Halloween Hell

As soon as I have recovered my strength I will post about the terrifying and destructive journey known as Taking Drama Kids to Drama Competition, but I am too tired and still shaking from the horror. Suffice to say, I have given up waaaaaay too much free time to get this thing done, and a school that can't even be arsed enough to SEND ME THE SCHEDULE OF EVENTS doesn't deserve to have me on board. School: do you think I ENJOY giving up my weekends? The kids, however, were lovely. Judges, I'm still not sure how you can tell kids who are wearing microphones to "project" and how you can't recognize melodrama or Shakespeare but you can praise trite performances of  "Maria teaches the children to sing from Sound of Music" and "Oh, no, I am a fish, you can tell I fish I wear hat is fish on it" as "original and to the point."  Or heap praise on a multi-act drama entitled, "In Search of His Root." Yanks, you DO know the meaning of "root", yes? FYI, judges, my kids wrote their play themselves. Suck it, judges, suck it.

Depressing Night

My neighbor--Chinese--is singing "Memories" from that hit Broadway musical. Apparently he's rehearsing for some big KTV night because he's sung it through for the past hour and shows no sign of either stopping or improving.  All I can say is this: on a night when you've been stood up and forced to eat sauerbraten on your own, there is little more depressing than hearing a quavery tenor muff the top notes on anything from Cats. Curse you, Andrew Lloyd Webber, for writing tunes that amateur singers think they can sing. Jesus, what's next--the best of Chess? Mr. Wang Li's interpretation of Mary Magdalene warbling "I Don't Know How to Love Him?" (With a strap-on, perhaps?) Maybe I should just be glad to be spared that he doesn't know anything from Starlight Express. Oh, Jesus, no: it got worse. It's now "Music of the Night." I kid you not. I am taking the doggies out for a long walk before they start their sympathetic howling. My ears hurt, my heart is heavy, and I had way-way-way too much sauerbraten with its delicious gingersnap-thickened gravy. The only music of the night in my house is Duchess Doggie quietly being sick on the new carpet. Let's hope it was the music and not the dinner that did it.

And One More Thing...

Last week, a dear friend and former flame (you know who you are) accused me of writing a blog for "Fat girls with cats." I was furious. First of all, I think that's a line from Season 4 of Ugly Betty--that, or something similar. I don't know why it hurt me so much--I don't write about my wilder exploits because my sister reads this, and so does my daughter, and frankly neither one of them needs to read about my intensely private albeit almost non-existent private life. I'm so circumspect I won't even allow myself to be photographed with a cocktail in my hand. (Teaching license, you know.)

Then I realized something: I'm not a Fat Girl with Cat (no offense to writer Cheryl Peck, whose books "Fat Girls and Lawn Chairs" and "Revenge of the Paste Eaters" are brilliant and some of my favorite reads) but rather, a Former Fat Girl with Dogs. There's a world of difference, and it irked me to no end that this man to whom I had bared my soul, not to mention my uncovered thighs, didn't see it. This probably explains why we don't date.

I wonder if I will ever grow up enough simply to be a person with pets, or in press-speak, "A gifted and stimulating writer whose compassion extends to her collection of rescue animals."  I'd write more about the subject, but Duchess  and The Emperor need a walk, and I haven't done my morning 5,000 steps yet.

Whazzup and Other Things I'm Too Old To Get

I've studied linguistics at undergrad and  post-graduate level, and I am willing and happy to concede that BE (Black English) is indeed a bona fide dialect. I'd be interested in seeing research projects for  basal readers for BE-speaking children written for the purposes of teaching the process of reading, for example, so they can transition more easily into reading and writing (and speaking) Standard American English at a later date. (Because it's easier to learn to read and write in your first language or dialect--then transfer those skills to another, that's why.) (And yes that's a HUGE argument I have entered. Is the use of a BE reader reinforcing BE? Prohibiting its use would imply that BE is a bad thing--and how can anyone's language be a BAD thing?)

I don't have much experience with BE, largely because I'm based here, and I am much more familiar with the emergence of Chinglish as a dialect at this point. (Ask me how!)  Every language has its poetic and expressive mode and I occasionally run into an expression that entered common speech through BE and it often makes me laugh--not a laugh of derision and scorn but one of delight. Some things are expressed perfectly in other languages-- "woman of a certain age" in French, for example (and yes, that would be moi)--- but I do wonder if pop culture's sudden leap into a steady diet of "black" vernacular is going to have an impact on Chinglish. I say this because yesterday, when I asked a student how she was, she replied "My name Pony." I said, "Yes, Pony, that's WHO you are. HOW are you?" and she stared blankly at me. It's her second year in an all-English program, by the way. One of her cohorts took up the conversational slack. "I'm very good boy," he offered. "I'm glad to hear that!" I replied in my hearty jolly teacher manner. "F' shizzle," he replied, then headed off to class.

October. Rocktober. Whatever--It's Still Nice

I love October, not just because it's my birth month, or the fact that it's the best month of the year to visit Beijing, but because it's just so blue and gold and clean. I can make little pumpkin faces in the capital O's of October. I can anticipate Halloween with a powerful yearning totally out of proportion to the actual events of the evening--in fact, my decorations are up. If I wasn't in a hurry for the sitter to come over so I could nip out and buy groceries--seriously, I can't leave the two dogs alone right now--I would write a lengthy article about simple Halloween snacks and cocktails. However, I leave you with this:

 Cocktails can be made to look ghoulish if you do the following: rim the glass with orange and black colored sugar (mix it yourself with a bit of food coloring and sugar in a ziplock bag--shake like hell--rim (using that word is going to get me some hits of an unwanted nature.)

Rim (not that word again) your glasses with "blood"=== it's just corn syrup and red food dye. 

Use black vodka. It's out there--just look for it. Especially nice in a layered drink.

Use a glow stick as a swizzle stick.

Peel a litchi (lizhi) and insert a big blueberry or grape in the hole--now it's an eyeball. Toss on top of any drink to freak people out.

While I'm out--ostensibly at the grocery store, most likely Ikea--I will pick up more proper martini glasses and take some photos. I can't just leave it at a suggestion, can I? Photos are best.

BZ, Baby!

Here's the deal: the first month of teaching in a new school is a nightmare, particularly if you are teaching in a new subject area, or are teaching a new curriculum. I have yet to work in a school that had a full set of textbooks for the students, much less a teacher's edition, working overhead projector, and supplementary materials such as the all-necessary DVD or CD on the first day, let alone the first month. I teach English as a Foreign Language--specifically, preparation for upcoming important exams-- and I can't teach out of my textbooks. Why? The CDs are lost. The tapescripts are lost. The transcripts are lost. My students have expensive textbooks which they can't use because we can't listen to the CD to do the activities which begin, "Listen to the dialogue between the two strangers. Write the words you hear in the blanks."

Now, if I had a teacher's edition of the book--or the transcript--I could reenact the dialogue. As it is, I have to resort to making it up--or worse, just making up something else to do. Even if I had the CD, folks, it wouldn't do any good as the two CD players in the entire school DON'T WORK. I finally broke down and brought in my OWN CD player, as well as my own speakers, because none of the speakers in the classroom work. I teach more than 20 different lessons every week and that is 20 plus lessons being pulled out of thin air, borne of my experience and back log of activities that I stored on a hard drive and which I frantically photo copy before class when I realize that once again, the CD didn't come in... Add to that the absolute frustration of a system that takes away the weekend before a holiday and the weekend after a holiday and declares them "working days" so that a teacher is working 9 or more days straight in order to have three days off in midweek towards the end of the month--and then have the said teacher sent to a conference where no translation is provided on the one day off they have all month--and you have a very tired, bitter little person hunched over her keyboard at 7:24 in the morning snarling, "Well, I'm not posting today EITHER then. Screw the fans, if I had any!"

Vice Cream Gateway to Harder Drugs

Vice Cream Gateway to Harder Drugs

Parents and fat chicks are in an uproar over the latest addition to milk bars and dairy cases across Australia. In a world where literally thousands of children starve to death every year, Australians have a deeper concern.

“It’s those bloody Vodka Cranberry Magnum ice creams,” 40-year old Suzie Knox sobbed helplessly, her ankles puffing over the tops of her skin tight white socks. “I can’t control myself. Two of those and I’m ready for the hot fudge sauce.”

Miss Knox’s foster parents nod sagely.

”It’s true," surrogate parent Jan Cochaud states flatly. “One or two bars and the next thing we know, she’s knee-deep in Arnott’s TV Snacks. We’re that worried that she’s going to start going for the hard stuff, dark chocolate, next.” She pauses. “Or worse.”

Other parents express their concerns. “I don’t even want to think about what happens with those damned Tim Tams," high school teacher Scott Wallace adds. “When those walk in the door, healthy snacks like Meat Pies fly straight out the frickin’ window. Even in a safe place like Mount Wycheproof.”

As child obesity rates soar, parents do well to worry that the addictive flavors of Tia Maria Tim Tams and Kahlua Slices will draw children away from traditional fare such as full-fat cheese and steamed golden pudding towards snack foods with a darker edge.

Lucy Y (not her real name) knows all about it. At the tender age of 12, Lucy has forsworn Barbie for delights of a more forbidden nature.

“It started innocently enough, “ she says, picking at a sore spot on her chin. “A few Jelly Babies here, a handful of Smarties there. But one day, I had a few of those Tia Maria Tim Tams and the next thing I knew, I was a goner. Soon, I was scarfing down a pack a day. Then two. But it wasn’t enough. Next thing I knew, I was shoplifting Cherry Ripes. Then even that wasn’t enough. I got on to the Crunchies then. Yeah, the hard stuff. One day, I did so many I totally scraped off the roof of my mouth. When I saw how I’d cut my mouth to ribbons, I knew I needed help.”