Titty Twisters?

Hmm, I start this blog with no clue as to what to write. But they say you should write nevertheless.

I got my eyes checked today, they found a cataract, which I knew about anyway since the last time I got my eyes checked they noticed it. But it's not in a spot that hinders my vision. Anyway, what was really funny about it was that he asked me if I had ever been punched in the eye, because that's what could have caused it. I said no, but in the car on the way home I remembered the time some girls jumped me and my friend Danielle. I think I got punched seven times in the eye. And then ˆ probably had PTSD, thinking back on it now. It took a really long time to get my confidence up for walking in downtown Saskatoon.

Then the other day some redneck yelled something at me from a car. I don't think it was homophobic, but it could have been. He didn't say fucking dyke. It was really interesting to watch my own response though, first I was startled and ready to run, then in a matter of seconds I had my back up and was itching to pound the shit out of him. I was strategically thinking how to incapacitate him, and then I started considering all my options for causing the most amount of pain while he was on the ground. I always thought it was elegant street justice for a homophobe to be severely debilitated for the rest of his life for having the audacity to go after an innocent homo walking the dog. I mean, I was furious!!! I wanted to crack this guy's spine!

I didn't fight back the first time I got bashed, but I think any other times I would definitely go after them tooth and nail, pulling a Kill Bill and ripping out eyeballs kind of thing.

I secretly admire people who can do things like bite off a rapists penis or like my cousin, grab the gun of a rapist and point it straight back at them until they poo their pants.

That all being said, 99.998 percent of the time violence is so not the answer. And most of the time, luckily, you never have to make a spikey fist with all your keys and ram it into some guy's face.

I took self defense after my beating, but it was woefully absent on the issue of female attackers. They say you should just kick them in the balls, but unless your attacking woman is a pre-op tranny, that's really unhelpful. What do you do when a woman's getting rank on you? Titty twisters?

Ch ch ch changes!

Over the past few weeks I've been in a bit of a quandry as to what to do with my life. When Christopher died it really hit home the fact that we all have such a limited time here on earth, and our lives could end at any moment.

So . . . I had some debauched times, involving drinking, loads of pot, gambling, and my first trip to the horse track (I didn't win anything). After that was done, I still didn't feel any better about where my life was headed, especially after some splitting hangovers and watching money fly out of my wallet to the great capitalist unknown.

And some other things were bothering me too, besides not having a job and living with Mum again. Mum's not bad, but it's not exactly appealling to let cutie pies know you're still in your parent's house. Since being treated for bipolar disorder I've gained an excess of fifty pounds, most of it on my belly and rump. The first year the weight gain was so bad that I got massive stretch marks, which made me feel even worse. Lately I've discovered I can't bend over to attend to things on the ground or I start having trouble breathing. I'm getting really fucking sick of being fat.

I went to the doctor today and said I wanted off Zyprexa. Zyprexa, my antipsychotic friend for the past three and a half years. Besides being one of THE major drugs that causes immense weight gain, it is also linked to causing diabetes, which I'm already predisposed to. So I got a prescription for Lamictal, and over the next few weeks will be doing the taper off/taper on dance. Lamictal has it's own drawbacks, including a sometimes fatal skin rash. I never knew skin rashes could be fatal, but there ya go.

Not only that, but I'm going to try to stick to a sensible diet and exercise regime. Tonight I have to mow the lawn, but I'm also going to start going for half hour walks everyday.

My next health task is going to be quitting smoking. I really want to do it this time, especially since I haven't had a sweetheart the entire time I've been a smoker. It's blocking my womanly odors! But first thing is first.

I'm also in the process of getting together a demo reel to apply for jobs as an editor. I am a kick ass editor, in case you didn't know. There was a rumour for a while that all of my early work was in camera, but only Bisexual Wannabe was in camera, the rest was edited together on various machines, some of them very archaic. Also my cousin and I have an idea for a television show that we're going to try and get some development money for. I never thought I'd work in television, but I need a job, and it's a fun project.

Aside from that, life is strange. I thought I would be moving back to Vancouver, but after visiting there for a week I decided not to. I don't know where I would fit in, right now I'm seriously considering either Toronto or Winnipeg, although something tells me I should stay in Saskatoon for a while yet.

In other news, the general consensus among people I know here is that something BIG is about to happen, and not something nice either. I'm talking either a major terrorist attack or a natural disaster, and probably within a few months. I know, that's the most vague prediction I've ever heard too, but something isn't right in the world, there's a weird energy and I can't for the life of me put my finger on it. I googled End of the World predictions and nothing came up that looked remotely like what would happen. I don't think it will be the end or anything though, just some very rough, very difficult times. And probably a lot of death.

But maybe we're all wrong. Ya never know.

Either way, I want to get this spare tire of mine to roll away before the Big thing hits.

SCREAMS IN THE NIGHT!

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My cuz Deanna and I were up to no good over at her friend's place out in the country. We had just said goodbye to her sister when out of nowhere an unearthly noise pierced the darkness of midnight. I was so shocked to hear it that I started smoking my cigarette even harder to try and finish it and get back inside. It came again, an eerie cry that sounded not unlike a woman screaming in extreme pain, like she was being brutally murdered. It came again, and this time it was getting closer.

"What the hell was that?"

I have to admit, my first thought was that it was an animal, but as it got closer and closer and inspired more and more fear, I began to have all kinds of wild thoughts. It sounded so much like it was a woman, what if at any second a bloody woman with a knife in her eye staggered up the walk and shrieked, with her demented murderer coming close behind, ready to destroy all the regrettably stoned witnesses? Not only that, but it was coming so close to the house, and I finally gave up my cigarette and ran inside, where we told everyone what was happening and two men went out to investigate.

They had seen a cougar, or rather, heard it, the other night out near the barn. They imitated the shriek, and the shrieking came back, but when they yelled Hey! nobody came or answered. Meanwhile we were huddled in the instrument room with quivering knees. Convinced it was really "just" a cougar, things calmed down again. Until somebody started hearing things coming from the basement . . . where there wasn't anybody.

It's true, cougars have returned to Saskatchewan, even around that bustling metropolis, Saskatoon. And jesus, they really do sound like murdered women.

Swelter

It's HOT here in Vancouver, as in beads of sweat are running down my face, as in I want to pass out. It's been an interesting trip, full of, strangeness. I got to see a room of sweaty lesbians last night, which was really nice. I've been to the ocean, to various little happenings. I saw the totem pole which had been repatriated by the Haisla. David Sukuzi was there for the ceremony, he got the biggest applause. It's perfect beach weather, and it would probably be cooler at the beach, but I'm now running out of money and can't even go. Life's rough that way.

I REALLY miss Mister and Schrodinger, I get some reports on how they are doing. Mister is in Clicker Training for little dogs, and we still have to work on him ignoring bathroom rules, little doof. Everytime I see a little dog here (and there are a lot of them!) I miss my tiny pals. So far I haven't seen a weiner dog as handsome and adorable as Mister. And I'm sure Schrodinger is getting bigger too, little goof. He's got this really angular little face and such beautiful fur.

Either way, tomorrow night I will have my little friends with me again, and I'm looking forward to it.

I should really venture forth into the hot hot hot and find something else to kill the time. Arg, what can I do with a teeny amount of money in a big expensive city?

Christopher Ian Cuthand February 18 1986 - June 2 2006

We buried my little cousin on Thursday, out at Little Pine reserve. His death was tragic and sudden, and we are all forever changed.

When we talk about him, we can't help but laugh because he was such a hilarious guy. He was sort of shy, but had this cheeky sense of humour, everyone loved him instantly. When I lived in Vancouver I would regularily hear Christopher stories, funny things he said or did. I heard about one time when he finally got his lava lamp and freaked out late one night because he thought the blobs made the face of the devil at him. He had a hamster named Mr. T, and he loved making wontons with my mom. He was just this bright happy sunbeam in all of our lives.

It's been a really hard past week, more so because now we're just expected to go with the flow again, when we've had such intense time together.

He was so young, it really makes you aware of your mortality.

I think what's really pulling me through is this intense faith I have, something I wouldn't have gotten, ironically, if I hadn't gone crazy.

You never really can tell what's going to come around the corner.

Message from a Scraling

This place is a message… and part of a system of messages… pay attention to it!
Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.
This place is not a place of honor…no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here… nothing valued is here.
What is here is dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger.
The danger is in a particular location… it increases toward a center… the center of danger is here… of a particular size and shape, and below us.
The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours.
The danger is to the body, and it can kill.
The form of the danger is an emanation of energy.
The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.

This is a message being conveyed at Yucca Mountain, one of the biggest sites of nuclear waste. This message has to be created in a form which humans or other life forms 10 000 years into the future will understand, irregardless of how advanced or primitive (hate that word). (wrap your brain around that one!) If that's not scary enough, listen to this. The Shoshone, who have been contesting the nuclear waste site, have a legend that "tell[s] of Yucca Mountain (known as Snake Mountain) and how the snake would rise up as a horrific serpent if it were ever harmed." It's also the site of Shoshone and Paite prayer rings, burial grounds, and sacred waterways. Of course. I mean, talk about the set up for a gory horror movie starring a zombie Graham Greene on a horse.

"This land was sacred to my people since time immemorial, and now I want to EAT YOUR BRAINS!!!!"

Currently the plan is to architecturally construct the site in a very forboding manner, involving large thorny concrete spikes, large black looming rocks, and a sort of unmanned interpretive centre in all UN languages and Navajo (apparently the Shoshone and Paite will be gone by then).

If you think that's awful, consider this fact. Mount Rushmore, with those looming white man faces, is considered a sacred site by the Lakota. And it was good for their ar-thur-itis too. Actually, I just made that last part up.

But if you want to know something really trippy, Vikings called us scralings. Scralings, isn't that hilarious? It's like something out of Lord of the Rings or a really bad text video game.

Hands up all the queer girls who are ogling the Pepsi commercial

Last year around this time I wrote about Parker Posey's sexiest moment as the bitchy senior who sprays the freshmen girls down with condiments. Now I add her latest achievement, the Pepsi commercial. I would never call Pepsi commercials an achievement normally, but she is so freakin' cute in it. Someone said she looked dorky, I guess she makes dorky kinda hot though.

I've gotten hooked to the freakin' ad, and everytime I hear the jingle I drop whatever I'm doing and stand slack jawed in front of the television set drooling. And apparently I'm not the only one.

In honour of Parker Posey day (which I have just made up), here is a series of links. If you're a Parker Posey fan, you might find some of the links probative.

The commercial in it's entirety Although it sucks that Parker Posey doesn't come in until later, it does show some new Parker Posey Pepsi footage, oo la la. Including someone shoving her! That makes two terrible things to befall our heroine in one ad, the second being when that idiot man throws her up into the air and she doesn't come back. It would have been cooler if it ended with her booting him in the groin and taking his wallet. Any other suggested alternative endings, please post them in the comments section.

If you have not heard of Parker Posey you have obviously been living under a rock. But there's the Wikipedia entry for her.

At my graduation screening I was in the middle of a mixed episode, and screamed out to the audience "Hey! This isn't Josie and the Pussycats!"

An old friend who lived in the same crack neighborhood as I saw Parker Posey in our neighborhood park where the crack dealers hung out. And maybe you're thinking "Oh no, she was probably doing something more innocuous and movie star-ish like cocaine or marijuana," but believe me, all they sell there is crack. The only other thing people go to that neighborhood for is to visit the art centres. Drug trade, art, due to economic circumstances the two seem to go together. Who knows, maybe Parker Posey was just hanging out in a scary neighborhood. She didn't dance down the street or anything wild.

On a googling expedition I discovered this lovely stanza under the promising title "Parker Posey cum":
Parker Posey cum
Parker Posey lesbian
u several in they're etc.
ours eg nor j.
with has where's
latter masturbation had becoming
except end otherwise k co her
Parker Posey ..

Happy Parker Posey Day!

Survival Tactics

In the wild, animals hide their pains, injuries, and illnesses so that they won't be dinner for various carnivourous megafauna. As humans, we'd like to think we are different, but this is so not the case. Especially for those of us with invisible disabilities. Although we're entitled to accommodations, we still try REALLY hard to act normal. Crazy people especially (such as moi) have to behave impeccably well to not be percieved as lacking in the skills and wherewithall to get through life. If our disability is getting obvious, or we're starting to have a breakthrough episode, it gets really hard. It's not so much that people care what you're thinking or feeling, it's that people want your behavior to not interfer with their lives. Also, if you're in deep emotional pain, you could get passed over for that promotion, that job, that apartment, etc etc. People don't like to be around crazy people because either a) they don't know how to deal with a crazy person, or b) they think you'll kill them.

Not only that, but to be publically identifiable as someone dealing with mental health issues means you're also prey for any of the millions of human predators out there, be they sexual predators, violent predators, or even a certain dude I know who twice tried to steal my apartment and possessions and toss me into the street. You get stuck in slum housing in a rough neighborhood working a low paying job, or worse, living on the meager amounts disability pays. I think stigma plays a huge role in the fact that a large number of people with mental health issues are living on the streets or in rundown buildings.

And then you might want to survive by not telling anyone that you have an invisible disability. But what about the sick days you'll have to take at some point when meds need to be changed? Or if you have to go to the hospital? What about that uncomfortable abusive feeling you get when someone starts talking shit about crazy people?

I'm still coming out of a depressive episode, a rather mild one really, but still totally fucked and horrid. But I only thought about suicide for one hour, and that was a new record for me. Unfortunately I did think about cutting, which is something I've only ever done once five years ago. I still feel pretty crummy, and I know it will be another week before I'm operating at full capacity. So I wear the happy face. Not because I am happy, or that I feel I should be happy, but just because if it looks like my episode is as bad as it really is people will get pissed off and I'll probably get hassled a lot by people who want me to snap out of it.

It's just a survival strategy, don't show weakness.

Fuckin' Epson

I've wasted a goodly amount of new ink trying to get the printer to work. Now I find out after googling that Epson Stylus CX5400 is NOTORIOUS for fucking up with clogged ink after three cartridge changes. This means: 1. They make more money off ink by wasting it. 2. They make more money by charging ridiculous prices to "repair" the printer. Luckily this can all be solved by a very involved cleaning (NOT "head cleaning," I mean actually taking the thing apart and using citrus clean and a wire in the hose). Head cleaning has so far done ABSOLUTELY nothing to get the printer to print, in fact it is making it worse. All this and I have a deadline coming up to submit my screenplay to the Sundance Screenwriters Lab. Which means I probably will end up going over to my mom's to print after all. So the point is, don't buy Epson. Do research before you purchase a printer so you don't end up with a pathetic lemon like mine.

Heavy sigh.

I got Schrodinger a huge cat "tree" today. Basically it's a two level carpeted cat gym with a small box with round doors on the bottom. a sisal scratching post and ramp to the second floor, where a round cat bed is perched. The legs are also covered with sisal and there are SIX (kinda ridiculous) rattley balls dangling from more sisal rope. I thought he would need it so he can hide from Jago, cause I know he'll be kinda pissed at me and especially at the dog. The surprising thing is that it only cost about 55 bucks. The funny thing is he's nearly the same color as it.

Anyway, cripes, I gotta get to bed.

28 years old

Today is my birthday, and the first thing I did was a prat fall off my bed, reaching for the snooze button. My new kitten Schrodinger was very alarmed, especially since one side of the futon was on the floor with me, while the side he was on had catapulted him up in the air. Poor little guy.

Schrodinger just came home on Sunday, and he's still getting used to life here. He missed his sisters and mom for the first day, but now he's just being a regular kitten, goofing around and playing with his huge collection of toys. I can spend hours just watching his hilarious antics. He sure does cheer me up. Life already seems very different. And when the dog comes, it's going to be even more different. He's a really funny cat, he gets pissed off if his litter box is too dirty, he just mews and mews until I clean it.

Anyway, hmm. Every birthday I try to write what I've learned about life in the past year.

What have I learned?

I've learned that sometimes fulfilling your dreams means you have to go into a different direction than you imagined. I've learned a hell of a lot about writing a screenplay. I've learned that it's best to be who you really are, instead of pretending to be someone other people might prefer. I've learned about psychiatric service dogs and what they can be trained to do to help mitigate my illness. I've realized that I'm a deeply spiritual person, and also that even though I firmly believe in something (ie, and afterlife, the being some call God), other people are also entitled to their own beliefs. I've learned a lot about living with bipolar disorder.

I hope this next year will be good. A lot of things happened when I was 27. I got my BFA. I finished the first draft of my first feature. I had a dissolute unemployed summer. I worked briefly in a homophobic office. I moved back to Saskatoon, and got my first nice apartment and decent job. I started hanging out with an old old old friend again. In all, it has been a good year.

And life will be irrevocably changed . . .

I've talked in the distant past about my desire for a service dog. I've spent hours researching and planning and scheming and thinking and more research, and it is starting to come to fruition. I've got the toys. I've got the time. I've got the money. And I've met the dog.

He's very smart and beautiful, with a really adorable face that can change like quicksliver from mild inquisitiveness to full on friendly face with a great big smile. He's quiet and gentle and smart as a whip. He's housebroken and knows some commands. He's got a sweet little pointy face and a dedicated nature. He's a year old, which is good because little babies are a lot of work.

This is the year long plan for the young man:
1. Take him to obedience school (clicker training)
2. Start getting him acclimated to public places, people, and new situations
3. Start doing task oriented training (hopefully with the help of a qualified trainer who's trained psychiatric service dogs)
4. Take the Canine Good Citizen Test
5. Continue on to advanced task training, alerting, more obedience, and more public spaces
6. Take him to a service dog organization to get him tested and given service dog i.d.

I've also considered, just for fun, to take him to agility.

You may be wondering why I want a service dog. Yeah, I take meds, yeah, I'm going to start counselling, AGAIN, but there are certain things a dog can help me with that all the rest can't:
To alert me to oncoming episodes and get me to a safe place to deal with it.
To remind me of medication time.
To ground me when my mind starts racing by inturrupting and focusing on me.
To calm me when I get anxiety.
To alert to panic attacks.
To wake me up in the morning.
To give emotional support when I'm depressed.
To remove me from social situations when I'm overwhelmed.

And I'm sure my list of things he can do for me will grow with time. It's going to be very different. And I know I'll probably feel exhausted at times. But in the long run, he's going to do so much for my quality of life. And I'm going to have to adjust to caring for a very small and important being. I know I'll also run into obstacles, especially since Canadian law doesn't fully protect Psychiatric Service Dogs in the same way American law does. It will be hard, getting access rights, having training difficulties, finding the PSD handler's community, getting crapped on for having such a small service dog (Canadians still consider service dogs to be big guys, even though in the States toy breeds are also used), getting crapped on by other people with mental health issues for even having a service dog. It's all going to be full of it's own ups and downs.

People think service dogs always are on the job, but that's not totally true. He's going to be able to come home and be a regular dog, with lots of toys in all varieties and walks and playing fetch and romps in the dog park. He's even going to be able to have occasional sleepover/vacations with certain people so he has some down time. He'll play with other dogs and be best friends with a kittycat and get to make goofy faces and have controlled treats. He's even going to travel with me for a month in August to Utah, Ontario, and Quebec. I'm not bringing him with me on business related trips until I'm sure he and I have a good relationship and he's well behaved. After that, where ever I go, he'll usually come too, helping me along across time and space!

So if you see someone in a movie theatre with a long haired black and tan mini dachshund in a "service dog in training" vest, it's probably me.

Butch-Femme Misconceptions

Being butch, I get a lot of weird ideas about my sexual identity. One is the ever popular heterosexualized game "Who's the boy and who's the girl?" In bed, they mean. Like only ONE person is ever allowed to do penetration and only ONE person is allowed to be penetrated. It's very unimaginative, and probably one of the better reasons they should stay to boring het sex.

But when you're a shy boi who wears the pants, immediately it's assumed that you're the penetrator and your more girly sweetie is the one with her legs in the air. And yeah, there are a lot of butches and femmes who operate like that, and good for them. But just because some of us do that doesn't mean we're all like that.

I'm a bottom. That doesn't mean I'm not into strapping it on or lubing up my fist, but for me, what really does it is some luscious femme with a big silicone boner under her skirt (or pants, or overalls, or whatever she likes to wear). Some people say this means you're not a butch, to which I say bullshit. Masculine men and women everywhere like penetration, and I don't think it means you have to start wearing lipstick.

What other butch misconceptions are out there? Hmm. That we're pretend men or want to be men. Yeah, it has to be said that there are a number of butches who eventually embrace their own maleness and come out as fully fledged FTM's. But that doesn't mean ALL butches want to be men. A lot of us are happy in our female bodies, even as we do shop in the men's section.

Coming out as butch was really confusing, because I think I'm so gender complicated. I tried wearing boy undawears because I thought it was expected of me, but in reality I feel way hotter wearing ridiculously feminine bras and panties. Plus boy gaunch were way too contricting around my ample girl thighs. Elaborate lacy things underneath a veneer of masculinity is HOT HOT HOT, and some of my partners have thought so too. I still remember the terrific thrill I got when a lover of mine tore off my button up shirt and found a fancy green and black lace brassiere underneath. And I remember how my femme lover was always enamoured of my pink frilly panties she would find under my jeans.

That all being said, sometimes I do like stuffing things down my pants. My favorite all time stuffer was a banana covered in a condom. As the day progressed it got mushier and mushier, until I finally threw it away, condom and all, into a garbage can at Emily Carr. I wouldn't be surprised if a hungry art student fished it out and ate it.

Off topic: Once at Emily Carr there was a garbage sign with a label which read "This is Art, not a Garbage Can." People threw garbage in it anyway.

One other thing I hate about butch misconceptions is that we're traitors to the female of the species. I think we're actually an integral part of the female experience. We've been on the vanguard of many political movements, and not just the queer rights movement. I hate that butch is considered an insult by some queers of my generation.

But what about femmes, you may ask?

Femme misconceptions run just as rampant, if not more so. I think the biggest complaint I've heard from my femme lovers has been how hard it is for them to be recognized as queers, not only by straight people, but by queer people too. I remember one time I was necking with my high femme lover in a Scotiabank ATM when some dude from ECIAD walked by. She started doing something else while I chatted with him.

"She's not gay," he told me, even after her tongue was down my throat right in front of him.

"No, she's bisexual."

"No she's not, she's straight." He'd never even talked to her but because she was a femme, apparently she couldn't like pussy.

But it happens with dykes too, ESPECIALLY if you're lover's bisexual. Because it's assumed that they won't ever consider a girl as a serious long term partner. And there are some bisexuals who lean more towards one side than the other, but you never really know what will happen when love just clicks.

I think my current favorite theorist on butches is Judith Halberstam. If you haven't read her work you should really check it out. I'd like to read some femme theory if I can get my hands on it, but with no dedicated homo book store in S'toon, I'm open to recommendations so I can order some in.

I've heard the crabs screaming

It's slowly becoming a birthday tradition for me to munch crab, drink champers, and live large, if only for one day. Because what else are birthdays for but belt popping fullness on food you'd ordinarily never eat?

I may have waxed romantic on crab dinner before, but now, out here on the prairies, with nothing more exotic than Red Lobster, a good crab dinner is hard to find. I don't want merely frozen legs doing a chorus line on my plate, I want a whole goddamned crab, curled up in it's own last moment of agony on my plate. I want oysters on the half shell, doing their last dance down my gullet.

I must say though, I do have a wave of regret about crab. I find it difficult to eat one if I've heard it screaming, which was why having a fancy restaurant kill it for you was so appetizing. They say crabs can't scream, but I was so sure I heard it once. Maybe it was just the sound of boiling water running through it's tiny body. Or maybe it did scream.

I recently purchased 11 dollars of snow crab legs. Frozen in a chorus line package. No screams for me.

But for my birthday, yes, we're going to have to buy live crabs and lobsters and kill them. I don't think I'll be able to look!!! But I'll definitely be able to chomp away at the wee crustaceans.

See, and this is probably the only reason I would be a vegetarian if it was the OLDEN days. No way could I chop the head off a chicken or chase a bison off a cliff. I'd be too squeamy. I'd say "um, I think I'll just have these berries, thanks anyway," and then they'd (the neighborhood) would all laugh at me as I got diarrea. And they'd probably be annoyed at me for eating all these berries.

(Name that comedian)
"I will hide these berries under a rock. There will be no berries, and some animals will die."

I recently purchased crustacean cutlery. Some shell cracking instruments and some long pointy forks with wee spoon like devices on the ends of them for pulling out MEAT.

Which brings me back to vegetarians.

Now I don't mind vegetarians, unless they start harping about my diet (dude I'm native, we FREAKIN' love meat!) but I heard a rather disturbing rumour about vegetarians some years ago. I may even have mentioned it here. But it's SO bizarre that it bears repeating.

I heard that vegetarians eat human placenta because it's the only meat that doesn't involve killing something.

Now that's sick!

I thought it was just an urban legend, but then I asked my good friend "New Man X", who was at the time an avowed vegan.

"We were going to eat my best friend's placenta" she calmly replied, well, with a hint of saliva creeping out of her mouth.

It was too much, the thought of a group of vegans hungrily frying up placenta. I heard it's a good cure for post partum depression, but ew, that's pretty desperate.

Now that makes the screaming of the crabs sound much more tolerable. I mean, I imagine menstruel clots are pretty similar to placenta, but I wouldn't collect them and make omelets, ya know what I mean?

The Icy Blast of the Past

I recently had the most ridiculous dream, involving my ex-one-time-lover from high school and Nicole Kidman. We were wearing top hats, sitting next to Nicole Kidman at a premiere. Nicole was going to be in a film I was making which was completely in German (I don't speak German and I doubt Nicole does).

Now, I wasn't as surprised to find Nicole Kidman in my dream, considering since I've moved to Saskatoon I've had celebrity cameos in my nocturnal slumbers on a fairly regular basis. But I was surprised to see Miss X (her name is unique enough that she would be justified in giving me a boot kicking for naming her), since I had thought of her only rarely in the intervening years since adolescence.

But it did give me pause for thought. For one thing, I was pretty awful as a teenager. I did a bunch of stuff I regret. Hormones are so crazy when you're a teen, and jealousy is horrid. I was fucked up and confused and mean, and I was way too preoccupied with the advice and opinions of others. I think as I've matured, I've wanted to go back and try to make amends.

I found her email, sent a message of apology, and you know, I really have no expectations. I won't even mind if she never emails me back, I'm just grateful that a dream pushed me towards trying to fix something that went terribly wrong. Maybe it will inspire me to be more open in future relationships.

She's still as beautiful as when she was a teenager, and I was awkwardly crushed out. I hope that time has given me the grace to act more honorably towards those I love.

I'm shrinking!

I may have mentioned the terrible flu I got just before I moved, how I lay in bed for a week and didn't eat, and consequently lost so much weight my pants were falling off. Well, I've been eating, way better food too, and still, the weight is slowly slipping off me. I'm wearing my "skinny" pants now, which are still pretty big, and now they're starting to fall off too. Someone even told me I had baggy clown pants, since my butt is getting smaller and smaller.

It's so weird, just when I was starting to be comfortable being fat, now I'm losing weight. Pour quoi?

It could be because I'm eating less junk food. It could be because I'm smoking next to nil pot, and hence having less munchies. It could be because I have a job that entails moving around. Who can say? All this, and I still haven't signed up to be a member of the Y yet, which is on my list of things to do.

Two of the most important things for a wee bipolar person like myself to do is to eat healthy and get lots of exercise. Finally I'm in a financial position where I can actually realize those things. Sure, exercise is sort of free, but to actually have some spare cash to get a subsidized membership to the Y and access to their gym and swimming pool is kind of amazing.

Next week I get my first Good Food Box of Organic veggies and fruits. PLUS I have been drinking this really yummy protein shake my mother showed me how to make.

The recipe is as follows:
Add 1 quarter of soft tofu to 8 ounces of orange juice (or other juice if you prefer, I've been using Pineapple & Orange Fruit and Veggie juice). Blend with a hand blender. Then add in five frozen strawberries, chopped up a little bit, and blend that in too. Next add two heaping tablespoons of frozen blueberries and blend again. Next, add one tablespoon of golden flax (or regular, but golden looks nicer). Stir and drink!

Don't go all hardcore and live on JUST that drink, but as a breakfast substitute it's pretty decent and healthy.

Yes, maybe I am finally winning the battle of medication side effects. I felt pretty betrayed by such a drastic weight gain happening all because of meds that I need to be stable. Not to downgrade the Sexy Fat Girl movement, because fat is sexy. I guess, I just missed being able to go into a store and find things that fit me.

Of course, the flip side of this is that the last time I lost weight, I went into full on mania. A strangely common side effect of mania is that we all look so svelt. Then again, I don't feel manic, my sleeping patterns are fine, and while work has it's own stresses, it's not as stressful as the situation I was in when I flipped out (ratty apartment with nothing, not having a bed, living with someone's abusive boyfriend, living in Montreal and not speaking any french, blah blah blah.)

Oh yeeeeeah! I am a GOD!

This morning I turned on my computer, only to see it do something completely heinous and evil like NOT RESPOND AT ALL!!

I shouldn't say not respond at all, the power light came on, only to go into epileptic fits of blinking madness. And then the fan went into overdrive. EEEK!

I checked some stuff quickly online, then went through my terribly slim manual that came with the thing. Then I decided it probably had to do with the RAM, due to the blinking lights, then went into the guts of my computer, took out both RAM cards, and then reinstalled them.

It was a little nerve racking, being so involved with the guts of what is a pretty crucial part of my life. So many ways to fuck up. But it worked! The computer's back up and running and I didn't have to take it down to some repair place and spend my pay cheque.


There is one thing I noticed though, which is that the inside is awfully dusty, I'll have to get a can of compressed air and do some tech-y dusting.

I feel like a god. There is nothing like knowing you can conquer technological problems. I think that's why I love my job. It's sometimes like doing a really abstract puzzle.

Anyway, I think I'm going to try and install Linux on one of my partitions. We'll see how it goes.

Three years have passed

It's been three years since I stepped out of the hospital to freedom. I had no money, so it wasn't long before I was back as work, still crippled by my experience.

The hospital. It's such a bland sounding word, nothing near the sheer horror of really being there. I mean, really being there. I remember confusion, and an overwhelming sadness. I'd wanted to kill myself before, but there, I was really ready to do it. I didn't know if I would ever get out, there was a lot of talk about behaviour, being good, as if having a psychotic episode automatically makes one the opposite of good, which is evil. I remember not knowing what was expected of me. For most of my stay, I made my bed every morning.

I have never made my bed before or since.

But there was this thing, about being normal. About not having religious thoughts. Who decides what is normal? Who makes up these standards?

I remember nurses talking down to me like I was a child, and how much I resented that.

I remember being forced to capitulate to the psychiatric health care system, and how much I resented the people who put me there.

I remember abuse, being put in restraints twice, for hours at a time. I remember bruises from the orderlies, and being screamed at for no good reason at all.

There is still an overwhelming sadness about the experience, about being degraded solely for having a mental illness. About being treated as a disgusting subhuman, and being blamed for things I could not control, and some things I had nothing to do with. Once an alarm went off on it's own and I remember an orderly coming into the room where I was sleeping and screaming at me that I had something to do with it, it was my fault. As though I was such a powerful crazy person that I could do things in my sleep.

I remember it was the first time in years that I got to eat three meals a day, instead of the one meal I had been subsisting on for ages.

I remember the loneliness, alienation.

It changes you. Once you've been hospitalized, once you've gone to that dark place, people look at you differently. People are scared of you. People try to control you afterwards. People assume you are a broken human.

As time passes, I find that the people I trust the most have been hospitalized too. It's an experience that almost becomes an identity, because you know that the only safety is with others who you can turn to who have been there too.

Three years have passed, and it still makes me cry. I guess I should celebrate the fact that I haven't been back since. But sometimes, I just feel frustrated that so much happened to me there and there's nothing I can do about it.

I know someone who was sexually assaulted when she was in the hospital. But no one believed her, because she was crazy.

Recently a bus driver taking some patients to another hospital stopped for a drink. When he got back, all the patients had escaped. So he picked up some people and offered them a free ride, what he didn't tell them was that it was to the hospital.

It took them three days to convince the staff that they weren't patients.

It could happen to you, even if you are sane.

Dreams and my big butt

I was listening to my favorite radio program when they started talking about how maybe, just possibly, our waking life is really the dream state, and our dream state is the reality. I pondered this and happily went into dreaming, thinking, wow, what if this is my real life.

I dreamt it was summer, and I was on my way to the Osbournes house, to see Ozzy and Kelly and Jack and Sharon. Someone had written in their bathroom "Our friend Thirza has a really big butt."

I got mad, and wrote "Fuck you," underneath it.

The night before Columbia from the Rocky Horror Picture Show had been tapdancing through my dream.

Yeah, I don't really believe that's my reality, although it sure is entertaining.

A Question of respect

I've been thinking a lot these days about the reaction of the Muslim and Western worlds to the Danish cartoons. While I in no way agree with violence, they do have a valid point. Although Christianity has never forbade depictions of Christ, Muslim law is very clear about not allowing depictions of their Prophet. And while we may disagree with certain Muslim laws, such as forbidding homosexuality, respecting their rules about Muhammed is relatively easy. Don't draw Him.

Especially when tensions are already running high with the current colonization of Iraq. Because let's face it, that is what is going on there. As a person who comes from a colonized race, I can see that clearly this is an issue of subjugating a race.

Now I hear there's a bounty on the head of the cartoonist, which is sad.

But what it comes down to is a question of respect. If we ever are to get on good terms with the Muslim world, we have to respect their differences. Otherwise this whole cycle of violence will just continue, on and on.

The horrors of Personals

Personals really kick the shit out of one's self esteem. I spent the latter part of the evening surfing various personals sites desperately seeking Miss Femme.

First of all, they ask for various pieces of information, like race.

Now, I'm biracial, and I like to be upfront about that. If I were to check the box saying I was European, well, I might end up with some racist bitch who hates Aboriginals. But on the other hand, I feel like a liar just saying Aboriginal (which by the way, none of the sites have, it always has American Indian, which is wrong on so many levels.) because I'm a pale little chickie and I feel way more comfortable choosing the middle ground where I actually live. However, a surprising number of personal sites don't allow for choosing more than one race. Pick one dammit! It's a sad reflection of society today.

Secondly, gender. I choose to live in a female body and be masculine, and I'd much rather choose a box marked Other than female or male.

Thirdly, I'm butch, no matter what my mother tries to tell me (or other obnoxious straight people for that matter who automatically think butch means ugly), and I like femmes. I feel most at home in butch-femme relationships. To me, an option for "I am a butch seeking a femme" seems like a given in a dyke personals site. And there are some (one) site specifically for that, but as far as I can tell there are no people from Saskatoon there.

Yes, it looks like I will never find a girlfriend. And besides that, how the hell do you screen for people who are bipolar friendly? As soon as you tell someone you have a pretty damned heavy duty mental illness, they run screaming for the hills. But to not tell someone, that's even worse, because why have a lover who you can't tell everything to?

I've been told my standards are too high (ie, more obnoxious straight people who don't recognize the fact that a gorgeous femme would be attracted to an equally gorgeous butch), but when I think about certain past lovers, I recognize that at numerous times I threw my standards out the window, mostly involving staying with abusive partners until friends told me I was scraping the bottom of the barrel.

And then there's the section for weight. Yeah, I'm fat. But how do you word that. "a few extra pounds (like twenty or thirty? Who decides how many is a few? Is it only ten?)' I don't like putting in heavy, I dunno, maybe it's my own internalized fat-phobia. Maybe it's because I am big but it looks really good on me. I dunno.

All this and I truly think it's an exercise in futility. I've really tried to stop being lesbian the past year, in the hopes that at least I could find some comfort with some warm body, but dammit, men just bore me sexually.

Maybe I'll just have to get famous and find some star struck woman.

My nipples are going to fall off

Yes, I come from Saskatchewan. I mean, I really come from here, my ancestors wandered around hunting bison and I now wonder . . . HOW THE HELL DID THEY STAND THE COLD!!??

Oh sure, Vancouver has the glum drawback of raining for weeks on end without a break, but at least one is moderately warmish.

That was the thought racing through my head as I endured the coldest day this winter. It was -27 this morning, and felt like at least -35 when I went home.

There’s not really any reason to complain about it, since my work and home are within quick walking distance to the bus stops, and by now I have figured out my route and the relevant bus schedules. But even inside at work I ended up wearing mittens, which don’t really jive with coiling cables. And yes, my nipples were hard as rocks and felt like they were going to pop off my breasts, roll down my shirt, and scamper across the floor.

HOWEVER, today I finally got hooked up to the internet and cable t.v. (with 200 channels!), I stocked up on 181 bucks worth of groceries, and I am gonna stay in and relax with food and entertainment. Plus I get pornography on my television for the first month! How could I complain?

Yes, it looks like with enough preparedness, even subzero temperatures are bareable.

Tattoo Meanings, Water and Fire

When I was about twenty I decided I wanted to get tattooed. Maybe it was my best friend, the fabulously tattooed Margaret Flood. Maybe it was just because I wanted something on the outside that told a story of something on the inside.

I wanted bands of fire and water around my biceps, fire on my right, waves of water on my left. Initially I wanted them because they told the story of how it feels to be biracial, two seemingly opposing sides, both with their own unique power. I wanted the duality of myself to be right there in every one's face. I wanted to show how it was a constant struggle to find the balance between races.

When I was 24 I was hospitalized for a psychotic episode. During my research into manic depression, I came across a comment by the esteemed psychiatrist Kay Redfield Jamieson about how manic depressives often draw images of water and fire during psychotic and manic episodes. These two elements are hardwired into our brains as symbology which explains our illness to others.

It struck a chord within me. The angry waves of water which now adorn my left bicep represent the seemingly innocuous (compared to high mania) of depression, the fear of drowning in sadness, the danger of suicide. On the other side, my flames of mania threaten to consume me in convoluted thought, rash actions, high energy burning up my seratonin and dopamine. ACTIVE, and also very dangerous.

These are the two forces I have to reconcile within myself, and having them etched into my skin makes me feel proud. Proud for surviving those dark nights when I wasn't sure if I would live to see morning, proud for living through a really horrific hospitalization and being able to recreate myself, to put myself back together into someone I can live with.

And yes, my own feelings about my race continue to live on through my tats.

I have some further tattoo work I want to complete sometime in the near future. I want some old school stars on my forearms. The next really complex work will be a Virgin of Guadalupe on my chest which will be drawn to resemble even more a vulva. That's kind of my nod to accepting and transforming Christian iconography into a more sexual celebration. Personally I have never felt more spiritual than when I am having sex with a woman I really love, and so I want to honour that. Plus I rarely ever show off my cleavage, so it's not going to be a very public tattoo. I have a few more ideas, but before I decide on a tattoo I want it to have a really deep meaning for myself.

Some people say "But what about when you're old and wrinkly and it all looks weird!" Hey, all of me will be old and wrinkly, and look weird. Why deprive myself of images I feel are beautiful on my body just because I'll look strange when I'm in the old folks home?

Besides, hopefully by then there will be an old folks home for queer perverts like me, in which case saggy tattoos will be quite common place.

Snow Legs

Not snow crab legs. I mean trudging through ice and snowbanks on wobbly legs with muscles I haven't used for ages since it rarely ever snows in Vancouver. I had a ridiculously long walk home from work because I got on the number 6 instead of the number 6A. Rode it up past my old high school (hello Aden Bowman!), got off at what I thought was the curling rink but in fact was an old age home (I swear the building looked the same!). Walked blocks and blocks in moderately cold temperatures, my calves aching. Then all I had energy to make for dinner was beans and weiners.

Good thing I had my ipod with me to keep me company.

My ipod advice for the day:
If you're a Mac user and you're looking for a good copy program to get your files off of your ipod onto your computer (because Itunes won't let you do this), the best free program out there is Senuti.

Apparently two of my boxes went missing in the move, and I am hoping to god it's not the one with the dildos or the two hundred dollar whip. I'm not really going to know WHAT's missing until I unpack everything, maybe there isn't even anything missing at all, just some stickers fell off. I've looked over my boxes and while I thought I knew what they look like, I honestly can't remember. Oh, I hope it's not the chip box filled with shoes and boots, because some of those are like, at least 600 bucks worth of fluvogs. I have all my porn comix, because I lent them to Velveeta and she gave them back just before I left.

Yeah, that whole last paragraph was just a weird display of my skewed priorities. I mean, it could be a couple boxes of expensive academic books, and that would break my heart too.

If it was some dishes I wouldn't mind.

If my top hat's missing I'll cry.

Some jerk kept trying to get me to sell him my top hat. Fuck off!! It's MY TOP HAT! I mean, how many places can you get a top hat these days?

Tomorrow I get to price Time Base Correctors and racks, I like my job.

Chain drinking Sodapop

Mmm, do I ever love pop. It's my main vice. Anyone who tries to come between me and bubbling sweetness of cola is in for trouble. Why anyone whould want to stop me from drinking cola is beyond me, it's such an innocent vice.

Well, today was my Sunday, so mom and I went apartment hunting and looked at a really REALLY cute one bedroom in an old character building downtown. It has nice hardwood floors, a nice kitchen, cute bathroom, some good windows. It's about a hundred bucks more than I was willing to shell out, but that includes heat and hot water, and apparently electricity isn't that much a month.

I am very into living in character buildings, not sure why, I think it's their aesthetics. Modern buildings seem very cold.

It looks like I'll get this place too, which would be great. It's close to work, sort of. It's a bit of a walk but not too bad, and maybe it will help me get my weight down a wee bit.

Here's something strange:

Since getting diagnosed manic depressive and going on a cocktail of Epival, Zyprexa, and Celexa, my weight ballooned up so rapidly that I was riddled with red angry stretch marks. I never lost any weight until I got really sick after new years. I quite literally didn't eat for a whole week, I just felt too miserable to cook or even get out of the house for something to munch on. So I went out to get boxes when I felt better and I had lost so much weight that my pants were falling right off my butt.

It really panicked me. For once I was desperate to get some of my weight BACK, even though technically it pushes me into the obese range.

The fact is, I look really good naked. I wear my blub quite well, in all sorts of nice places. Finally, after three years, I like being a fat girl. It's sexy in a ridiculous way.

Someone told me if I quit drinking soda pop I could probably lose a lot of weight. I thought it was the most inappropriate rude comment I'd heard in ages. I think I told her to fuck off. Fuck off is the best phrase for us fat girls to use.

Mmm, gonna get me another soda pop, watch election coverage with my mom, and get together a list of references.

Sassytoon

Well, here I am! I'm sure you've been wondering if I would ever write in here again, and so here it is! I've had about a month of massive changes going on in my life, including leaving Vancouver for Saskatoon, where I now work at paved Art + New Media as the Production Coordinator, so if you're in Saskatoon and you're making media art, you'll probably be dealing with me.

I got dreadfully ill just after new years and was pretty much housebound for over a week, while also assessing the immense mess of my home and trying to figure out how to pack it all up. It was a bit of a nightmare. Thank god packing and moving is over, now I just have to find a reasonably priced one bedroom which will let me have a weiner dog, and unpack all my stuff which is enroute.

I've been pretty busy here since I got back, in addition to starting my new job. There seems to be a lot going on here, which in some ways is good. But in other ways, I dunno, I am a bit of a hermit. Which is why living with my mom and cousin right now is a bit stressful, I like having time to be alone, to not feel so weird or pressured to perform. I value my down time. I've heard it said that writers and thinkers need a lot of leisure time compared to other people, and that it is in fact a part of the creative process. That is definately true in my case. I've even been told that I'm lazy and unmotivated and hate to work (which trust me, is not true). But the fact is, I need alone time to listen to music and gather information on the world and have conversations in my head between fictional characters who may or may not ever see the light of day. It is work.

Tonight I'm off to an opening, but god, it feels like I've been busy ever since I got here, and all I really want to do is have a night of slacking off. Just watching television, eating ice cream, and chatting on the phone to various long distance friends. dfffffffff cat did it. Now here's curling up on my shoulders. I have to go pet him.

See, no slacker time for me!

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.