Next!

Next week I move back into the director's chair, with a full five-day week of after-school auditions--about 90 audition spots and all are filled and now there's a waiting list.

The stress is building for kids--with a smaller pit band some who before played now think of trying out for the cast, and others who worked in the crew also think they'd like to get on stage for their senior year show.

One 11th grader today told me of her dream where I announced audition results by handing out different coloured jello--apparently in the dream I gave her a red jello, which meant success, but then realized my mistake and took it back and handed her the dreaded blue variety.

What would Freud say?

Search terms of late

First of all, I'm wondering if blogger is dying. Most of the blogs I was reading regularly are dead. My counter says hardly anyone reads this any more.

I blame facebook. Before, you had blogs that you occasionally visited like you might sip a nice glass of wine at the end of the day. Then the facebook truck backs up and drops off 20 jugs of cheap crappy wine in your driveway, and you drag it in and think--I'll just have a taste.

It isn't really very satisfying, but it's so damn--everywhere. People are using their cellphones to check it 'cause they can't wait for after the bus ride to get on their computers. What do they find? Oooh--somebody added a picture! With blogger sometimes people wrote interesting and even insightful commentary. Commentary on facebook is "Wow--you look really stoned in that picture". (but there'd be some misspellings and the occasional "lol")

Meanwhile, you can't be bothered to restock your wine cellar and nobody else is either.

Enough of the bleating. Here are my "top five searches that brought people to this blog recently":

5. is Costco owned by the Red Army?
4. "blouses with snaps"
3. Strippercize victoria
2. "refuse alcohol treatment"
1. "preserved husband"

Top five (again--"top" just means I like them) searches that brought people to the Cynical Career Counselor site:

5. why are purple doors illegal in ontario
4. strippercize st louis
3. sexy aircraft mechanic jokes
2. will shriners cover the cost of braces for the teeth
1. phrases for your korean hairstylist

At least Nanowrimo is coming soon so I'll get my writing fix there and not worry about the cobwebs up here in the blogger attic.

Red Sky at Morning...

We've been spoiled. It figures the year school starts the earliest that we'd have three solid weeks of sunshine, temperatures in 70s or even 80s each day. It's been nice--last night walking out of the grocery store with my dad into a full-moon lit evening and he commented on how warm it felt outside compared to the air-conditioned supermarket--more a July kind of experience.

The new school year is already hectic, and yesterday's news brought this story, which I predicted would happen last spring when we were discussing this year's ban on junk food throughout all the schools in the province:

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2008/09/16/bc-junk-food-trade.html?ref=rss

Not something that would be as profitable at my school as we have all kinds of stores and fast food places very close by. Still, for schools like those north of the city, surrounded by farmland, this is probably going to be an ongoing problem.

Most people I know think it's a well-intentioned but rather foolish bit of interference with basic rights.

Meanwhile, the Cops for Cancer headshave can't happen fast enough for me. I decided to forego my end of August haircut since I'd just be going bald by the first week of October anyway, but this mop on my head is driving me nuts. Plus, our organizer has added a new wrinkle; the men on staff are all growing beards up until the event, and I guess these will be gone that day as well.

I feel like I should be in some 70s wilderness movie...

Poetry by Dythandra

The Road Less Traveled

Collegial aspirations
Never burned within me
So why are they surprised
To find I have spurned
The fall migration to hallowed halls of learning?

Leagues, vine-covered or otherwise
Have never appealed to me
And frat boys make me shudder.

My father shakes his head a lot
And mutters--he fears the direct approach
Mother, though, damns the torpedos:

Don't you want to go off to school Like all your friends?
All my friends?
She always did have a penchant for hyperbole.

What do you want to do with your life?

I mutter something about
"Medical research test subject"
and retreat to my room.

Then it begins:
The financial offensive.

The fiscal bleating becomes the new
Book of Common Prayer
at our dining table.

She reads the grocery bills
While he chants about heat and taxes.
Eventually, I offer to pay board.
(I'd leave in a heartbeat but I lack the resources
to afford the freedom my psyche screams for)

They agree to a number,
But still take every opportunity
To suggest I am
An ambitionless burden.

Then, a few weeks after "good" offspring
Have blessed their parents with the empty nest
Mine so clearly yearn for,
Comes a new development.

I can tell something's up.
Mother asks what I'd like for supper
Instead of handing me the pork chops
And suggesting I overcome my distaste for such
As a meatless diet has clearly robbed me of
The nutrients that fuel ambition.

I cautiously suggest vegetarian pasta,
And she cheerily begins the preparation
While I look out the window
Expecting one of those "tough love boot camp" vans
To pull up any moment.

Father enters the dining room with his
"We have to have in important talk" face on.

That kind of talk best accomplished
When I keep my mouth shut.

He is a model of understanding
And worldly sophistication.
Of course my internet radio show is a great hobby
(He knows about that?)
and the tattoo parlour job an interesting phase
But it's time to grow up.

Then the anvil plummets.

He's spoken to his boss, and it seems there's room
For another junior office drone in training.

My mother bursts in as if a conductor waived a baton
And crescendos her gushing about the great opportunity with:
"And haven't you always wondered about what your father does at work?"

I've spent more time contemplating the mating habits
of the long-tailed shrew.

Just as I'm debating whether it will be my bedroom door
Or the front door which slams behind me,
He hisses one incentive
That turns this offer of purgatory
Into Eden's seductive fruit:

"You could make enough to get your own place."

The looks on both parentals' faces--
Clear indication that they covet this resolution
As much as I do--
Shouldn't bother me.

At least that's what I tell myself.

"We'd even quit charging you board, so you could
save up to get your place sooner"

Great Central Insurance.

Here I come, dress code or not.

-------------------------------------------------------------------
(more poetry by Dythandra can be found here)

New Look

I've been wanting to change the look of this blog for a while. Now I just need to sort out the glitch that's hiding the comments. They're all still there, but they only show up if they're the bottom comment on the page.

more tourist shilling

One of the attractions that draws tons of tourists here is Butchart Gardens. I remember my parents telling me that on one of their trips to England they spotted a big billboard advertising the place at Picadilly Circus.

We don't go too often because it's expensive, but three weeks ago we did the saturday night fireworks. I found out it was the busiest day of the year--the weather was amazing, so no doubt that helped. Never dropped below mid 70s all night and no mosquitos. They get 1.3 million visitors a year--probably more from the U.S. than anywhere else--and there were probably over 20,000 visitors that saturday.

Here's some random entertainment that you see while you're wandering. The little guy dancing is our nephew.



Interestingly, the guy on the left in the band is an employee who also works on the weekly fireworks show, which happened a couple hours after that previous clip:



I think it's a better show than the summer evening fireworks at Disneyland.

Here are a few more pics from that day: