue, B.G.--go visit and drop a note of encouragement. I feel so sorry for her for all thic crap right now.

The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Future as a

Writer

Oh—you’re the kid who won that story contest a while back. Yeah, I guess I could tell you about being a writer if you want a good hobby for when… what? You want to make a living at it? Okay, then that’s different…

You’ll head off to college after high school and do the general first year or two in the Arts faculty, and then when you get a chance you’ll apply to the writing coop or English honors program. Either way, you'll have to show some college writing teachers what you’ve got to offer. Don’t be surprised if they’re not gushing over anything you do. You see, most writing instructors are simply frustrated writers—if they had their preference, they’d be writing too, but they can’t make a living at it so they toil in academia where they have come to the conclusion that no one actually will succeed in the profession that has been so fickle to them.

In spite of their lack of support, you begin to develop your own unique style—well, not exactly unique—face it, there are so many writers out there all you can hope is that you’re not so very obvious when you mimic Hemingway or imitate Sylvia Plath. While you are struggling to please your professors, you also begin sending off short works to various magazines, and begin working on what you come to describe as your “major opus”—a work so dear to your heart that you begin celebrating its birthday and think of it as family.

In your senior year in college you take up with another young writer—you’ve been pretentiously ambiguous about your sexuality for a couple of years but you decide to settle on this dark young poet who writes his most edgy works while recovering from his all too common three-day drunken benders. You keep his printer in ink, make him breakfast and ensure the world doesn’t bother him when he’s writing. You try not to look hurt when he refuses to show you his work, and you manage not to cry when he mocks the few things you show him. One night he even goads you into burning your "baby". You plan to leave him countless times but every time he’s on his tenth martini and slurs that you’re his “muse”, you succumb to your codependent tendencies and unpack your bags.

Money is tight when the two of you move in together after graduating with worthless bachelors’ degrees so you take a job as a phone harasser for a loans collection agency while he continues to drink and occasionally write. After you receive an eviction notice because he spent your rent money on a beer bong and a party while you were out of town one weekend you decide you’ve had enough. You sneak out while he’s asleep and rent a small apartment across town. You decide to forget your writing dream and enroll in a graduate business program. It’s deadly dull, but at least you feel there’s some money at the end of this obstacle course.

Meanwhile, only a few weeks after you leave your ex is suddenly discovered as a “bright new literary star”, which simply means that he had the good fortune to step into traffic and be hit by Oprah’s chauffeur. Fearing a lawsuit, Oprah befriends him and puts his poetry anthology “Blood in my Urine” on her monthly book club recommended list. Soon your old boyfriend is being feted by pretentious semiliterates throughout the English-speaking world, while you write insincere papers for soulless business professors. It shocks you when your suddenly successful ex calls you and invites you for dinner. He had hired a private investigator to unravel the mystery of your sudden disappearance, and once he has found you, he immediately proposes.

Your heart overrules your doubts and you say yes. Within a few days you’ve once again moved in together and you’re suddenly sharing the fruits of his newfound wealth. He boasts of his six-month long sobriety to you, but within another month the two of you are screaming at each other daily and you realize sadly that it was the drunk you fell in love with, and his sober self is a tiresome bore. You resolve to leave one night when he’s in the middle of a rant about your many shortcomings when suddenly he stops, clutches his chest and then falls to the floor, dead.

The outpouring of grief by his admiring public is intense but shortlived. As you are cleaning out his den a few weeks later, you discover some unpublished poems and take them to his publisher. Soon you’re collecting royalties for the posthumous anthology and you realize that there’s still some money left in his reputation. You quietly begin writing bogus poetry you attribute to him—long hours of listening to his cynical diatribes have made you uniquely qualified to counterfeit his work.

It’s only when you get even greedier and recycle some of your old work from college that an old teaching assistant from your former university blows the whistle on you and your lucrative income vanishes instantly. Because you were unprepared for it, you had no chance to save, and before long you’re desperate for cash. Unfortunately the writing bug has returned to you full force and you cannot bring yourself to return to the mundane demands of any other career. Still, your work is hardly of a caliber to attract attention in the right circles, and before long you are forced to turn to writing pornography—a 150 page predictable piece of trash pays a few hundred dollars, and your prose is a slight cut above the tripe most of your fellow pornographers produce.

If you’re lucky, one day you’ll get a chance to write a screenplay for one of your novels. I doubt it will be difficult.

grrrrr...

So the travel company--I won't name them since they're huge and then I'd end up getting traffic I didn't want right now--who's doing our New York trip today tells me when I PHONE THEM that there's a problem since there's no other group to pair us with when we plan to go. Yes, we're not a huge group, but I was never told that would be a problem--there are 14 of us travelling all together. Anyway, the choices that her company seems to be giving us are

a) go during the spring, say March. NO THAT WON'T WORK WE HAVE KIDS ON BAND TRIPS AND THAT'S WHEN OUR SHOW IS.

b) cancel the trip outright and they'll refund our money. LOVELY--MY FIRST BIG TRIP AND IT FLOPS; WON'T THAT MAKE EVERYONE WHO'S LOOKING FORWARD TO IT HAPPY.

c) do it as a "private" tour, which means we add an amount per person to do that--she suggested $150 per person. RIGHT--HEY FOLKS, JUST THOUGHT I'D TELL YOU WE NEED MORE MONEY FROM ALL OF YOU WITHOUT WARNING--YOU'RE OKAY WITH THAT, RIGHT?

Sorry--I hate capitalization yelling, but this is crap. I told her to work really hard on that number for the private trip and get back to me. I'm not happy. If I wasn't already paying the 99 bucks per for everyone's comprehensive travel insurance package and doing the subsidies for all my program kids, it might be easily done. As it is, when I catch my breath and think about it, I know I can probably pull it off.

It just cuts into money that should be there for other things.

It's also too late to switch tour companies, as has already been suggested to me, and arranging a tour ourself at this late date isn't possible for the price per person we'd have to work with.

The company isn't some little mickey mouse one--it's the same one that did Kate's school trip to Germany a few months ago. I wonder how long it would've taken for them to spring this on me if I hadn't phoned today?

*sigh*

The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Future as a

Tourist Trap Operator

Hi kid--Your family has that dollar store in the strip mall, right? Did you know your toothpaste tastes like soap? So what do you want to... Oh, hmm--well, I can see the connection I guess, since tourists are good at paying for absolute crap merchandise if you market it right. It will go something like this:

You'll move to some small town, preferably located near a beach, mountains or hot springs--or any other kind of natural phenomenon that can be marketed. Remember, that stink from the hot springs is "therapeutic" rather than toxic.

You'll buy or build a small retail outlet near the center of town. You won't rent because you don't want someone evicting you and stealing your idea if you become a success. Besides, with the ingenuity you and the other members of the local chamber of commerce will bring to the task of creating a tourism destination you figure the property will be a good investment.

It won't be easy at first--the locals are an odd bunch, probably due to the small gene pool created by years of inbreeding--but eventually you figure out the only way into their trust and you marry a local girl. Fortunately her six toes are from a recessive gene and your two girls seem comfortingly normal.

The hot springs aren't enough to make the town boom, you figure out, so you bring a brainstorm to the city council and convince them the town needs a mythological creature to pull in the crowds and market souvenir merchandise. You propose "Mort the Giant Rat", which seems original to anyone who doesn't know your kids' propensity for watching "The Princess Bride" five nights a week. The council agrees--although some wonder about the repulsiveness of the creature until you share a portfolio of Mort charicatures you had done by a local artist--he's almost cuddly in the poses with a variety of local merchanise and produce.

Still, the goal is to create interest, so while the marketing version of Mort is friendly, you simultaneously develop a ficticious folklore about giant rats who inhabited the murky past of your small community. Soon cryptozoologists are among the hundreds who flock to wander the back trails in search of the legendary "rodentia gigantisimus" as you and your colleagues dub it. The growth of the town continues, and although some items, like the local eatery's "ratburgers" don't sell well, most find the tourist trade increasingly lucrative.

Of course, there is still the offseason. The winter months are grey and depressing, and your girls join the local children who wander the empty streets seeking distraction. Since the local police maintain their manpower year-round, all they have to do in the offseason is hunt for drugs and confiscate alcohol from teens. In despair local youth turn to glue and gasoline for their highs, and soon you're among the many parents who ship their kids off to boarding school to save them from tragedy.

By the following season you've added a new attraction--a local craftsman, related like most to your wife, builds you a giant rat trap which you locate at the front of your property, even though you dipped into the town treasury to pay for it. Some other merchants are angry at first, but you assuage them by having giant yellow rat prints painted on the town boardwalk and have the tracks enter those businesses who contribute to your campaign to become mayor. When you win you get to sit in a convertible at the front of the "rat race", the annual parade which kicks off the weeklong "Plague Festival". It's going so well you buy up property outside town you can't really afford and begin building a resort which will stretch your budget to the breaking point.

Unfortunately, at about that time an unlucky tourist will trigger the rat trap in front of your store--you hadn't realized your dimwitted cousin-in-law would make it a functioning device--and the result is one man dead, a couple both paralyzed for life, and a busload of children in need of months of trauma counselling. The town becomes even more crowded with tabloid news crews for a few days, and then the downturn begins. Locals blame you for the destruction of the tourist trade, and soon only a few ghouls come to look at the site of the tragedy, and even the hot springs can't escape the malaise that hangs over the town.

You declare bankruptcy after first alienating your wife and all of her relatives by trying to sue her cousin for his deadly mousetrap construction. He has no assets and leaves town and you are financially destroyed by the first few lawsuits to get to court.

Your daughters are forced to return home and when your wife leaves you they join her. Her relatives give her a portion of the moonshine revenue to start a new life as a maid in a large Las Vegas hotel and casino. She and your daughters stop writing you after six months, and you hear nothing for two years from them as you drink most of the little money you are able to glean from the occasional visitor. You become more and more isolated from the villagers who hate you and have to pay a local ne'er do well to buy groceries for you so you needn't mix with people who'd rather spit on you than serve you.

After a lively night of heavy drinking, the patrons of a local pub head to your home with torches, while you read a letter you received from your ex-wife earlier in the day--apparently your daughters are ironically both serving the needs of tourists in ways that are only legal in Nevada. You don't notice the crowd outside until the molotov cocktails come crashing through your windows.

The next year the locals concoct a story about how you were in league with the devil and you and your home spontaneously combusted. They have their most profitable summer in a decade, and they become nostalgic enough about your good years that within a few months practically no one urinates on your grave any more.

A Link Blog

This morning I drove my niece into town to stay with my wife's sister and her family tonight. Tomorrow afternoon I pick her up and take her to the airport and she heads to go live with her family for a few months before heading off to India after Christmas where she'll be volunteering in an orphanage for a year. I got to work and had to put away all my theatre seats before first block--fortunately Marcela stopped by and have me a hand. and had a nice Drama 9 class, and then in my spare had a much needed chat with R, who once again has the sacred keys to the theatre/booth and we went on our first Starbucks run of the new school year.

I enjoyed talking yesterday on the phone to Kate for the first time. She needs not be so touchy about cracker jokes though. Today I received the paperwork to make Bay one of my T.A.'s for this semester. At lunch, Milly was putting masking tape on people's backs and writing messages on them. She put one on my back that said something like "this beard needs shaving". The funny part was that after lunch I forgot about the tape and I went to my afternoon grade 9 English class with it still stuck on my back, where I am sure my students saw it every time I turned to write on the whiteboard and thought "what a loser".

When I got home I had a chance to chat with my friend sshhh, who works here. Then my daughter got home from her appointment to have her cast removed, and we discovered, as my wife had suspected a month ago when she got the cast on, that the bones hadn't quite been aligned and so the healing is going slowly and she has now got a "splint" half cast, which really disappointed her--crying time--so I promised her a trip to her favorite restaurant, and we even let her order one of the "expensive kid's drinks" instead of just the regular pop.

My wife wasn't suprised since the cast was put on in Powell River, where my wife, who is a nurse, has always been less than impressed by the quality of the health care she's heard about from my parents or seen firsthand on the occasions we've needed to use it up there. So now it looks like two more weeks of cast for the kid who had hoped to come home and jump in the pool that I rushed home from work to prepare.

Later, after supper, I talked to Katie on msn for the first time. While we were talking I noticed I had received an email from the recently invisible Camila, who briefly informed me of the main reason for her invisibility. Ahh, gossip from the eastern time zone...

Sorry if I didn't include some of you--this kind of post is more work than usual...

Participant list...

for the Delurking Day in support of Hurricane Katrina victims is at Ella's blog.

Go. Read. Comment. Cost us money. Donate yourself.

j.


I should give something for people to read, I just decided, so for those of you wandering to this blog just to say hi today, you can have a look at these old posts:

A poem by the "Emo Child" (though Alex rightly points out she sounds more goth than emo)

Ilsa the Costco Girl

The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Future as an Art Critic

The Kid Who Sits Behind You Explains "Romeo and Juliet"

Let's give them something to talk about

Sorry--cheesy title for a serious entry.

I figure if I'm doing the delurking day thing tomorrow (see below) then I'd best get some topics out there for commenting. BTW, I get an alert like many of you for each comment added anywhere on my blog, so you can go comment on something from last January and I'll still count it.

First, I'm barely able to tear myself away from the coverage of the disaster on the various news outlets--it's hard to even comprehend the level of this. Rampant snipers, corpses floating by, people dying in their homes with no one to rescue them, hospitals moving everyone to the upper floors to protect them from looters and chaos, and finally the military showing up several days late.

Oh, and on one station a commentator pointing out that 40% or more of the national guard members who'd be around for this sort of thing are instead in Iraq, and then asking what would happen if now there was a major terrorist incident or an earthquake in southern california. He followed that with bringing up the renewed push for a return of the draft...

Had a few good chats with Kate since she got back online. She's still at her mom's in B.R. and they've got another family of N.O. refugees staying there at the moment. School back in Mandeville is apparently scheduled to restart in early October. Lots of uncertainty--her dad's place of employment was located right near where the levee broke so it doesn't exist as a building anymore. They're also looking at having to move homes now, due to hurricane damage as well.

Here in my household we've begun once more discussing the need for better emergency supplies on hand--I wonder how many of you have such? K. can correct me but I seem to recall years ago when I boarded in the basement suite of an LDS family that they were supposed to keep two months supply of goods on hand--whether that was a local practice or a church teaching I don't know.

Back almost a decade ago when we had the freakish snowstorm that paralyzed this city--bodies were left in houses where people died for several days because no help could get through, etc.--we realized how much having a good relationship with neighbors can help. Our little cul-de-sac of 11 houses all pulled together to clear the street and look after the elderly residents--trudging on foot to the one grocery store we knew was open.

We also discovered that when the electricity and cable were on, television was useless--locally they just ran regular programming and didn't seem to acknowledge the problem. Meanwhile, one local radio station essentially ran the town for a week. It was that station who alerted people that an elderly person's roof needed shovelling off or it was in danger of collapse--a bunch of roofs did in fact collapse--or that a dialysis patient desperately needed a snowmobile ride to the hospital.

That's another tragic part of the crisis in the hurricane's aftermath--the poor who have survived but who need dialysis or insulin and can't get it in the chaos that exists right now.

Question for Ella--if a disaster on a large scale happened where you work and live, would you be the one sitting there with a shotgun protecting the inventory, or would you walk away and leave the door unlocked as you go?

Then there's the debate about our role as teachers if the big earthquake comes here while school is in session--how many of us must stay and how long? What about our own families and finding our kids?

Lots to think about right now.

If you wish to donate, there are lots of pages and locations but I'll just pass along a link page on the CNN site:
http://edition.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2005/katrina/help.center/

I start counting at midnight tonight.

Delurking day to support hurricane victims

For everyone who comments on Saturday I'll be donating a dollar to the Red Cross to assist the victims of Hurricane Katrina. (No, Kate, I won't just turn it into a starbucks card for you.) Seriously, though--it's a great cause and if you want to participate or know more, go read about the idea on Ella's blog.

Do it.

(Oh, and for you bright sparks who think you can make 700 comments that day--it's sadly one per customer.)

J.

For those of you who read Kate's blog

like Rach, Jatue, B.G. and any others...

I got a text message on my cell phone from her about 90 minutes ago. She says her stuff is apparently okay but many of her friends are not so lucky. There is no electricity. I doubt she'll be updating anytime soon.

I've tried phoning back to the number she gave me 3 times but "all circuits are busy" which is understandable considering the magnitude of what's happened down there.

The most important thing is she's okay.

J.

so brutal

I was looking at the pics this morning on the NY Times website of the New Orleans area. It's scary--places with 20 feet of water, 80% of the city flooded--and significant loss of life.

I can't really imagine what Kate and everyone else is going to be going home to. Over two million people are without electricity so I doubt we'll hear soon, either.

The Kid Who Sits Behind You Explains

Just Lather, That's All

So this is a short story and not some stupid long novel so I already like finished the whole thing and I still had time to play warcraft and go outside and smoke up.

The story's about this barber who's some kind of 'rebel' which probably means he wore a leather jacket and stuff (cause on account of this was written back in the day but in spanish my teacher said but I bet they still had kickass cars and drag races and stuff) and anyway, this barber's just minding his own business and then this Captain Torres guy comes in.

The barber freaks out, on account of I think this was back in the day when there was some lamewad music group called the "The Captain and Ten Eels" so this captain was really some celebrity. Anyway the barber was all nervous since he had to shave this captain guy (and if he's like all those sea captains in the cartoons and stuff he's probably got some big gross tangly beard) and he was afraid he'd cut this guy and then the captain's posse would hang him or something.

Oh, and he got really sweaty, which was kinda gross.

The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Future as a

Fast Food Manager

So, you want to be "lovin' it" for the next four decades or so, kid? You're the one who always looks so happy there in the drive thru... oh, really? Well, your parents will stop weeping about this idea in a month or two--after all, they've got to be proud of that older sister of yours. Feature dancer at the downtown show bar... Tell her that it's embarassing when she waves to her old teachers from onstage, er--I mean, the shop teachers told me she does that sometimes; I wouldn't know myself.

Anyway--back to your future managing the golden arches. First of all, they'll probably test your IQ and your personality to make sure you're smart and ambitious enough to staff the restaurant and do the promotional stuff, but not so gifted as to want to put a gun in your mouth after a couple years. No doubt you'll work your way up locally as first a shift manager, and then assistant, and then one day it will be your turn to don the golden name tag.

Don't expect it to be easy. Once you're past 20, girls don't see dating someone like you as a great catch--you might understand there's good things ahead if you're loyal to the corporation, but they see you as a loser they'd be ashamed to bring to a thanksgiving dinner and have sit at a table with their sister's husbands who all have more impressive careers.

Ironically, at the same time as you strike out at the bar every time they ask you what you do for a living, you'll have 16 year old girls offering you 5 minutes of paradise in the stock room for a pathetic promotion to the drive-thru window, so you'll have to be careful to cover your backside, since even if you behave, the rejected ones can still say something happened. To be safe you'll put the guy who's been there longest on the window job--with only his pathetic dreams of rock stardom to hold onto, it's already clear to all the other staff that he's a "lifer". Still, even though you duck the sexual harassment complaint by that little maneuver, you'll still end up in the headlines when it turns out mister rock star is dealing drugs to the cars that pull up each night.

Head office cringes at the bad publicity and quickly gets you out of town--you're given the management responsibilities for a new outlet in a small town a couple hundred miles away. It wouldn't be big enough to have a franchise if it weren't for all the traffic that goes through on the main highway through the center of town. You get to hire the entire staff, which is harder than back in the city since there's a much smaller pool of candidates, but soon you've got a full crew, even if there's a number of sibling teams who bicker constantly until you figure out not to schedule their shifts together.

The small town realities hit you quickly. You realize after the fiasco at your last restaurant that you have to make this one work, but there's some resistance in town--especially from "Mom and Pop's", the local cafe that's been in operation for almost 20 years. Some people make it almost a moral issue to patronize the older establishment and boycott yours, seeing as you represent all that is evil with corporate globalization. Nonetheless, some of those same people have no problem coming to you with cap in hand every time some charity or team needs sponsoring--they expect you to have the bottomless pockets of a huge multinational corporation, and think you mean and stingy when you have to turn some of them away.

It gets even more uncomfortable when "Mom and Pop's" daughter is sent to the city, ostensibly for treatment for a serious eating disorder. They make no secret of the fact that the treatment is expensive and their income reduced with the arrival of your fast food place. You can't avoid contributing substantially to her treatment fund, even though you receive little or no credit for doing so.

A few months later you're visiting relatives back in the city and you find out your niece rooms in the same dorm with the "poor anorexic", and she laughs at your questions about the girl's condition. Apparently the whole thing was a scam and the girl has used the "treatment money" to buy a car. Still, you realize you'd best not say anything back in town, and you bite your tongue every time some old dear prattles on about "that poor girl".

It's only a few months later when "Mom" is apparently diagnosed with some mysterious tumor, and she also is the recipient of local business largesse, and once again you're hit for a major contribution. Your niece tells you the mother had a nice visit in the city, using that cash to take all the dorm girls out for an expensive dinner, and showing them her purchases from a couple of days' shopping at a variety of exclusive shops.

This time you've had enough, and when "Pop" comes around with a group from the local chamber of commerce collecting for a scholarship for his "dyslexic" son, you explode, and scream forth all your accusations, only to find yourself punched by a local town councilman who calls you a variety of disgusting names, and then leads the group to the local newspaper where an exposé on your wicked heartlessness is quickly added to the front page of the next day's edition.

Within days parents have forced most of your employees to quit, and the head office damage control team shows up and gives you a choice--quit outright and forget about the pension you've been depending on, or take a transfer to Beirut, which they assure you is much more peaceful than it used to be.

You think about it for a while and realize you have no marketable skills and no money to go to college, so you accept the offer. You work well as the second in command at the Beirut outlet until you are mistakenly kidnapped by terrorists--you look strikingly like the Belgian ambassador--and they kill you in disgust when they discover their error.

Your pension is sent back to the small town you fled and dumped into yet another fund to help pay for Mom and Pop's irish setter's treatment for canine depression. Nobody notices.

State your quest

The weekend thus far:

Friday was nice--the kidlets did an overnight at the inlaws and Judy and I went out for supper downtown. Moxie's for those who know Victoria, seems to have a hiring policy that goes something like this--"you must be good looking enough to be on a magazine cover to wait tables here". My wife and I both noticed this to be true of both the guys and the girls working at least that night. Nice to know that the staffing policies of The Keg from my university days still live on, at least at that restaurant.

Then we wandered downtown and ended up at the tourist trap gelato place where R. is now working--poor kid, she's worked about 30 hours this weekend or something insane. Anyway, it was nice to see her there and take a pic of her in her "uniform". I don't know that my credit rating would allow me to patronize that place too often though. Crazy expensive, but I guess the tourists just off the boat can be assured it's merely the "exchange rate" at work.

Yesterday we had a nice barbecue at my wife's sister's place, and her husband and I were in the liquor store when I discovered this to my great delight:




I'll let you know how it tastes. I really just wanted the bottle, anway.

The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Future As A

Tour Guide

Oh, I know you--you're that foreign languages club kid. How many you speak now, anyway? Oh--well, German could be valuable, I guess. You taking anything special course wise this year? Tourism, eh? Great program that--preparing kids for the minimum wage careers of the future. So--a career in tourism? How 'bout you try travel agent? Yeah, I guess, but office work ain't so terrible... all right then, tour guide it is.

So, you'll get on the local tourist runs--seasonal work, low pay, occasional tips. In return, you'll deal with the idiosyncracies of weirdos from all nations. You can't help but make mistakes too, using the wrong word for something and offending an entire busload of people by accident, but still, at least you'll get to know the three or four bus drivers who become your regular companions driving around the same tired tourist traps for four or five months a year. Naturally, since you speak German, you'll get those groups most, and you'll begin to develop some strange suspicions--you walk off the bus for a moment and get back to overhear the words "fourth reich" muttered in clipped Prussian accents and then they all look shifty and change the subject when they see you to something more innocuous.

If it only happened once or twice, you'd ignore it, but it happens over and over, and you get a little worried when you hear too many of them humming songs you recognize from archival footage of rallies at the Brandenburg Gate during the late 1930s. Finally you decide something is up--perhaps these bus trips are some sort of front for neo-nazi plotting, and you report your suspicions to your supervisor. He looks at you incredulously, and recommends stress leave. You realize his last name is Von Braun, and decide he's in on it--so you go to the government, to tip them off about the plot.

Eventually you get a little "holiday" in a psychiatric respite center, and it's only when one of your fellow employees feels guilty and sends you an anonymous letter that you clue into the fact that each time you stepped off the bus your "friends" the bus drivers clued the passengers in to a little "let's freak out the tour guide" game they enjoyed playing so much. Seems they figured with their air brakes tickets they shouldn't be making 50 cents an hour less than you.

You are released from the psych ward, and you abandon local tour work to take a job with a group that tours elderly north americans through europe. Of course, the tours are not sightseeing as much as endurance, since one really can't "do" seven countries very well in ten days, and you're forever having to go out hunting for the one or two old dears who get lost and haven't made it back to the bus. Plus, the air conditioning invariably dies just as you hit the hottest part of your trip, and I won't even begin to describe the repulsiveness of the "biffy" at the back of the bus--you do your best to dissuade your charges from ever using it, but they're old and stubborn, and along with the broken air conditioner that disfunctional bus accessory also makes the trips even more hellish.

Every so often one of the groups includes a younger man--perhaps the child of one of the elderly tour members--and the ancient busybodies make it their business to matchmake you, thereby guaranteeing that no romance will ever develop. Pushy local bus drivers hit on you regularly as well, but you know they're just after a quick fling or a chance at getting out of their country's hellish economic situation by following you back to the land of the free.

Still, despite all this, you fall for one driver--Pedro--four years into the monotony of the job. He seems different--he's cute, he listens and he seems to care. You fall into a romance almost without realizing it, and actually begin to feel the unfamiliar sensation of happiness. You don't even notice the tour company supervisor sitting near the front of the bus when you step up from the Roman street to plant a kiss on Pedro's cheek, and squeeze his shoulder. His pulling away and yelling seem strange, and then he immediately files a complaint to the already disapproving supervisor sitting nearby. You are fired and sent home immediately.

Not to worry, though--there are plenty of souvenir shops or whale-watching ticket booths around. There's always lots of low-paying deadend part-time seasonal tourism jobs for someone with your training and skills. Plus you'll be familiar enough with the youth hostel system that you'll be able to negotiate a monthly rent for your accomodations--which is good, because it's all you'll ever be able to afford.

And you'll still have enough left for an adequate supply of kraft dinner and lice shampoo as well.

Guten tag.

The other 44 Career Counsellor posts can be found here.

Poetry by the Emo Child

Parentals

Dear, would you mind coming down to dinner?
Mortal food pleases me not, mother

I sit and contemplate my surroundings
Too middle class, too white, too suburban.
My room should have stalactites
And stalagmites,
Chewing intruders.

Honey, how come you never bring any boys to the house ?
Do you really want to hear the answer to that?

How about something angstful and easy...
The boys at my school are stupid
I'm not really as popular as the cheerleader sluts
I'm saving myself for...
No not even I can say that with a straight face
And that's what you want, isn't it mother...
A "straight" face.

I see you wondering as you timidly tiptoe into my room
Glancing at things you cannot begin to comprehend

So much.... black, really dear--doesn't it depress you?
You continued breathing depresses me, mater dearest
But I can't change that... just yet.

I see those books you bring home from the library
"How to Talk to Your Troubled Teen"
I peruse it them while you sleep.
My responses are more disturbing
When I script them first.

Please sweetheart, wouldn't you prefer a tidy room?
Fire is the ultimate cleanser, mother.

Maybe your father can talk some sense into you...

He can't even make eye contact
Maybe he's noticed his liquor decanters
Are slowly filling with water.

Or maybe...

I found his secret stash of porn--old school, VHS.
I did a little editing...
Videos of my birthdays, preschool graduations, and such
In place of the money shots.
I wonder if he's noticed?

I think it's time
For a bigger allowance.

The Kid Who Sits Behind You Explains

The Plague - by Albert Camus

This book is like some dental hygiene thing, I think. See, there's this place called "Oran" which is like some town in Africa which totally sounds like the name of a toothbrush, and everybody's just ignoring these rats that are croaking all over the place because they've got "the plague", which I think is that gross stuff that gets on your teeth and they give you those red pills to chew and it's all "look you've got plague on your teeth" but my friend Jake says that it's called "plaque".

No way Jake--that's what they call those boy scout things up on my wall that my mom won't let me take down because she said they'll remind me that I "still had potential to make something of your life". Right. I quit that lameass club cause on account of one day my grandpa was over and he was kinda loaded and he took me aside after I came home from scouts and he said "What the hell is this sissy outfit" and something about how scouts is filled with perverts and stuff and so I quit cause that old man rocks when he ain't going on forever about some stupid car he had back in 1950 something.

Anyway, I don't quite get how the rats get bad teeth and all, but they start showing up dead all over town and the people just igore them cause they want to party and not brush their teeth. And then it's too late and they all start dying from this "bubonic plague" which is like when your gums get so infected your whole body is like one giant cavity with tooth decay coming out your armpits and it's hella disgusting.

Then the book goes on forever about nothing, really, ceptin' how this priest is all "God wants us to learn from this" and this doctor who's all "yeah right" and this reporter dude who pays some guys so sneak him out of town and ain't even pissed when they don't and a bunch of people are dead and then the plague ends and people are kind of happy when they see some rats again.

I guess they kinda missed the rats. I gotta go brush my teeth now.