topless substitute teacher
10:50 a.m. on 2005-06-19
Okay.
Ahem.
We were camping on the beach near Westport last, what was it, Tuesday? And we were walking on the path to the ocean to watch the sun set, and some drunk guy, you know the type, probably sweet on the work powder too, eyes yellow and lumpy and bulging out in strange directions, substance induced lazy eye, told us that there was a fucking tsunami warning. "I just came to see it," he said. "I figure if I'm going to die, it might as well be cool."
O-kay....?
(Actually, I unfortunately can relate to this attitude).
So, since the baby probably wouldn't think it was too groovy to die yet, we trotted back to our car, jumped in, and headed out. We stopped to warn some of the other yahoos at the campground, who grabbed their surfboards and headed for the ocean ("Tsunami? Nuh uh! Awesome!") and followed the signs that said "Tsunami evacuation route". We were listening to the radio. scanning every channel, looking for some evidence that the drunk dude hadn't just had some sort of hobby of fucking with random people. There was nothing on the radio at all, and, even funnier, the evacuation route was FOLLOWING THE FUCKING COAST. We stopped at a gas station and asked the clerk, who said he hadn't heard anything on the radio, either. Finally we ran into some firefighters at the exit to another town who said that it hadn't hit yet, and probably wouldn't. So if it HAD hit, we would have been toast. They hadn't set off the sirens, they didn't send park officials (we were paying to camp in a State Park, with no other options available nowadays) to warn us, they didn't put out alerts on the radio. THANKS, GREGOIRE! I'm glad all those billions of dollars of seismic and tsunami detecting equipment are being put to such good use. They know when one might happen, but they don't have a public alert system in place, or a rational plan of evacuation.
Played the show. It was fun as shit, even though I fucked up a lot. Actually the fucking up part just seemed funny to me, maybe it added to the ambience, I don't know. People seemed to enjoy us. We could do better, though, and if my friend Brian ever drags his melodramatic ass back from Austin we'll probably play more. I hope so. The fuckwad.
I'm going to some sort of weird family reunion thing in Idaho this weekend. My grandpa and his brothers got all geeky into the geneology thing and tracked down some folks from Salt Lake City with the same last name, that looked to be descended from the same foppish pansy-ass Welsh duke or whatever that we are. Then they had themselves all genetically tested to see if we're related. So anyways, we are. Long-lost Mormon cousins. Yay! And so I'm driving down with the baby and with my uncle John (from the Long Winters), and Brian wants me to schmooze him up to play a show in Yakima, with us as one of the opening bands. I'm trying to see myself doing this, and not having a very easy time of it. Do I have some dignity? Maybe.
<< || >>