Saskatchewan Scrotums

The scotum is probably one of the funnier looking parts of the human body. Which is why seeing a pair dangling from a trailer hitch on the car in front of us made my mom and I crack up. Why was it there? Apparently Tiger Automotive has them, balls for men's cars who want to be manly. There were no labia though.

Scrotums for your car. What is the world coming to? Do you remember Neuticals, the silicone testicular implants that would make your boy dog have balls even after being neutered?

Well, aside from that, it's nice here in Saskatchewan. Not too terribly cold. Getting busy for some family parties. I don't even know when to expect the guests, but I've been tidying while Mom went to the doctors. I should really get back to that.

I'm buying someone balls for Christmas, I think she wants some.

Profanity Report

So I'm in Saskatchewan, where I may be moving. There may be a pretty juicy job here for me, and my family, and some wacky great friends. It's also my homeland. I think it's time for me to see if I'll feel different living in the place I really come from. As in, countless generations before me have survived here on the prairies.

But anyway, since I've been gone for a while from this blog, I thought I would update you on the feature. It's still really rough, and two crucial scenes haven't been written in yet. But I thought I'd give you all a taste of the script. Since I'm queer, all kinds of censoring things might happen during the making of Bunnyhug and it's release. So I decided to post the current profanity report. It's generated by Final Draft softwear, so I don't know who decided what counts as profanity.

BUNNYHUG -- STATISTICS REPORT


GENERAL STATISTICS

Number of words: 1833
Number of paragraphs: 251

PROFANITY
This profanity report should be used as a general guide to the profanity content of your script. Some of the items in this report may not be actual profanity and other real instances in your script may have been missed.

"Ass" (2 occurrences)
It appears on the following pages:
12, 76
It is spoken by the following characters:
ELLIE, NARRATOR

"Asshole" (4 occurrences)
It appears on the following pages:
24, 42, 60, 96
It is spoken by the following characters:
CASSANDRA, ELLIE, OLD QUAVERY LADY, RACHEL

"Bitch" (2 occurrences)
It appears on the following pages:
30, 108
It is spoken by the following characters:
JANET, MIRANDA

"Bullshit" (1 occurrences)
It appears on the following pages:
45
It is spoken by the following characters:
CASSANDRA

"Cock" (2 occurrences)
It appears on the following pages:
41, 95
It is spoken by the following characters:
ELLIE, SEXY FETISH LADY #1

"Crap" (1 occurrences)
It appears on the following pages:
24
It is spoken by the following characters:
CASSANDRA

"Damn" (2 occurrences)
It appears on the following pages:
76, 108
It is spoken by the following characters:
ELLIE, MIRANDA

"Dildo" (2 occurrences)
It appears on the following pages:
29, 78
"Fuck" (11 occurrences)
It appears on the following pages:
12, 13, 30, 31, 44, 73, 76, 92
It is spoken by the following characters:
ELLIE, JANET, MARY

"Fucked" (4 occurrences)
It appears on the following pages:
30, 52, 89, 98
It is spoken by the following characters:
ELLIE, JANET

"Fucker" (1 occurrences)
It appears on the following pages:
25
It is spoken by the following characters:
CASSANDRA

"Fucking" (10 occurrences)
It appears on the following pages:
17, 29, 31, 49, 71, 76, 84, 88, 98
It is spoken by the following characters:
CASSANDRA, ELLIE, JOHN, MIRANDA

"Piss" (1 occurrences)
It appears on the following pages:
77
It is spoken by the following characters:
ELLIE

"Shit" (5 occurrences)
It appears on the following pages:
11, 27, 42, 65, 86
It is spoken by the following characters:
DAMIEN, ELLIE, NARRATOR

"Tits" (1 occurrences)
It appears on the following pages:
11
It is spoken by the following characters:
JOHNNY

testing, testing . . . eins, zwei, drei

Traditions die hard

It is a common Vancouver tradition to light firecrackers and fireworks off every halloween. Bang, pops, and dreadful whirring noises have decended on the neighborhood. I must say, when I first moved here that drove me crazy. Vancouver loves it's halloweens. Now I have come to regard the rather violent celebrations with fondness. I'm just glad this halloween I will not have to go to the hospital.

This coffee cake's fumes are making me woozy.

Teabagged!

I teabagged myself last night, purely by accident. I was drinking the last dregs of chai and had the teabag wrapped around the handle. I was drinking when I saw the bag fly to my face, to hit me between the eyes with a warm wet slap. As the realization dawned on me that I had truly teabagged myself, I quickly began laughing and very nearly spewed my hot chai all over the place.

Happy Halloween!!!! I have the day off, which is saving me from seeing my coworkers dressed as zombies. It's a grey day in Vancouver, hopefully it will stay dry so the kids can go get candy.

I've been having some fun, writing writing my script. Going to Halloween parties. Thinking about stuff. I think I've been a bit low, the change of seasons affects me, like most bipolars. Going to daylight savings time doesn't help much either.

Shhh, don't scare baby

The most disgusting thing I read recently is that Katie Holmes had to agree to have a "silent birth." That means she can't scream her head off or make any noise that implies pain. IT"S Å scientologist thing. Freaking shift key is sticky.

That's just cruel to do to someone. Make them promise not to cry out during child birth.

I have one Werthers left.

Okay: the only reason I want breast implants. Within the next fifteen years you can get implants that are actually MP3 Players.

Madness is my friend

I have never gone surfing. Not once in my life. I was a prairie girl, where the hell would I surf? And the first time I swam naked in the ocean with a bunch of lesbians, I was so terrified of sinking into the deep depths that I didn't even realize how sexy that whole escapade was until I wrote it here.

So I'm not really cut out for surfing. But I watch it and I imagine that surfing would feel a lot like riding madness. It's scary, yet exciting, it's sometimes dangerous, and there's always the undertow.

I have been on a nearly lifelong journey to try and accept my madness. It's difficult. It's such a pervasive disability, and yet there can be long stretches of stability. And the creativity is addictive. Hypomania is just a hard thing to stop, because it feels so good. And let's not forget the wanting to snuff it moments. I hate those.

I like that I can think in a different way than other people. It gives one an advantage sometimes. Sometimes it's really a barrier.

Being manic feels like having every electrical appliance on in the house. Watching every channel at once. Fast urgent thoughts coming out like bumper cars, all crashing into each other. I think people are usually more scared of mania than depression, even very serious depression. People notice when I'm manic. People don't notice when I'm depressed. Sometimes they even say I'm cheerful.

In some ways it feels bad ass, because you're the pariahs of society. In some ways it sucks, because you're the pariahs of society.

By the way, whenever comments are turned off from now on, it's just because some jerk left a blogspam that I can't erase.

"This is the sort of nonsense up with which I shall not put!"

I think sometimes my manic mind frusterates others. I sometimes talk slooow, sometimes fast, sometimes so ridiculously fast it all comes out as gibberish (although I know all the words), but that's only on . . . extreme occasions. And I leap topics like nobody's business. I operate on several channels all at once, and I love to toy with ideas and link them to other things.

The opening of this blog complete, I feel very sleepy. And overworked. I found a few things in my manic depressive websurfing that were somewhat interesting, although completely unrelated to each other.

For instance: A water balloon exploding in zero gravity.(with Videos!)

My mother hates it when I end a sentence with a preposition. She has a fit, a cow, kittens. It's really the best way to get her mad without doing something you'll feel guilty about later. But according to Wikipedia, sentences ending with prepositions may not be that bad.

This is my current favorite flash, Ptikobj. I like his other work as well, but I warn you, the rest of it is quite morbid and grotesque. "There is a dog trapped in my guitar!" Ha ha, classic.

Oooh, speaking of morbid, and considering Halloween is fast approaching, here is my all time favorite site for ghost stories, The Shadowlands, followed by Obiwan's UFO Free Paranormal Page. Be sure to read the Black Eyed Kids and the one about the jello globs.

Someone was killed in my neighborhood, which troubles me, and they're gay, which troubles me. I really don't want to end my life in some alley getting my brains bashed in by some homophobic jock getting his jollies. And I imagine he didn't either. It really makes you wonder about human nature, that one small difference in your identity makes you prey. Bleh.

And really, those were all the things I was thinking about today.

They're back!

The mice ate my popcorn, nibbling away the nights. I am appalled. Popcorn is so important to my life. And now I am betrayed by rodents.

The Aboriginal Glass Ceiling

Or: The Myth of Aboriginal CandyLand

White people love to tell me how much money I have access to being one of those Aboriginals. They also seem to assume that I have a better chance of being hired than an equally qualified white person, because of equal opportunity employment. According to a surprising majority of people, I should be making 40 grand a year, when the reality is this year I MAY clear 8000. MAYBE.

It's true, my education was largely paid for by my reservation, I am not crippled by a huge student loan, and there were two funding sources I've recieved money from solely for Natives.

But now that schools over, I've applied at a wide variety of jobs in my field, all of which I'm qualified for, I am still struggling and working in a phone room. And when I look at other close friends of mine who are brilliant Native women, many of us are not employed in our field of expertise. Or where we are employed, it's really underpaid. Now I don't have access to production equipment, except for grants, and since it's still quite new for me to be dependent on grants, I understandably have the fear that being a minority in multiple ways, I won't get the funding to keep making work.

But back to the job thing. I'm qualified to do so many jobs, and yet I never get called back, even from people advertising as equal opportunity employers. I am beginning to suspect that there is a glass ceiling at work, one no one talks about, one which wants to keep the Aboriginal population as minimum wage slaves. Doing the menial work. It really makes me wonder.

I don't think Canada is ready for middle class Aboriginals.

I promise this will be as painless as possible

I'm doing my favorite kind of calling right now. I cannot tell you the specifics, but it's a very fast call basically getting an opinion and giving information. It literally takes about a minute to do, there's no money involved, and for the most part people don't actually mind it as much.

HOWEVER, there's always the few people who get infuriated the second you start. It's getting tipped off by the not-quite right pronunciation of their names, no matter how well you studied phonetics. Or the way you introduce yourself. Then they don't even listen to a word you say. You could be telling them they won a million dollars for all they know, and they just rip into you.

And here's the really weird thing, usually it's the women yelling at me that bothers me the most. The men are usually gruff and grumpy, but they usually make you laugh while they're telling you off. But women, eeee! Sometimes I think they would hunt me down and kill me given the chance.

I day dream about all the witty retorts never said, for the most part I just politely get them off the line. I say sorry so many times a day.

I must have done something REALLY awful in a past life to end up at a job where saying sorry is so automatic. I am a machine, a sorry saying machine.

But here is what I have to say to the mean ladies who rip into callers:

This morning I was eating something (I think it was chips) and drinking coffee and smoking and having my alone time with my huge pile of email (I'm on a listserv, it's not fans or anything), and this horrendous whirring saw noise starts, in the hallway outside my apartment. Ugh, I was so mad, and it continued on and off for the last hour I had before going to work, and totally wrecked my concentration. I wanted to yell at him, but I couldn't, and didn't. He was doing his job. So it was annoying, whatever, poor guy has to go be annoying everywhere all day. I was nice to him. I just imagined throttling him so he'd shut up. I didn't do it. And in the end we have nice new tiles in the bathroom. And a pit where the toilet used to be.

I miss the toilet, but I digress.

So just be nice with callers, we are usually pretty amiable to a polite no, and it doesn't take that long to talk to someone.

AND here's another thing about callers, YOU might know the person calling you. But they could be using a fake name, like Cha Cha DiGregorio, or Jessica Drake, or Mrs. Goulet. So you could be making your best friend or your cousin cry. Have you ever seen a caller cry? It is a sad sight.

Nylabone Propaganda

When I got my first dog, I remember reading some book that in retrospect, was probably put out by Nylabone. They were filled with lots of other information, but then all of a sudden, the benefits of Nylabones would be scientifically explained for a full forty pages. With full color pictures of the range of Nylabone products on the market.

So I dutifully bought a Nylabone, only to realize two dogs later that Nylabones were pretty much ignored, while cow hooves and pig ears were much more acceptable.

Suzie's prize cow hoof gave off a rank smell that put off everyone. She was an austrailian cattle dog, so maybe that's why she loved them so.

Now I'm looking at dog books again, and I find the same Nylabone propaganda is out there. I've yet to hear of a dog who actually likes their Nylabone. Maybe Mrs. Goulet's dog likes Nylabones.

Die Blogspammers!

Hey dude, I think your blog is cool, keep up the good work. By the way, check out the great rates on Home Loans.com!

Grrrrrr, nothing makes me madder than deleting someone's garbagy spam from off my blog, much like hosing away dog turds and horcked spit from the sidewalk. I am on the hunt tonight to learn how to get rid of these horrible things.

And everytime I delete the spam comments, there is left a little imprint "This comment has been removed." It makes me look like a censor when really I'm just erasing advertising.

Fellow bloggers would like to read this manifesto I found.

Do you know Mrs. Goulet?

After Unemployed Summer 2005, I now find myself in the bizarre position of juggling jobs. Today I will be quitting my current job and going back to a full time contract job, while at the same time waiting to see if I will be called in to work a completely different job. It's all very strange. Good thing my artist fee came in, which means I pay the rent somewhat on time and pay off two other outstanding bills.

At the same time, I am still being hounded by some bill collectors in Quebec. Actually, since my last known address was my mothers, she hounds her. Mrs. Goulet, she is called. Mrs. Goulet is very persistent. She is also francophone, and insists on leaving messages completely in french on my mother's answering machine. I think she represents Quebec Hydro, but my deeper fear is that she is collecting on behalf of the Quebec Health Care system, bloody hell I don't even remember what they're called.

The only word my mom knows in french is Chocolat, and that's because it was the name of a movie she fancied.

My own knowledge of french is most basic, elementary type stuff "Je suis tres froid" kind of thing, and I don't even know if that's right.

Tonight my mother is going for dinner with someone who's last name is Goulet, I wonder if she is related to the infamous Mrs. Goulet.

I wonder who Mrs. Goulet really is? I bet she has swear words written all over my leads about how impossible I am to find.

Mrs. Goulet is now a legendary figure in my family. She never tires out.

Oppression is Rude

I'm not out at work, for the two MAJOR aspects of my identity that make people weird, namely being a homosexshual and being a crazy lady. This means I've heard some unpleasant things about "dykes" and manic depressives in the last couple of days. Yes, we are the outcasts. We are the people who make others uncomfortable and scared, either that we'll "dyke out" on them (ugh, straight girls totally turn me off), or that we'll flip out and run around with hunting rifles.

Honestly, homophobia and crazy-phobia pisses me off. For one thing, I'm the most pacifist person you could ever find, the one time I got assaulted I didn't even raise a fist to my attacker. I took my glasses off, mostly because they were getting damaged and in my hazy getting beat up mindset I figured I should save them. So as far as being a violent maniac, it's never happened.

My main concern is that oppression is rude. What gives anyone the right to harrass someone based solely on their identity? And I especially hate it when oppressed groups slam other oppressed groups, and do you know why? Because A) it adds to global oppression, and B) the privilleged ruling class wants us to be fragmented groups. I mean, can you imagine if all the oppressed minorities rose up together in unison? We wouldn't be MINORITIES anymore, we would be an overwhelming majority, with huge power.

I'm glad my new job starts soon, hopefully it will be a little easier to be a complex little Thirza there.

False Christians ruin it for the rest of us

"For now you have hijacked the Son,
Last time I checked He came to light the lamp for everyone" - Tori Amos

It took me a really long time to get around to even considering that Jesus had something to offer me. Not because I disliked His teachings, in fact, he was quite sensible and had the same values I share. No, I didn't consider Jesus because of his followers. Followers like Fred Phelps of God Hates Fags fame, the one who demonstrated at Matthew Shepards funeral. Followers like the rigid Christians I knew in school, eager to bandy about words like Sin and Hellfire and the one true Saviour. They irritated me. For that reason alone I stayed away from Christianity. I didn't want to become narrowminded, didn't want to be like them. Didn't want to invoke the same deity as some homophobic redneck from the Bible Belt.

I much preferred Buddha's teachings, finding truth within yourself by your own spiritual regimine. Having compassion. I still like Buddha. The first time I meditated, I mean, really was able to still my mind, I felt my consciousness expand to include every living creature as myself, from an ant crawling along the edge of a leaf to a killer whale leaping out of the waters of the Georgia Straight. "Can it really be that simple?" I wondered.

Later on, when I went crazy, I started reading the Bible. Not the Old Testament, the grumpy God who was always changing his mind and smiting people. I read the New Testament. The life and times of Jesus. Jesus never made faggot jokes, or encouraged bloodthirst. People didn't even call him the messiah while he was alive, they always called him Teacher. I liked that.

I hesitate to call myself a Christian, for reasons I will elaborate further. However, having had a psychotic episode, having been in an altered spiritual state, I will say that yes, I do believe Jesus was an actual historical figure. I do believe in a God (although I do not consider it gendered).

I DON'T believe that the only way to Heaven, the Afterlife, what have you, is by being Christian. You may be baptized and go to church regularily, but you can still lead a fairly impoverished spiritual life. Consider the example of a very famous "Christian" who leads a very corrupted spiritual life. George W. Bush has turned nearly everything he has touched into crap. He's a dictator who electronically stole the last election and stole the previous one by denying many blacks the right to vote. He gets very angry at any collegues who give him bad news, turning his office into a group of simpering yes-men and women. He has illegally started a new Viet Nam, trashed reproductive rights, and maintained queers as sub-citizens with limited rights, he ignored New Orleans. And yet he is OBSESSED with portraying himself as a good Christian.

That makes me sick. While I still tenuously toy with the label Christian, my loving grandparents are avowed Anglicans, and have been for decades. Gramma does Bible Study, Grampa translates the Bible and is an ordained minister. They love and support me, their lesbian granddaughter, and even do queer rights activism within their church. They are perfect Christians. And yet what they practice seems so far removed from what Bush practices.

In some ways, I think I should call myself a Christian. I think it's time to take Christianity back from those who use it as a tool of oppression. Learning unconditional love, even for figures like Bush, is difficult, but an important spiritual exercise.

Even Jesus knew what his followers could do.

"When the Judgement Day comes, many will say to me 'Lord, Lord! In your name we spoke God's message, by your name we drove out many demons and performed many miracles! Then I will say to them, 'I never knew you. Get away from me you wicked people!'" - Jesus

Obsessive Woof woof!

Yes, we all laughed when Anna Nicole was giving her little dog Prozac. Dogs with mental health issues, who would believe it?

Well, now the madness in my family has even spread to my mother's dog. At first my mom was concerned by him barking madly in the middle of the night at nothing. Strange indeed. Anxiety maybe? Well, then he started licking all the fur off his leg. Hmm. And everytime I called my mom, I could hear the dog panting in the background. Excessive panting, barking, licking, a little light went on while Mum started dosing him with Rescue Remedy. I looked it up, and it turns out the little fuzzball has many characteristics of a dog with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

He's got a great personality, he's just very weird. I mean, you can't fault him for that. I've been doing some more research on it. Selectively bred dogs have a higher incidence of OCD, about 2 percent. Most dogs with OCD are male, while most cats with OCD are female. Large breeds excessively lick themselves, while terriers run in circles. If allowed to go unchecked, the dog may stop drinking or eating, so figuring out a way to treat it is pretty important.

Some of the drugs used to treat OCD pups are the trileptic antidepressants, and they are looking into the SSRI's too. Right now I think Mum's going to treat him with natural supplements, but who knows? Too bad no one else in the family has OCD, or we might know more about what he's going through in his poor little doggy head. Apparently they're aware that they're being odd, so they sometimes try to do their repetitive behaviours in private. Other animals usually stay away from them, yes, mental health stigma exists in animals too. I thought the kitties stayed away from him because he rolls them across the floor with his snout.

Anyway, anyone with good tips on OCD in dogs, let me know. And I don't want tips about Home Loans, or any other spam related "comments" crap. In case you're wondering why I've been deleting comments, it's because they are worthless spam comments with links to capitalist sites. Go shove it up your ass spam commenters, before I sic my mom's crazy dog on you!

Internet Conciousness

They say in five years the Internet may become a concious entity, capable of interacting with people and thinking for itself.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Will the Internet get obsessed with conspiracy theories, porn, and gory photos? Will it be benevolent? What about it's opinions on world politics? What if it staged a coup?

Ah well, still five years before we have to worry about it becoming an electronic entity. I wonder what kind of personality it will have? Will it put out podcasts? What if it decides it's Jesus? Dear lord, what if it is Jesus?

In other strange news, military trained killer dolphins escaped into the Gulf during Hurricane Katrina. I couldn't make this up if I tried.

Psychiatric Service Dogs

I know I'm DissAbled, but I didn't know I too am eligible to have a service dog. I spent the last couple of hours looking up any information I could find about them. They are trained to do a bunch of tasks, including getting your meds and warning you of an oncoming manic episode. My interest was piqued, and I began to wonder if a mini dachshund could be trained to do all those things. But no, I think he'll just be a pet. Still, maybe in the future I will get a service dog, when I have more room. I do like Goldens.

And I could train him to dance too!

EDIT * * * Okay, I saw a Chihuahua doing service work. If a Chihuahua can do it, surely a dachshund can. ***** END.

My Weiner Dog

He is due to be born on the 22nd. After Christmas my mom and I are driving out to the breeder's and picking him up. He will either be a red or a black and tan smooth mini dachshund. I'm a little worried my mom's boisterous Golden will grab my pup and run victory laps round and round her backyard. Then we fly back to Vancouver (he's coming in the cabin) and TA DA! Weiner dog! If anyone wants to do some puppysitting, let me know. I will try and post pictures of him when I get some.

spindly soup

I hate it when people pay artists way late, excruciatingly late. I'm facing an eviction notice this thursday if I don't scramble up some rent money. I'm for sure getting one small pay cheque, possibly getting another, and hopefully that will be enough to pay off my outrageously late rent. My cupboards are bare, even the mice aren't bothering with hanging out in my apartment. I didn't eat anything today but two cups of coffee (all I really have left), an apple fritter that my co-worker didn't want, and a spindly flavourless black bean soup made with the few things left in the fridge. It lacked jalapenos and tomatoes, looked like something an old lady with tummy troubles would make.

This too will pass.

I rolled four butt smokes, and I haven't smoked for half the day. I should just not smoke again. Actually, I should try those herbal cigarettes. Not pot. Herbal. Smart alex.

I thought I was going to pass out at work. It felt like my stomach was eating itself, and everyone I called was in the middle of supper. Of course.

I would like a steak, or some crab. Maybe some king crab legs. I would like cheese. Fried Salmon. Toast with honey. A nice shiraz.

In a couple of weeks this will all be different. Heck, tomorrow my family is helping me out.

Friday I plan to go for sushi with my friend Lynn. I hope. If the rent doesn't completely wipe out my cash.

Don't support the Red Cross

Unless you don't mind having most of your donation go towards ambigious "war funds."

In the hands of God

It's been a couple of years since I went crazy. I think I always believed in God, as I understood It to be. Not the God of bible thumping hellfire and damnation, but a loving God, a Just God. After going crazy, I am convinced there is such a being.

That's the part of going crazy that no one understood, or even acknowledged. For myself, going crazy wasn't some major self destructive thing (although yes, it did damage relationships and so forth), but rather it was like a very intense Spiritual boot camp. Going crazy lets you touch God, and that scares people. Suddenly the mysteries in the universe click into place and everything makes sense. I finally understood that I was God.

See, and that is exactly where people get pissed off at me, because it's an audacious thing to say and then they assume that it means you think you are the One and Only God. Which isn't true at all. What I really mean when I say I am God is that we all are. That's the whole point of us being on this earth. We all split off into seperate souls so that we could learn, grow, and eventually go back to being God. We are all the same person.

It's a startling revelation, and one that is bound to look "crazy."

Going crazy was the most spiritually enlightening event of my life. It gave me wisdom in a way I never would have gotten from sitting in church every Sunday. And it was also undervalued and unappreciated. No one expects you to walk out of the fires of psychosis with deep understanding of spiritual tenets, when the reality is that many of us do. We just don't talk about what we've seen because people get nervous.

Once we were seers, we were valued for our visions. Now, we are just subhumans, scary and dangerous and objects of scorn. And yet, the so called Mentally Ill have for eons been bringing religious and spiritual insights to the world. What do we do now when anything we say is subject to "time to up your meds" or "you're happy, I think you're manic" or "have you told your doctor about this?"

I believe Crazy people have a lot to offer society, more than some understand. It would be wise for more spiritual councelling to go on in psych wards, where someone can talk about what they went through. It's not always the prettiest experience, sometimes it's downright terrifying, but there is some truth within the maelstrom of insanity, and those truths should be honoured.

"Go fuck yourself, Mr. Cheney! Go fuck yourself, you asshole!"

A scary, yet funny story about a katrina survivor, the man, and some goons. Note the Mr. T t-shirt.

Underprivilleged

I'm sure by now you have heard Barbara Bush's incredibly disgusting comment by now. Rep. Baker of Baton Rouge said "We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans.
We couldn't do it, but God did."

I know people are really turned off by the idea of thinking of race and class being an issue in the atrociously delayed response to the disaster. No one wants to think that racism and classism are alive and well. Or if it is, don't talk about it. But IT SO OBVIOUSLY IS!

And even though we're up here in Canada, probably being smug about not having the same problems, imagine if a large disaster affected a Canadian community that was largely Aboriginal. Would people be glad to see a large portion of us wiped off the map, conveniently dislocated in time for the development of a new resort? Or would Canadians actually rise to the occasion and give help to fellow humans in need?

Would people downplay our suffering by saying we were underprivelleged anyway?

By the way, stop trying to colonize my blog with bullshit spam comments. I know you don't give a damn about what I write, you probably don't even read it, and if you want to advertise here you have to pay me. I'm not cheap either. I may be underprivelleged, but I do have class.

 

Handball

Disclaimer: This is not an entry about fisting.

I'm sure by now most of you are aware I was a massive nerd during my formative years. Now I'm an artist, which is quasi cool, but I'm still pretty much a big nerd. Anyway, as a nerd, I never did very well in P.E. That's PhysEd. I suppose I got used to the constant horrors of competive education. I was weaker, therefore I was the loser.

In high school we had all become friends with each other. The nerds, the outcasts, anyone who didn't fit in. We were pals and had grand adventures and dramas. And we all sucked at P.E.

Anyway, one strange day we were all on a team against some of the most popular girls in the school when we learned of a wonderous new sport.

Handball.

We were light on our feet and nimble, making passes effortlessly and getting goal after goal after goal.

We kicked serious handball ass.

Why handball, I don't know. But I was disappointed when we didn't get to play handball the next class. It felt good to finally win. We were all really quiet about the whole thing, and at one point I even wondered if we had kicked ass. Then my friend Heather said "Remember that day we played handball and kicked ass!"

Yes Heather, I still remember it.

In Search Of

Do you remember that show? It was one of those paranormal shows. As in "In Search Of Ufo's," "In Search Of Bigfoot," and so on.

Well, my quest is not nearly so supernatural. I am In Search Of A Weiner Dog. I got a part time job today, and it boosted my spirits (and my income, having been unemployed all summer). So I am in a better spot for the next month or so from other sources (none of which are paranormal either) and I want to get my dog. I'm working part time, I'd have time to be around him. I want a boy dog, because bitches are hell to live with.

Soo, want a pup. But they are rather pricey, to say the least. There's some cheaper dogs being sold in the States, but I haven't run any numbers through a currency counter so it might still be really expensive. PLUS then I would have to get them shipped, which would probably make them just as expensive as the ones around here. However, there are more moderately priced dogs in Saskatchewan.

Next task: Convince Mother to drive to Lloydminster and pick up my weiner dog.

Actually, the next task is really for me to make some sense out of a huge amount of financial issues, including two big bill payments. But I really do miss having a little friend. I've had pets almost my whole life, and it's weird not to have one. And I'm ready to have a new little friend, time's passed since Clive moved on. And I'm lonely. And it would be a good reason for me to maintain a schedule. Plus I am such a dog person.

Anyway, I'm off to virtually window shop mini dachshund pups.

I have been absent

For a few reasons. One, and quite possibly the most likely reason, is that I ran out of anti-depressants and I've slid into a little depressed hole. Crap. I've been borrowing anti-depressants from my neighbor down the hall, but she's not there tonight, or last night. And I am all alone. Howl!

Anyway, I have actually been doing a lot of reading on the whole New Orleans disaster. It's really criminal. And now the mayor is worried that all the floating chemicals and oils and gas and so forth on the water could ignite. That would make this disaster even worse.

Some people are even calling it genocide, which you know, it really does look like that. It's really creepy how they're blocking all kinds of aid from getting in. Who knows. I am sure everyone has some motive going on behind the whole thing, there's so much politics involved. But why make out your government to be weak in times of crisis? Especially a country that is so into war and being top dog of all the world? Doesn't this make them look highly ineffectual and therefore a prime target?

See, that's what confuses me, I can get the racism/classism stuff, but making the country seem unable to respond to crisis during a war on terror? I don't quite get what they (they, the thems, the suited folk that make decisions) are aiming to get out of the situation.

As for life, eh, I might have work tomorrow, which would be nice. Part time call centre job. Yep. I also applied for the Customer service rep position at the Bay, which appeals to my colonized body in some way. I think I would make a great halfbreed CSR, Aboriginals working for the Bay in the New Millenium! Training starts in October.

I guess, aside from falling into a puddle of despair (it is not a deep black bleak pit of despair), I am doing alright. Waiting for cash to pour in, reading affirmations on abundance.

I am a tender flower, worth all the gold bullion in the world, someone will give me a job.

The eye of the storm

I was listening to radio reports the night the hurricane headed for New Orleans. New Orleans, I had always wanted to visit it. Such a romantic, haunted city. Of course it appeals to me.

I've been watching and reading all of the news coming out of there right now. The media are really downplaying the sheer horror of the entire catastrophe.

I could tell you some of the stories coming out of there, but it would also be filtered information, so instead I will try and find some blogs that will give you some idea of what's really going on.

Interdictor is guarding a web hosting server in New Orleans armed with provisions, a gun, and a live feed from their building. This blog really gives a view into life in the city as it is right now.

Katrina Refugee is from the viewpoint of someone who made it out of New Orleans.

Gulfsails posts hourly via cell and noticed a shark swimming in the murky streets.

I don't know if Sciguy is there, but he's a great source of information on the aftermath of Katrina.

Something creepy tells me this is only the beginning of worse times. I'm sure you all know I live on a massive fault line that is just aching to release. I feel woefully unprepared for a natural disaster, even though I'm more or less healthy and have a copy of the Survival Guide. If worse came to worse, I would pack all I could on my back, hop on my rickety bike, and cycle to a scene or city of less devastation, occasionally turning on my cell to post here via audio blogs. That being said, I feel like something is coming soon, and I don't really want to be here when it hits.

Ode to Olanzapine

Night after night in the bleak grip of darkness
I reach for the Olanzapine
Round white pills of things mysterious to me
It is the drug companies biggest seller
You can't say there are no after effects
The first year was a fog
Emotional flatline
They said I was making progress
Olanzapine zombie rarely speaks
Is compliant
60 pounds in six months
New wardrobe, new stretchmarks, new body
I take this drug so that I can keep up with capitalist demand
To be a productive person
To not think magic still exists
To live
I don't mind the olanzapine
I just hate the idea of forever.

Life is strange

Yes it is. I'm having a sort of spiritual crisis at the moment, a result of deciding to walk away from a very long and intense friendship which was stagnant. I know it was a positive decision, but the negative fallout from walking away (including having my dead pet put on my apartment doorknob and which was stolen before I could reach him) has left me feeling shaken. I want to be able to have the ability to love and forgive, but hurtful actions are difficult to heal from.

Maybe I used to think that in order to truly forgive someone, you had to allow them in your life, even if they were severely limiting your ability to live in peace and love. Now I realize this isn't the case, you can care deeply about someone and still put up big boundaries that mean they can never hurt you again. Sometimes people are just too negative to allow them to influence your life anymore. Sometimes the best thing you can do for someone is to tell them goodbye.

Aside from that, I have been reading a lot of stuff on Near Death Experiences. Quite fascinating. I must admit, it makes me quite homesick for a spiritual land far far away. But dammit, I'm supposed to be here, doing my thing.

I'm also considering moving. To either Saskatchewan, Manitoba, or Ontario. Of course, I probably won't, yet. Still, there is a creepy feeling pervading me that this isn't where I should be calling home. I'm really unsure. Too many questions.

Life is strange

Yes it is. I'm having a sort of spiritual crisis at the moment, a result of deciding to walk away from a very long and intense friendship which was stagnant. I know it was a positive decision, but the negative fallout from walking away (including having my dead pet put on my apartment doorknob and which was stolen before I could reach him) has left me feeling shaken. I want to be able to have the ability to love and forgive, but hurtful actions are difficult to heal from.

Maybe I used to think that in order to truly forgive someone, you had to allow them in your life, even if they were severely limiting your ability to live in peace and love. Now I realize this isn't the case, you can care deeply about someone and still put up big boundaries that mean they can never hurt you again. Sometimes people are just too negative to allow them to influence your life anymore. Sometimes the best thing you can do for someone is to tell them goodbye.

Aside from that, I have been reading a lot of stuff on Near Death Experiences. Quite fascinating. I must admit, it makes me quite homesick for a spiritual land far far away. But dammit, I'm supposed to be here, doing my thing.

I'm also considering moving. To either Saskatchewan, Manitoba, or Ontario. Of course, I probably won't, yet. Still, there is a creepy feeling pervading me that this isn't where I should be calling home. I'm really unsure. Too many questions.

The Great Drug Debate

There are some people who go crazy and then manage to pull themselves back to normal through natural remedies. In fact, during my early adolescence, alternative medicine is what saved my life. I do not deny the efficacy of alternative means of dealing with mental health. I'm sure if I hadn't gone to see that alternative doctor, I would be dead long long long ago.

So why do I take pharmaceuticals now? The short answer is that I had a psychotic break and what eventually stabilized me were pharmaceuticals.

Now I am just as aware as anyone of the unethical capitalist practices of the pharmaceutical industry. It's a corrupt system, filled with unfairly tilted studies of new drugs, sweeping side effects like death, suicide, and homicide under the carpet.

At the same time, I think it's just as unethical to tell someone whose medication works for them that they shouldn't be taking it. I'm tired of hearing people tell me "you're not crazy, you don't need those medications."

I am crazy. Crazy isn't a forever thing, it happens in cycles, at least my brand of crazy. And while I can function to a high degree, I definately notice if I forget my meds. If I get depressed, you usually won't know it because I retreat into my apartment. If I get hypomanic, most people will just notice that I seem happier and yappier than normal and that maybe I'm doing better. I have only once gone so crazy as to believe I was the next messiah, and that scared the shit out of me.

So I take pharmaceuticals. Big deal. Five pills a day and I'm a-okay. This is how I'm dealing with my mental health right now. There is always the possibility that someday in the future I will go into full remission and not have to take my medication. Likewise, I may always take medication.

As a crazy community, it's important that we support everyone's personal decision as to how they want to address their mental health concerns, drugs or no drugs. To do this, we have to be given more choices, more options. Doctors should be willing to listen to the concerns of their patients about side effects. The psych ward system needs to have group home options for people who are going through spiritual crisis that will allow the course of a psychotic episode to be resolved naturally. In fact, in the States back in the seventies this was done with manic depressives and schizophrenics, and without the use of drugs or restraints, all the patients were able to resume fully functioning lives. Of course once in a while someone would run naked into the yard, but this wasn't pathologized.

And finally, most importantly, crazy people who are stabilized need to be given more supports in our communities. It doesn't help to go to a mental health team and find out you're not crazy enough to be given services.

Mmm, kissin'

I went out last night, got wasted, and necked with two girls and a boy while their friends took pictures. Much fun. I haven't kissed girls in ages, and it's kind of nice to neck when there's no pressure about going "all the way." Plus I look freakin hot necking with girls. I've never had the chance to look at it from an outside perspective. Oh wait, I necked with one of my friends on Super 8, but I never used the footage. It was pretty funny.

I like kissing. I believe I must get more kisses in my life. I used to kiss so many people when I was in my early twenties. I could neck at the drop of a hat. Most of the time I didn't even care to go further, and neither did they, it was just a fun thing to do when you're at . . . certain events. Like fetish parties. There was this one friend I had who was so hot, and we totally necked here and there.

I remember this one time she was helping me get ready for my bartenders exam, and if I recited the recipes wrong she'd flick my nipple REALLY HARD! Ah, good times.

I must admit, if I look at the people who are my close friends now, I've necked with most of them at some point in the course of our friendships. Or else they were my lovers and then in true lesbian fashion went on to be friends after the break up. Sometimes . . . long after the break up. It's hard to remain friends with someone you still desperately want to shag, but I find if there's a nice chunk of time away from them where you get to work through all those bitter feelings, it can work. I mean, all of my girlfriends have been people I like as individuals for different reasons, so in some way I don't see the point of completely cutting them out of my life based solely on the fact that the relationship wasn't working out.

Yes, I am a mature experienced woman.

I'm not a dog!

My current favorite piece of software

I love software. I have always loved it. Editing, writing, photoshopping, web pages, power point, whatever. I have a love affair with each one.

My current favorite piece of software is Final Draft. It makes scriptwriting so freakin easy. Not only does it make formatting it properly a breeze, but it will also do really cool things for your script, like come up with various reports on how many characters there are, give you all your locations, and it can even be used to compare your first draft with your later drafts. How sexy is that?

Anyway, after the last pathetic blog, I decided I would write some stuff. Altogether with today and yesterdays work, I have seven and a half new pages. Woo hoo! Including the sex scene, which was a little hard to write because the last time I had sex with a girl was when Bush got into office. Pretty grim. So I felt just as rusty writing sex as I'm sure I'll be having sex, should I ever have sex again.

I've also realized that in a certain way, what has blocked me from writing this story is that it's a love story, and love has been rather elusive in my life. So I was uncomfortable actually writing characters who fall in love, although more terrible things are in store for them soon.

Soon I have to write the really uncomfortable scenes, the loss of sanity and subsequent hospitalization. It's all very sad. Hmm. And I'll be introducing some more characters.

That's the hard part of writing, you create characters you really care about, and then you have to throw them in a horrible situation.

I tell you we must die

Trundling along with Unemployed Summer. It is Thursday. I applied for two jobs. One is as an Office Services Clerk in a law firm. That would be a nice job to have, considering I've already done it. After writing two cover letters and updating my c.v., I sat around and talked to my mother. Then I watched two episodes of Ab Fab and then Mirrorball. I laughed so hard at the scene where Jane Horrocks sings Alabama Song. That's one of my all time favorite songs when I'm maudlin in a certain "the piano has been drinking" sort of way. Oh show me the way to the next whiskey bar. I tell you we must die. I tell you we must die.

I am a veritable powerhouse of creativity at the moment, and yet I can't seem to motivate myself enough to pull my script up and pound away at it. The trouble with the writing process is it's so solitary. That's something I like about it as well, but when I'm on my own, making myself sit down and write is that hardest thing to do.

So I write in my blog.

Really though, sitting around watching well written british comedy series is probably part of my creative process. Brit comedies rule the fucking planet. If I was ever to do a comedy series, I would want to do it with the BBC.

But obviously, I must first learn to have good writing habits. I do write everyday, just not on my script. I must start everyday script writing. What troubles me at the moment is I have fifty-five pages and I'm only a third of the way through the plot, which means I've got more material than I can use. However, I also realize that I shouldn't start chopping away at it until I've completed the whole first draft. Oh it's tiring. Plus one of my characters really needs an overhaul, poor transdude. He's been tokenized, and that's obviously a problem because he's woefully unfleshed out.

I am my own worst critic.

I tell you we must die. I tell you we must die.

I'm off to buy two cigs now. I'll be back later.

Diary Haiku

I apparently have but one thing on my mind according to the haiku engine for my diary site. Here's what it came up with:

are all bacon and
eggs nibble nibble i like
fish as long as it


I am particular about fish. I didn't realize I talked about food so much in my diary. I thought for sure it would pick up my potty mouth.

Life + Pills

Edina - "Remember when you could just wake up in the morning and feel fabulous?"
Patsy- "Yeah, without pills."

I'm trying to think how long I've been taking pills for psychiatric reasons. I've been on Epival and two other meds for two and a half years now, but before that there were many years I was on anti-depressants alone. It does seem like a very long time. Probably the majority of my adult life.

Before pills, life was really hellish. I think back on my childhood and so much of it was just dark and intense. I really didn't want to live. And I was a kid!

I wish there had been some way to treat me back then. Oh well.

But I do remember mornings when I could wake up and feel fabulous, and the smell of the morning dew as I walked to school was the most sensual spiritual feeling I ever had, and I liked life. That's the weird thing, it didn't all suck all the time.

So now I'm maintained on three different drugs that work together in different ways in my brain and make me able to function fairly normally. I've grown happily accustomed to my prescription, no horrible side effects, but I can't help but wonder what it would be like to not have to depend on pills. I don't want to go off them, because obviously they work wonders. But there are concerns, like say my plane crashed in the woods and I ran out of meds. Or the government broke down and there was no way for me to get a prescription filled in all the melee. What the hell kind of crazy would I go?

Still, the little pills are in no danger of being taken away from me yet. Unlike American's whose health plans only pay for meds as long as you are actively crazy. Once you're stabilized, they take it away.

It makes me cream my jeans

I just found the sexiest thing in the world on the net. I am rendered completely speechless. I think I am overcome with love and lust. If I had this baby by my side, life would be sooooo ultimately perfect. I have missed having my own camera since I lent mine out and it came back BROKEN! And besides, it also became really old technology.

Thirza sells out and goes High Definition. Mmmmm, sweet sexy sacriligious sell out.

A stark reminder in the midst of gay revelry

I've been having quite a bit of fun lately, what with Pride weekend closely followed by Out On Screen's Queer Film Festival. Love and Numbers is screening again on Sunday afternoon at 2, followed by a panel. I've been surrounded by all shades of queer, sexy femmes and swaggering butches and gay men and trannies and bisexuals to be sure. Living in a somewhat cosmopolitan city in Western culture, just newly able to legally marry, things look pretty good for queers here. There still are issues, to be sure. Lest we not forget Aaron Webster, the gay man who was brutally murdered in Stanley Park and whose death was not declared a hate crime. I don't know, but when a lot of straight men attack a gay man with baseball bats, I call that a hate crime.

But maybe hate crime is not a strong enough word for what it really is. What it really is is genocide.

I was reminded of that this week when a friend forwarded on news about two gay teenagers in Iran who were sentenced to death for the capital crime of homosexuality. They were sixteen when the so called "crime" was committed. You can find pictures of their last moments alive here, here, and here.

I have to say, while all the images shocked and appalled me, I think the first one struck me the most, probably because one of the boys looks very similar to a dear gay friend of mine.

Since the Ayatolla's took power in 1979, 4000 gays and lesbians have been executed. How can one not call that genocide?

One might argue it's impossible to commit genocide towards queers, to which I say bunk. What about all the queers shipped off to concentration camps? And while we're a funny culture in society because we pop up in any family anywhere, we are a very tribal people, having had the history of people being rejected by their families and making new, queer ones.

But really, what it comes down to is western guilt. As a queer in Canada, what the hell can I do to make being a homo easier for people worldwide? I don't know why I feel this is my mission, but it is an important question.

In the meantime, I will say a prayer an continue being a raging Canadian dyke.

Welcoming song

I have a screening I curated on tonight. I'm nervous I will be asked to get up and say something. My hands shake when I do public speaking. I thought I could get away with it if I stuck a rattle in my hand and said I was doing a welcoming song from my people. Shake shake shake. Shake shake shake. Shake that groove thing.

The joys of being mental.

Passing

When I came out years ago, I was really confused by the term passing. In my history, passing was related to race, whereas in queer terms it means passing as male/female.

I think as a biracial person, most of the hate directed towards me had to do with the fact that I could easily choose to pass for white, abandon the race, and not bother myself with advancing civil rights for aboriginals. At least, to the outsider it seemed like an easy choice. But I wasn't raised that way. Lightest next to my white grandma in a family a varying shades of brown, I just felt like I was a brown person. I confronted racism in elementary school next to my brown best buddies, I studied my history, I did everything a "good" upstanding Aboriginal was supposed to do.

But it didn't save me the day some brown girls beat me up for being white and not afraid of them. What I remember most is their fury, and the way they kept denying that I could possibly be an Aboriginal.

It was a hate crime, from my own people. I was forced to reconcile the fact that I had white skin, and therefore more privilege.

I think I'm pretty obvious about my racial background. Still, for some people that will never be enough. They will always be jealous that I'm able to pass for white, not realizing the huge internal struggles that this poses.

Eggs

Eggs are a cheap source of protein. This is what I tell myself when I open the fridge and find only mustard, a wilted stalk of celery, and six eggs. I had devoured my spagetti and sauce, and the bacon had turned an unholy shade of green.

After living for a year on pizza by the slice, eggs have become my main staple as a person living in poverty.

Eggs can be cooked in a lot of yummy ways, unfortunately huevos rancheros cannot be created using limp celery and mustard.

I hate eggs. They have become a symbol of my poverty. They should taste yummy, but when they are the only option for consumption, they choke.

"It could be worse, you could have no eggs."

True.

Sometimes I have tried to insert moments of poverty in my videos. Counting spare change, taking pills, but nothing has really captured the feelings of utter hopelessness and desperation that come with such actions. I'm thinking of other things I have done, re-roll cigarette butts, that's a big one, go to the Carnegie, go to Coast's free Friday dinners. Waiting in line for careless sandwiches.

And eggs, those eggs mock me. I want meat. I want stir frys and salmon and tofu curry. I want fruit and crackers and cheese, and beans, and I make long lists in my head late at night, imagining what I would buy if I got some cash. I've grown past the point of living on pizza by the slice and gyros and any other cheap fast food. I like to actually make myself food.

But what can you make when all you have are eggs?

Look Out!

I am ready to shake off a lot of stuff from my life.

Some people aren't going to know me anymore after this summer. That's a positive thing for me.

At this point I have a very very very low tolerance for people putting crap on me.

I am making space for new friends and lovers, so new folks, feel free to invite me out for a coffee.

I'm not quite sure who I'll be by the end of it, or even where I will be.

Soon it's time to drop the axe.

Condoleeza Rice strikes Again!

In case you missed that post, I once had a dream about making out with Condoleeza Rice.

It truly disturbed me.

Last night she was in my dream again, tight hairdo, pinched face, we were in some kind of a boardroom. I considered telling her about my necking dream.

Why do I dream of Condoleeza Rice?! Something tells me I have a politically incorrect bone for the lady.

I have negative 16 dollars in my bank account. I don't know how I have MINUS 16 bucks.

I just need to survive a couple more weeks and an artist fee is coming in. Oh hurry scurry little artist fee!

I should write a letter to Condoleeza Rice and ask her to send me some money.

Someone keeps trying to tell me I am no longer a lesbian because of some meaningless experiments with boys. It's pissing me off. So I haven't played with ladies recently, so what. Why does that make me any less a lesbian than the first four years I was out and celibate because everyone my age was closeted and all the older ladies wouldn't play with me because there's laws against it? I don't understand. Now I feel compelled to prove my lesbianism to someone who isn't even a lesbian, it's stupid.

Just because I've been single a long time doesn't mean I haven't fallen in love with ladies.

Plus I hate that lesbian identity is so fragile the slightest bit of penis puts it in question, whereas gay men can easily have casual sex with girls and aren't challenged.

Goddamn phallus power. My Condoleeza Rice dreams are far more baffling evidence of my lesbian tendencies.

If anything my boy experiments proved conclusively that I am not bisexual. I could write a paper on why, but that's just wasting more energy on something stupid, when I would much rather be spending more time with lesbians, meeting girls, and getting nervous and crushed out on them.

Tell a secret

I've never been diagnosed or treated for it, but I believe I have a mild form of epilepsy. I've only ever had one grand mal seiziure, I remember it clear as day. I remember the way the morning light came in the windows, and I was eating my cereal, probably fruit loops, reading Gary Larson and laughing my butt off. Then my funny bone hit the edge of the kitchen table and I was in massive pain, yelling owie. Then blackness. The next thing I knew I woke up on the livingroom carpet, soft face smooshed into the weave. My first thought was "It must be Monday. Time to go to school."

There's nothing else particularily remarkable, no further grand mal seizures, but I have petit mals. I get them quite frequently. I'll just stare at a small spot and suddenly no information gets into my head. People could be having meaningful conversations with me and quite often I'll "space out." I've learned how to cover for it reasonably well, just nod your head in agreement once you can move again. There actually have been a couple of times I agreed to something that wasn't . . . agreeable. People sometimes also assume I'm not listening to them, which is true but for a medical reason, and then they get all tetchy.

***************Bonus Secret!**********************

I commonly have auditory hallucinations. Ironically, these didn't begin until I started taking pharmaceuticals to combat depression, then manic depression. There's nothing particularily remarkable about these either, quite often I hear my name being called, during withdrawal from Paxil I kept hearing the sound of a huge truck passing by, sometimes just a pounding frequency. When I went really crazy I had very distinct voices telling me things, and church bells. But my hallucinations are pretty benign, and I cover for them pretty well so I can pass as normal. I've just learned not to react every time I hear something similar to my hallucinations. Unfortunately this sometimes makes me look a bit stupid or standoffish if it's not a hallucination.

Montreal psych ward horror story bonding

Last night I did the something for the first time. I actually met a couple of folks who I knew only through the internet. It was a gas, and this girl had been in a Montreal psych ward too. When I tell people I was in a psych ward, they truly don't grasp the traumatic horrors that occur there.

First off, you are not treated as someone with an illness, you're treated like a criminal. For another thing, I think they take some kind of course in destroying the last traces of humanity, empathy, and compassion. Personally, I think a lot of the psych ward workers I met, particularily in Emergency, were probably the Gestapo in their past lives. You look into their eyes and it's completely cold and soulless.

Then there's the restraints. It doesn't sound as violent as it really is. I'm all for consensual bondage, but when you're put in restraints it's really fucking scary. Usually it's used as punishment for minor infractions, in my case I wanted to use the phone during nap time, and instead of having a rational discussion about why they had some rule against using the phone, I was drugged and tied down for three and a half hours.

Then there's this absurd idea of medical care. They do not care about their patients. Drug em, feed em, let them watch television, that's your life and it won't get better until they decide to let you out. When I got first degree burns on my hands they didn't give me proper medical attention until two days later, even after I went to them saying my hands were burned. My hands were in agony. Finally one of the few nice staff brought a doc to see me. So they gave me this special cream to put on my hands to heal them. Later, when I went in again, I still needed the cream, but of course I didn't have a chance to get it before going to the bin a second time. I kept asking friends and family to go get me this cream, but they thought I was a delusional nut, so instead they brought me hand lotion which didn't do shit for my poor burns.

That's not the only instance I saw of poor medical care. A homeless man who came to the hospital had gone walking in snow and ice in bare feet in montreal. His feet were pretty cut up, and looked frostbitten too. No one did anything for him until I got mad at my shrink and pointed it out.

They don't care about protecting patients from other patients. There was this gross old man who wanted to gang rape me and even though I protested, they put me in a small ward with him and a handful of other male patients. As a rape survivor, this totally triggered off a whole host of things, none of which helped calm me down and bring me to this mythical state they call normal.

Finally, they have a fucked up attitude towards anglos. If you're an anglo and you end up in a montreal bin, they will not provide you with interpreters and they are adamant about not transferring you to an English speaking hospital, of which there are a few. Actually, not just anglos, I take that back, anyone who doesn't speak French is left to try and make sense of arbitrary rules. There were a few people who obviously spoke very little French OR English, and I have no idea how awful that must have been for them.

Anyway, now I have a friend who actually understands how truly soul destroying a stay in a Montreal psych ward is. And that makes me feel a lot more relieved, less alone about the whole experience. I sometimes get so furious about how casual certain people are about my experience in the bin. I have no obvious scars from the stay. But I am a psychiatric survivor.

One day I hope to transcend from being a psychiatric survivor. I think that day is coming. It's taken a lot of really hard honest soul searching, writing, crying, and most notably, coming back to life. I feel I died in the psych ward. But my own personal ressurection and living has made me a stronger person.

Lesbians

God bless 'em. I've spent nearly half my life proudly being lesbian. Then some questioning years, related to gender. Now it's an identity I feel oddly at ease with all over again. Like a well worn leather jacket. Yeeeah! Women rock my world. They really do. Nothing makes me feel more electrified than feminine flirtatious energy. I love butch/femme identities and sexual frission. I love that my town is filled with brazen leatherdykes who love sticking needles all over their bodies. I love belonging to a sub culture. I love being a lesbian.

I want to write something in honour of all the lesbians I have known who have supported me and paved the way for me to be. And yet, thinking of all the wildly talented and hot women I know across Canada, I find it hard to express how truly blessed I have been to have them in my lives.

Instead, I present to you a montage of my top ten favorite lesbian moments in my life.

1. Riding the back of a butch dyke's motorcycle through the streets of San Francisco one hot summer night.
2. The first time a woman's breasts pressed against mine and I realized I loved female flesh.
3. Losing my virginity to the most gorgeous bisexual in grade 11.
4. Getting shy and flustered when Kate Bornstien liked my hair.
5. Getting shy and flustered when I first saw Annie Sprinkle in real life.
6. Butches bonding over fatty fried foods.
7. The time my vegan lover asked me in the middle of the night if I ate bacon.
8. Kissing a reluctant older butch in a courtyard in Germany.
9. Having romantic baths with my femme girlfriend who actually didn't like baths and would always end up laying naked on the floor talking to me. Actually now that I think about it that was kind of weird.
10. Having meaningless sex with an ex for the purposes of art. Actually it was really fun but I was never allowed to tell her that.

Lesbians. God bless 'em.

The mice are back

God bless 'em. At least now I'm not so pitifully alone.

Pride weekend is around the corner and my dance card is empty.

Someone told me there is no sex in the afterlife. For shame!!

Can Pride 20055555555555 be the year I break my celibacy? I actually just meant to write 2005, but my five key sticks. I fear it may be a much more accurate assessment of my singleness.

More funny

News from Iraq.

Secrets and Rants

Hi, my Netscape is being a big jerk and won't let me sign in, so I am on Safari. Anyway, I found a blog you all might be interested in. It's called Post Secret and it's a collection of mail art made by anonymous folks who tell a secret about themselves. Some are funny, some are sad, it's updated every Sunday with new secrets.

I made a secret card to mail in this week.

And now for a rant.

So I spent a few hours cruising around Livejournal looking -seeking- for another community I would actually want to be a part of. But all the bipolar communities are full of whingers and all the lesbian communities seem composed of newly out lesbians still raging about how their families just don't understand. I'm twenty-seven and I've been openly a homo for thirteen years, so this is all quite redundant to me. God, I've been through being an out homo in high school IN SASKATCHEWAN no less, and I hate listening to twenty-somethings who have just come out whine about oh, my mum's an ass, and wah wah wah, and I just wanna say yeah, thanks a lot.

Thanks for being the homophobic twat who slammed me in high school to protect your reputation and then later when your hankering for pussy gets the best of you, now you want in the community. Well fuck you. I have nothing but contempt for homos who are too shit scared to be who they are when they're a teenager. Thanks a bunch for leaving me and many other queer kids in the lurch, looking for allies and finding nothing. Sorry, that's just my mood today. I know it's scary to be a queer teen, but fucking christ, I did it in the Canadian equivalent of the Midwest so fuck you. And when you're in your twenties you have way more options opened up for being in the queer community, so quit your whinging and go to a support group or a rally or a bar or something.

Down Town East Side Eagle Feather

It has been a long time since an eagle feather came to me. The last time, and first time, I was walking along the beach with my mother when she found a golden eagle feather. It was truly majestic, and she gave it to me. I was probably thirteen or fourteen.

As you know, it's illegal to kill eagles, so getting a real eagle feather is a pretty special thing.

Present day life in Strathcona, I go on a very long voyage on foot to buy pot for a friend, I wind all the way through the hinterlands of East Van, down Commercial Drive, up to a street corner where I meet the dealer who has been developing a rather amusing infatuation. Then I hop on the Freetrain back to my neck of the woods, risking a fine just because my feet are tired. I arrive back at the apartment building, when what do I see, but an eagle feather. Not majestic, but noble nonetheless.

We have a pair of bald eagles in the neighborhood, so it could have come from them.

Or, as my friend pointed out, fallen off of some Indian.

Either way, a sacreligious reward for walking so far, mighty halfbreed, to score drugs.

I choose today to blame it all on my Saturn Return

I only clean when people visit me. How strange. Like, I can live in a sty, but visiting folk cannot. Anyway, there's not really much to tell about my life. Or maybe, there is stuff to tell and I just don't wanna. I think it's my Saturn return. It's kind of interesting anyway, to me, not necessarily other folk. I feel poised to make massive changes in my life. I don't know that they would be changes anyone would notice though, except for me.

Since going a little loco at the end of last semester, I've been on an anti-depressant and my mood stabilizer and my anti-psychotic, and I haven't been terribly depressed since. I've felt way more hopeful about life. This whole unemployed thing is a freakin' nightmare, but I know somehow I'll end up in the right job.

******************living kitchens*******************************
My fridge breathes. It's true, ask Lynn. Every few hours it lets out a great sigh.

Lynn (my neighbor) has dirty dishes. Once I was visiting her and I heard moans and creaking bed noises and it was coming from her kitchen sink! We just call them the dirty dirty dishes.
*****************end***************************************************

I haven't cried in a very long time though, and that unsettles me. It's like, crying is a focused expression of emotion, it's kind of a religious experience really. And it's healing. And I just haven't cried about anything in a long time, whereas before I could cry at the drop of a hat. I don't know which is worse. I miss crying.

That all being said, please don't go out of your way to make me cry. That would annoy me.

I finally have a happy dream to tell you about. My mentally handicapped sister had her 30th birthday party and I missed it, which was sad. But I dreamt that I was there, and the whole family was there, all dressed up. And somehow my sister had connections with the millitary, so they flew in fighter jets across the sky and dropped all these little toys, like swimming noodles and those punch balloons. And my job was to go gather up all these little toys for her.

So I think when I have some money, I'm going to go down to the toy store and buy her a bunch of goofy toys she would like. And marshmallows, because she loves marshmallows. All kinds. There's this really yummy kind she likes that has toasted coconut on it.

Job Hunting and Gathering

"A BFA, what kind of a job can you get with that?" my cousin scoffed.

It is true, BFA's, or as they are affectionately known, "Bachelor of Fuck All"'s, are a whole lot of work with dubious credentials at the end. But surely a major in Film/Video must add up to something. Dear god, all that learning how to use equipment I could not afford.

Anyway, there's a job opening as a technician at ECI. Which is a bit ridiculous, going back and working for the school I graduated from. On the other hand, I was taught how to use all their gear, and I was a technician intern.

My protein sources are sad. I need to buy some groceries. My potatoes are all rotten. And I need to take out the garbage.

I had a long nap today.

Recently I had a nightmare I was trying to move into a new place and everytime I was moving in I would find dead murdered bodies everywhere, I was screaming and running away, eee. Finally I told my friend who was helping me find a new house NO MORE MURDERED PEOPLE. Strange dream.

Boy - Part 3 TMI

************Do not read if you don't want to hear about testosterone's effects on clits********************
The two weeks is up, I do not have a mustache, I am beyond the hot flashes and higher body temperature. I am still not planning to transition into a man. However the one thing I was hoping for has happened. My clit got bigger. I am probably exaggerating, but it feels twice as big as it was before. For a masculine little dude girl, this is an exciting development. My sensation even feels slightly different, which is awfully cool.

Did my sex drive go up? Nah, not a whole lot, I'm fairly concupiscent as it is. That's a fancy word for horny, yes it is.

Either way, the whole experience has left me feeling more comfortable in my body as it is. I consider it another form of body modification that I've chosen. Apparently it will stay the same size, unless I opt for further hormone treatments, in which case it will get bigger, but that whole body hair lowered voice thing scares me.

I like being a lesbian boy the best. All these parts of mine are nice, and I want to keep them as they are.

High Femme Haiku

High femmes, I love you so,
yet you are scary, how can this be?
Is it the pointy shoes?

Someone buy me this . . .

. . . hot transfag porno.

I Heart Too Much

"You love too much."

It is true, I have fallen in love a fair number of times in my life. We'd taken some kind of online test, and I had been fussing with dirty dishes as I casually called out my answers.

Me, a woman who loves too much.

How many times are you allowed to fall in love in your life without looking like a ridiculous teenager?

When I was younger, with my first sweetie that I was with for a year, there was this friend who kept falling in love with a different person every month. I think I saw her go through like, four or five girlfriends. A woman who loved too much.

But who is to say that just because you fall in love with a number of people, that it is a bad thing. What's wrong with loving more people?

It's a bit ridiculous to think I love too much, since I'm twenty-seven and have only had three girlfriends, and can fall hopelessly in love with people for years without anything ever actually happening. I just don't see the point of only having one big love in your lifetime. Plus I just like that in love feeling. I guess I'm a pretty intense little dude when I'm in love. It's been many years since I wrote a poem to a girl though.

Anyway, this summer is looking like much fun because for the first time in years I have a nice set of multiple crushes, on various cute smart ladies. Assorted flavours. Even if nothing happens with anyone, it's entertaining as all hell. My close friends are now used to listening to me spin grand fantasies involving people they don't know. I honestly don't know how they can stand it.

$101.00

I won $101 dollars playing pull tabs at the Sufferin' Dufferin last night. It was enough to buy mysef and two friends two rounds of import beers, and some extra to fiddle with. I'm really tempted to buy a DVD I have wanted for a long time, since this is extra Surprise money. Hmm. What to do. . .

*******UPDATE***************
I bought the DVD for cheap on eBay.

:D

I have kandy korn!

Without a care in the world

This morning a terroist attack rocked London. And I la di da'd around all afternoon on public transit, not a care in the world, shopping. I bought pricey honey-carmel scented soap and candy bath melts. One Roman Dirge baby T (fat girl in skintight T alert!), three panties, and two cute t shirts from Old Navy. And that was about it. Then I split a 6 pack with a friend because I promised I would buy her beers. And that was my day, it was lovely. If I got major artist fees I would shop every day.

I'm not feeling the hot flashes as much, maybe that part of T is over. People ask me if I am going to keep taking it. I would have to say, no, not unless something really happens to change how I think of myself in the world. I'm pretty comfortable in this wacky gender called Butch Dyke. I think it's a place I want to keep living in for a while.

In fact, I almost feel more girly after having tried T. It's hard to explain. I will mine my daily thoughts for a way to explain it. I do know that the other day I was shaving my legs (I haven't done that in about six or seven years) and I thought "This is not a manly thing to be doing." Same with wearing the Dorothy's-Ruby-Slippers nail polish. And buying a T shirt that says "I am a little fairy princess."

I'm just a 21st century gender terrorist.

Manic Panic

Yesterday was a weird day. I found out I had gotten my money from my reserve for graduating, so I did a happy dance and smoked a joint. Then this morning I checked my mailbox and ta da! A nice little artist fee. It's like getting paid to be me.

But last night the weirdest thing happened, a friend told me she thought I sounded manic, and for some reason it made me really angry. I think because the last time she said that, next thing I knew cops were at the door. But I was manic then. And then I got really confused, and had to run over a checklist in my head of manic symptoms. Not talking too fast, not getting involved in big plans, I did feel happy, but that was probably mostly due to having some cash in my pocket. Either way, I did not feel like I was manic at all, actually yesterday I felt pretty sluggish and tired. And depressed. Until I got money.

Because in a capitalist society money = survival.

Another online friend said she gets pissed when her bf or mum tell her she seems manic because it feels like a form of control. I think that's what made me mad, just that pointing out someone is manic is a lot like saying "Go to the Hospital you Subhuman fuckup!" I don't know, no one ever tells you you seem crazy in a calm way. It's never a normal event.

Man, I don't even know what I am trying to say.

So I did do a thorough check in of me, and I can pretty much confirm that I'm not crazy. In fact, I feel pretty even, and I'm still faithfully taking all my medications, including a pretty heavy duty anti-psychotic that can knock a manic episode on it's ass. I know there's always the possibility of breakthrough episodes, but I just don't think I'm having one of those. I think I'm pretty stable. Hmm . . .

Of course now that someone outside of me has mentioned it, now I have to do check ins on myself for the next week, which is a pain because people hate when you seem self absorbed and pre-occupied. At the same time, I probably was going to check in on myself just because of the T anyway, so it's no big deal.

If it's not one thing, it's another

I trotted off to the post office and picked up my new phone, spent the next hour changing some phone numbers so they were stored to my sim card. Replaced the sim, and fiddled around with all the new things on my new phone. It has polyphonic ringtones. Get this: when my phone rings, it sounds like an actual old phone! It is so cute! I was terribly excited and thought oh yay, my life is turning around.

But then I went on friendster and got an admonishment from a friend for mentioning accidentally touching his cock, AND found out someone I like is currently taken, which they never bothered to let me know. I mean, it's not like I demanded that she keep me up to date or anything, so I can't really complain, and besides that she does live VERY far away. As for the cock thing, I dunno, maybe I have really bad boundaries. Growing up native, people just routinely made lewd crude jokes all over the place. I mean, some of my elders have thoroughly embarrassed me by teasing me about my sexuality, not in a mean way mind you, just, I dunno, that's what they do. It's an Indian thing. If you've never experienced it, you wouldn't understand it.

Anyway, I felt cruddy for a while, and didn't even have the chance to call mum to vent because she's up in Northern Saskatchewan at a cabin on a lake, lucky woman. Then the worst thing happened: Internet Explorer decided to be fucked up. I click on it at the little icon bounces up and down like it's yelling "I'm ready, I'm ready!" and then it just stops, and doesn't open. All "Fuck you!" Sigh.

It's overcast and I am still on the job hunt. Bleh.

But at least I have my phone again, an even better phone, a cuter, lighter, smaller phone.

The T isn't doing anything to me besides giving me the occassional hot flash. Not a Menopausal Woman hot flash (those look way way more intense), but hot flashes nonetheless.

I'm grumpy. I'm going for a walk before it rains.

Boy - Pain in the Ass (Part 2)

We were prepped, we were ready. The needle was fearsome. My friend let me hold it for a while before he wielded against my bare bum. 50mg of depo-testosterone, all that kaffufle and it just came down to this ridiculously benign looking amber fluid.

We went to his bedroom, where I bared my butt and got into position.

Deep breaths. He had a very nice bedside manner.

"Aaaah! I"m nervous!" It reminded me of my trips to the piercer, that nervous energy that crawls into the palms of your hands and tickles like you gotta pee right now.

"Have you ever done play piercing?"

"Yeah, just surface stuff on my arms."

"Well this won't even hurt as much as that because it's only breaking the skin once and it's coming out the same way."

We did some more deep breathing.

Then I was ready.

It was a sharp pinch, and then it was over. I thought an intramuscular injection would hurt a lot more, but it didn't really. I'm sure if I had to do it every two weeks I would think it stinks though. I felt a bit giddy, general euphoria. I had done it, there it was, it was in my system. Who knew what the next two weeks would hold for me?

One of the first effects I noticed was a tingling in my crotch, not a I have To Pee tingle, more, I dunno, a This Turns Me On tingle. Not quite, but that's the closest I can describe it. And I felt my body temperature rise. My hands seemed warmer.

And yet, the sky didn't fall. Later on when my friend's boyfriend kept wanting to watch boxing on tv, I didn't connect with it because of boy-hormones. I mean, essentially I feel pretty much the same as I did before.

Another friend got a shot, she called me up today and asked if my clit was throbbing, which it isn't really, but I have only been awake for a short amount of time.

I'm excited to see how this works for the next couple of weeks it's in my system.

********I have a phone again! A friend is lending me her ancient cell phone so now the temp agency can get in touch with me, and people can ask me out on dates. Ask me out on a date while the T makes me horny!********

Boy - Part 1

I think I went through the biggest part of my gender confusion when I was about nineteen years old. I remember this one time I was telling an older butch friend about a dream I had where I was a boy, and how it really made me wonder where my gender stood. There was this other woman hanging around, non-butch, totally didn't get it, while my friend just kind of nodded and agreed that any masculine woman these days has a moment where ya wonder, am I male or female?

There is this opening story in Stone Butch Blues about how the protagonist, Jess, is constantly asked if she is a boy or a girl. This was the constant question of my childhood too. Are you a boy or a girl? To think that even adults think they have the right to interrogate a child on their gender, that is sick.

At this point in my life, eight years of really doing major soul searching on whether or not I wanted to transition into a man, I have accepted that my gender is a question more than any answer. More than any allegiance to a binary, I have come to terms with living on the border of boy and girl. I know I wouldn't be happier with a more masculine body. Hair, deep voice, no, that's not really me. I don't feel completely comfortable inside a girl body either, but it's something I can work with until the day I shed this body and go to the other side, where something tells me I won't be a boy or a girl.

At the same time, ever since I was nineteen, hearing the fabulous stories of what a shot of testosterone can do, I knew I wanted to have that experience. Only once, a needle sinking into my butt, a couple of weeks of male hormones, possibly one or two minor physical changes. My dalliance inside maleness. And eight years after making the decision to temporarily modify my hormones, to possibly put a couple of gendered questions to rest, some trans friends of mine are giving me a shot.

It's the most exciting thing to happen to me all summer so far, and so of course with summer night drinks with friends I've excitedly told them about this new development in my life.

Okay, so I've had trans friends for ages, I mean, ever since I was in youth groups. I knew shit came at you for being trans, transphobia, yes, I thought I was really prepared for it. I also somehow thought that because I have educated and informed myself about transgender politics, I dunno, everyone else would have done the same thing.

Anyway, people have really freaked out about me getting this shot. They've challenged me on my gender, some people even said I wasn't butch. They've tried to talk me out of it. Some people have said they don't want to hear about how it goes. They've demanded to know what my body is going to look like after having one shot (this is a strange one, because my body is my own business). I'm just being an open honest dude about it and realizing that my openly transgendered butch status is turning me into an Other on a daily basis, with weird taunts about why in the world a nice girl like me would have a shot of T.

We decided we would do it this weekend, and I'm seeing them tonight. I'm a little intimidated by the needle, more so than what's going to take place in my body. The last time I got a needle in the butt was just before they strapped me down in four point restraints for three and a half hours. Soooo, being a leathergirl, of course I have to re-enact the scene to reclaim that moment in my life. My friends aren't tying me up, but we'll probably have a nice chat about boy hormones and ladies and things of that nature. It's an inch and a half long intramuscular injection, and apparently it can really hurt. I can take it, but that doesn't make me like it any.

This is an experience I just have to have in my life, a chance to see what difference, if any, having testosterone in my body makes. It comes from a deep desire to understand and know the human condition. And even though people have been really vocal about not wanting me to do it, it is my own journey that I'm on, and this is just one of those destinations I have been planning for a long time.

I doubt I will decide to continue taking hormones, but then again, no one can say with certainty what the future holds.

Filthy Lady

I was plodding to the bath to wash away the day. My landlord was making the Canada Day rent rounds. I gave him rent money, then he said "The Fire and Health Inspectors came to the building last month."
"Oh," I say very innocently. Shit shit shit, that was just before the Big Clean of 2005. That was when I could barely make it from my bed to the door. It was awful, and the mice were having some kind of carnival in my boxes.
"Your apartment was filthy."
"I know, I've cleaned since then."
"I have to inspect it again next month."
Sigh. What I hate is that these "inspections" so far haven't come with any warning. I know bc tenants rights have changed with the Campbell government, but I don't know if the old rule that you had to give 24 hours notice still stands. For all I know he could drop in any time he feels like it. Like a Santa Claus with no presents.
But I'm embarrassed that he saw my apartment when it was at it's all-time worst.
At the same time, I am glad a lot of other tenants in the building have mental illnesses, so he doesn't turf you out right away or scream or anything. He's pretty decent overall.

Result Report

Candidate Name: Cuthand, Thirza
Candidate ID: cuthandt
Candidate Email: f-------@excite.com
 
Evaluation Name: Administrative Support Skills
Evaluation Date: 6/26/2005 7:30:25 PM Pacific Time (US & Canada)
Questions Completed: 43 of 43      
Elapsed Time: 14 Minutes 34 Seconds
Questions Correct: 35
 
Overall Score 81%
   
Scores by Level
Basic 88%
   
Intermediate 94%
   
Advanced 55%
   
Scores by Category
Administration 73%
   
Filing 100%
 
Math 70%
   
Spelling 83%
   
End of Report

(Thirza can change the world through proper filing!)

In Search of Femmes

Sometimes straight people are exceedingly stupid.

My last girlfriend and I were making out in front of a Scotiabank security camera, my eyes were peeking at what we looked like, tongues slipping and sliding inside girl mouths, when I heard a surprised man's voice say "Thirza?"

It was some guy from school.

"She's not gay," he said of my sweetie, the woman I had just been macking on, the lady with dildos and harnesses and whips and lesbian porn in her bedroom.

"Well, no, she's bisexual," I said.

"No, she's straight." He was convinced. No way a girl could be that feminine and enjoy the company of other women, much less a rather masculine woman.

Some would argue that queer people are just as stupid. I think I have mentioned before the prevalance of dykes who shun uber-femme women in the community. I can't tell you how many of my lovers told me their pissed off stories about being given dirty looks or ignored outright by card carrying homos.

It does make for some awkward moments, being a butch who likes femmes, who especially likes bisexuals, to carefully choose who is safe to make the moves on. And it's true, in my life there have been many gorgeous femmes who turned out to be straight girls. But that doesn't mean every well coiffed lady is straight as an arrow.