The Mystery is Solved

So my pal Hix found the book. It was wedged into the passesnger door compartment thing that I forgot was there. I have NO idea how it managed to get in there. We were making a mad dash from Porirua to Kingston to deliver the last tape from our team's 48 Hour film shoot - and he just yanked it out and said - "Hey, I found 'The Gunslinger' ".

I was so sure I throughly checked the car. Damn.

I'll write something about the film competition experience soon. Briefly - it was another cool experience. I didn'y have nearly as big a role in it this year - but I got to get blood splashed in my face and then I had to play dead in a shot.

All very fun.

Fake blood tastes a lot better than real blood too. In case you're ...y'know... interested.

Not that I drink a lot of blood or anything.

I'll stop talking now.

The Mystery of the Lost Book

The production is FINALLY over. Yay! It's so good not to be consumed by fear and doubt anymore!

As is the way with students, they pulled themselves together remarkably in the last two or three practices. The started actually DOING the things that I had been asking/telling them to do since the start. I think I said to a staff member sitting beside me in the final dress rehearsal "When the hell did they start doing this ? Which practice did I miss ?".

The production went very well. All the staff members who saw it said it was great - so that's cool. Most of my puppetry ideas worked really well, so that too was a bonus.

And now it's time to drink until I forget about the WHOLE thing...

In "infuriating things happening to Seraph" - I have lost a book. It has been pissing me off no end. I got a second hand copy of "The Gunslinger ( revised and expanded version )" which I had never read before. I started reading in Saturday afternoon before I went in to the theatre for the final performance of the production. I put it down SOMEWHERE ... and now I can't find it. I just have no idea where I put it. What makes it doubly annoying is that I had thought of taking it in with me to the performance ( in case I had some down time where I didn't need to be running around like a headless chook, or if I had to be backstage during the performance - to make sure the kids didn't trash the green room ). I have no clear memory of actually taking it with me though. I turned the house upside down on Sunday ( working myself into a stress induced breakdown of sorts ). I searched my satchel, I searched my car. I checked the lost property that we brought back from the play. I called the theatre itself. Nothing.

It's really making me quite cross.

I have also found some other items hard to track down recently. Some of my toys seem to have disappeared ... as well as the "County Love Songs" CD I borrowed from my mum ( not ACTUALLY real country love songs - more humour really. There's a song on there called "Took a lot of pills and died" which is hilarious. Seriously ! You'd like it ! ).

And Viva WAS at home with the book for some time ( presuming I did indeed leave it at home - which does look increasingly likely ).

Hmmmm.

I wonder.

That's what those smily things are for !

The lights come up on our stage. Theatre flats have been arranged to form a corner, facing out into the audience at a 45 degree angle. We see the back of Seraph. He is facing into the corner wearing a large white paper cone on his head. When he turns to face the audience we can see a large letter 'D' printed on the front in vivid marker.

Seraph - "What? You're kidding me, right ? I don't have to tell THEM about this, do I ?"

Disembodied electronically disguised voice - "It's the LEAST you can do - you scumbag."

S - "Hey ! That wasn't cool !"

DEDV - "You're telling me it isn't warranted ?"

Seraph sighs.

S - " ... No"

DEDV - "Alright then. Get on with it."

Seraph faces the audience.

S - "SOooooooooooo ... I bet you're wondering why I'm wearing the dunce cap, huh ? It's a symbol of contrition. I did something PRETTY dopey earlier this week. But I DID learn a valuable lesson. I learnt that things that I think are funny might not be received in the same way ... Especially if said funny thing is transmitted through the medium of an e-mail."

"I'm at work - and I'm in a good mood even though the production is KILLING me, because our office is FINALLY getting the renovations done to such a degree that I actually get a proper desk. Life is good ! I get an e-mail from a friend - who has just done an incredibly cool thing for me by downloading a large and rather silly piece of animation via broadband. She jokingly refers to a couple of my fellow teachers as scumbags - they missed out on some cool deal or something because they didn't reply to an e-mail.

'AH ! She just called D. And C. A scumbag ! They are so not scum-bags ! I delight in the contradiction !'. I have no real idea of what kind of deal they missed out on - there was technical language. I copy and paste the comment into an e-mail to both of my colleagues - 'They'll know what this means better than me ... and they'll enjoy the scumbag reference as well ! Laughs all round !". I mention in the e-mail ( in what I thought was a pretty clear way) that I "didn't know if M. is joking or not !". I title the e-mail "And the horse you rode in on !" - referencing a well known joke ( what I thought to be well known anyway ).

I then have to lose my connection to the network while some renovation things go on.

When I get back onto the network ( it must have been an hour or so later ) - there were two e-mails waiting for me.

One was from my colleague D. It simply said "I'll deal with this personally."

Uh oh. I didn't like the sound of that tone.

The other one was from M. It said something like "Holy crap S ! It was a JOKE for Christ's sake!" Following it was the message that D. had sent her. The 'I'll take care of this' one. It was pretty stone cold ! It went on about how he did not appreciate being called a scumbag. He did not appreciate his colleague being called a scumbag. There were other words. They were bad.

Fuck !

I felt pretty bad about the whole thing. Needless to say I apologized to both parties ( with a more 'how the hell could you NOT tell this was a joke?' vibe to D. ).

Gargh."

DEDV - "This isn't the first time your so-called sense of humour got you into trouble, is it ?"

S - "What ? You're not going to mention - "

DEDV - "Remember how Jodie broke up with you after that joke you made ?"

S - "Shut up man ! I don't want to think about that ! That was freaking traumatizing !"

DEDV - "Or what about the time you told that bunch of vegetarians that you hated vegetarians because they were taking an evolutionary back-step ?"

S - "Oh come on ! They weren't listening to the tone ! It's all about the TONE ! Those fuckers needed to chill out ! It was a party for crying out loud !"

DEDV - "I think it was when you said that they didn't deserve to have eyes on the front of their face that really offended them. You should have seen the way they looked at you when you asked how a lack of peripheral vision hampered their chances in the herd ..."

S - " ... You might have a point. Okay - so I should be more careful about sharing things that I think are funny. Especially in e-mails. But YOU have to concede that SOME people should lighten the hell up !"

DEDV - "Fair enough"

S - "... Does that mean I can take this thing off now ?"

DEDV - "Oh, I think you'll have to be wearing that for a while yet."

Lights fade

S - "Awwww man."

Gagging for it

Oh dear - boys are pretty funny sometimes.

I was taking one of my junior performing arts classes today - it was last lesson ( trouble ), it was a Friday ( double - trouble ) and a big inter-house competition had just been cancelled due to rain ( run to the hills ! ).

There were some girls from our sister school in, they had the day off. I think their teachers all got ebola or something. Anyway - one of them walks past the door. These doors are mostly wood - they have this narrow pane of window space, she couldn't have been visible for more than a second. But see her they did.

A chorus goes up from a few of them "A GIRL !!!"

The general crowd ( whose 'girl-o-vision' can't have been working too well today ) echoes back "WHERE ??!?!?"

"There are just a few girls from the production next door helping with props ... " - man, was THAT the wrong thing to say !

"There are MORE ???!!?!" cries one of them.

"HERE ???!?!?!" came they general response from everyone else in the class.

I came close to getting the emergency fire reel and hosing them all down in an effort to shut them up !

Sheesh - I hope I was never THAT sad as a second former ! Mind you - I went to a co-ed school, so I got to see girls everyday. Probably took some of the magic out of it.

Binary

I spent a non-contact lesson today cutting out large cardboard 1's and 0's. I don't even teach maths !

Let it never be said that teaching is career which lacks variety.

Or that cutting out about 40 1's and 0's out of tough art-folio art is an easy thing to do.

I just hope Jenni is coping with the giant plush squirrels that I've contracted her to make for me.

...It just gets weirder and weirder doesn't it ?