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.

The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Future As A

Newscaster (by request)

Ahh--I remember you. You know when you taped me by the principal's car after that staff party? I wasn't really peeing... It was all just a joke. You have destroyed that video, right? Good. So, you want to be a newscaster? Hmmm--I think it will look something like this.

First of all, you've got that combination of "pretty" and "authoritative" that will give you a leg up on the competition. Sure, if you looked good and were a visible minority, you'd get there quicker, but still, you've got the right... tools for the job.

You'll need to take some sort of training--there's hundreds of programs all over that will let you study broadcasting while practicing in the college's studio and then working as an unpaid intern--which is another word for slave--at the local cable access station. At the station you'll run cameras, aim lights, and help prep guests and on-air "talent"--though calling the bunch of freaks and weirdos that vie for time on those stations that nobody watches is stretching it just a bit. You'll chuckle at the program warning that UFO's have landed and the aliens are among us, and you'll cringe every time you get assigned to tape "The Golden Age Nudist Music Appreciation Show" with naked 70 year olds dancing to scratchy jazz standards.

Eventually you'll get your chance in front of the camera. It may be a local dog show, or the big scout jamboree, but you'll get to lead a one-man camera crew around while you stick a microphone in front of a variety of inarticulate clods. Your parents' investment in your teeth and your perfect skin mean that the camera is your friend, and it isn't long before a real station agrees to let you do your next work experience placement in their newsroom.

You thought you'd been blessed with a clean, wholesome beauty, but soon you're having an anxiety attack whenever a small pimple appears on your face, and you borrow money from your parents to finance the plastic surgery you're convinced you need until too late you realize it was just the wonky picture tube on your old television that made your nose look crooked. Still, you become skilled at doing the fluff "around town" pieces for the evening news, and when your internship is finished, you are offered a job which pays pathetically little, but gets your face on the screen.

You do that mundane schtick for a year or two, and then when one of the two regular evening news anchors takes a job in a bigger market, they decide to give you a shot at the coveted anchor chair. You aren't the most experienced or most qualified for the job, but the producer knows you'll look good in those ads on the sides of buses, and you'll distract from the bulbous alcoholic's nose that dominates every shot of your veteran anchor partner. He, of course, soon resents your easy rise to equality with him, and takes every opportunity to belittle your work to the rest of the crew. You ignore him as best you can, and the public warms to you quickly.

Just as you ready to sign a new contract at the end of your first year, expecting a nice raise, there's a newsroom coup, and your producer is fired, and the new one, at the senior newscaster's urging, decides not to renew your contract. Fortunately for you, your new producer will land a good job in another city, and he'll bring you along to his new station.

His mentorship comes with a price, though. He knows you and he are both new to the city you now call home, and he manages to monopolize all your free time until suddenly you wake up and find yourself in a relationship with him. Since you'd been staying at his place anyways until you "settled in", it's an easy transition to make from employee to lover, and your new colleagues assure each other that it's only your willingness to "put out" for your producer boyfriend that got you your new job in the first place.

The constant backbiting grates on you, and one day you decide to test their theory, and you break up with your controlling partner. He assures you that your job is safe, but one day, while you are describing the horrible death toll in the fiery crash of a busload of orphans, he stands beside the camera you are forced to look at, and begins doing his one-man three stooges routine that always cracks you up. You end up giggling on the tag line "and only two of the children survived, and they will be horribly scarred for life" and as you prepare to go to commercial, you burst out in horribly inappropriate guffaws.

This ends your career. No one will corroborate your story about your ex-boyfriend distracting you, and the actual clip of your gaffe somehow finds its way to all the news outlets in the English-speaking world, and you become a topic of vitriolic editorials on the insensitivity of modern media.

You hide in your parents' basement for six months after losing that job, and eventually you regroup and take the only job in broadcasting offered you.

You become the host of a late night infomercial "talk show" focused on promoting a sketchy herbal libido enhancer. Each night you sit on a semicircular couch surrounded by an aging male porn star, an exotic dancer, and an ersatz "doctor" and you furrow your brow and nod supportively as you ask carefully scripted questions about erectile dysfunction and herbal remedies for such.

You tape seven such shows, which run on stations all over North America in the inexpensive late night time slots, and your parents plead with you to adopt a new "performer" name. You collect royalties for these shows and travel to trade fairs featuring the same product--you won't be rich, but you'll get by, until one day when Conan O'Brien does a "where are they now" segment which flashes your laughing at orphans embarassement and then segues to your herbal sex enhancement informercials.

Your employer realizes you are still a laughing stock, and your disgrace is complete when the herbal enhancement company decides you are too ridiculous to even speak for them.

You spend the rest of your days making a pittance as a guest speaker in media ethics courses and selling mail order fruit preserves from your home. On your 40th birthday you receive a card from your former producer/boyfriend with two words scrolled neatly inside:

"You Lost"

Oh, you've got to run now? You're sure that tape was erased, right? Thanks, kid--I appreciate it.