Imported Facebook Note

Dressed for Sunday Night at the Purple Onion

The Whale Festival is on in Tofino. I'm not entirely sure what the whale festival is about, aside from the fact that it coincides with school and statutory holidays, and takes places in a town that seems to have something to do with whales. Tonight, there is a Whale Festival event called "Martini Migration"... which has nothing at all to do with whales, but rather involves (so I've heard) an entire town pouring into the community centre (which resembles something like an elementary school gymnasium, minus the basketball hoops and with lower ceilings) and getting drunk on "martinis" made by various restaurants in the area, who are all competing, I suppose, for the title of "best martini."

I had heard that this event is extremely popular, and that tickets sell out within hours of their going on sale. Knowing this, I had no desire to be there. As it turns out, however, the tickets were not impossible to get, and a co-worker offered to sell me a ticket. I still wasn't all that enthusiastic about it... but seeing as I live in Tofino, I felt that I should make some sort of effort to partake in the social going ons of this town...

I was told that this is one of those rare events in which one gets to "dress up"... last time I was told this, it was the Mermaid Ball... to which people showed up in togas and gumboots, I kid you not... this calls into question the local definition of "dressing up"... and I sure as hell wasn't going to show up at another one of these events dressed for Sunday night at the Purple Onion.

I was assured that people actually dressed *up* for this... in real clothes... not togas and gumboots and pirate costumes (I don't get the pirate costume thing... they seem really popular here). I was also assured that this event was a good place to "hook up"... which, given the nebulousness of the unintentionally long-term yet evidently meaningless entanglements of the past year or two, seemed like an opportunity to, at the very least, move along.

I could go through and describe the ordeal in detail, but it is as depressing for me as it would be entertaining for you, and I'm not feeling particularly altruistic at the moment.

Well. That's that then. Now I'm quite committed to never going to another social function in Tofino. Expectations are to be re-adjusted. Equilibrium is to be achieved between working and surfing, and the ultimate goal of a quick and painless death shall be constantly brought back to the top of the list. I only wish that, by the time it is my turn to croak, I play the flute as well as Schopenhauer did on the day of his death at age 72.