Unsettling Healthy Advice

I am drinking Sunrype Fruit and Veggie drink. Every glass gives you two Canada Food Guide servings of fruit and vegetable. It's full of yummy goodness. I am suddenly an advertisement. I apologize.

See, it all started earlier today with my friend "nameless." She used to be a socially corrupting influence. Suddenly she is full of so much good advice and health tips that I'm the baddy. I still smoke. Still eat meat. Still use drugs. Still eat junk food from the whole spectrum of junk food. Have fatty foods.

She is getting skinnier and passing her clothes on to me.

I am beginning to long for the good healthy lifestyle. She is rubbing off.

And somehow she knows me better than I wish she did. It's kind of funny. Today we were talking about a certain someone and she kept saying to me "You still want her, I KNOW you still want her. Don't you? Don't you?!" and I was all cowering in the corner saying "Get out from inside my head!"

DIVERSION!!!
FILM FEST SWAG: I got a pair of boxer shorts from the Rendevous with Madness film festival in Toronto (where my newest tape Love & Numbers played) that has a fish on the butt with the words Nice Bass over it. If you ask me nice I'll bend over and let you see my Bass.
***********************

So I went to the store today where I usually buy myself a Coke. But I've been hearing more and more scary things about the Coca-cola company these days. So I got this juice, this special ultra healthy juice.

I am bad about vegetables. I eat them so rarely. I like them. I know they're better for the world if you eat vegetables. But why eat vegetables when you could have BACON!!!!!!

Truthfully I tire of bacon.

I have to clean the bathroom before twelve o'clock or I turn into a pumpkin.

I have the right shape to be a pumpkin.

I tire of my body shape. I wish my stomach had real muscles, not these piddly bands of fiberous tissue.

I tire of my life. I am stuck in a rut in a specific part of my life and it's really starting to wear on me. I'm tired of being messy. I'm tired of being unhealthy. I'm tired of my body. I'm tired of smoking and doing drugs. I'm tired of being paranoid. I'm tired of having no spiritual focus to my life.

It's crunch time and I am procrastinating. I should be working on papers. Instead I cast my words into the internet void.

Say hello to the so-called world, words.

Hello.

Click on the ads!

I'm trying out a new way of getting ad based revenue. I know my readership is small, but if you click on the ads then I get paid, which means I'll be able to devote more time to this blog. And if I can devote more time, then I'll be able to launch my t-shirt line and you can all wear genderfucking tees!! So click on the ads please!

The pitfalls of Aboriginal identity in art

Recently a woman at my school was writing a paper on my work and phoned me up to ask some questions. It was a saturday night and I was thinking about other things, like this dream I had about being in a German mansion during the war, and the papers I am writing on trans photography, butch representations, and Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gomez-Pena's "Two Undiscovered Amerindians in Spain." Anyway, I should note that the presentation-paper this woman is writing is for an Aboriginal contemporary art class. She was asking if she could find any other work I had done (I had previously told her to go to Video Out because they had more videos than the ECIAD library). I told her I was very sorry but I didn't have any other tapes with me beyond "Anhedonia." I've moved around a lot over the past few years and my stuff's not with me right now.
"It's just that all your videos are about being gay! They aren't native!" she said.
What?
I suppose I could have explained two spirited identity to her, but I was tired.
I suppose I could have said "Well I'm native, therefore so is the work."
I suppose I could have said "Why does being gay preclude being native?"
Or I could have said "Ugh, I'm not gay, I'm a homo, a queer, a pervert, a genderqueer, a transgendered butch, a two spirited person."
There are assumptions made within contemporary Aboriginal art practices that to be an "authentic" Aboriginal artist, you have to talk about specific things in your work. Your work should utilize specific Aboriginal modes of production. And particularily for white looking Aboriginals such as myself, you must continuously "out" yourself as an Aboriginal. You can't rely on a name like Cuthand to do it for you. (In the prairies you only need to say the name Cuthand and you're immediately identified as Cree.) I've even been criticized for NOT talking about my family in my work (a dubious statement at best, considering my second video was about my sister, although that was about being related to someone severely mentally handicapped, not someone native).
The question is, to what extent are we imposing constraints on the expressions of Aboriginal artists? If I make a video about sex, let's say, lesbian sex at that, will I be accused of being assimilated and colonized? Will my artistic treaty card be revoked? It's a fine line my friends, a damn fine line.
There is also a split, a sad ripping apart that has happened within me, where being queer meets being native and people just don't want to see both going on at once. It's a lonely feeling, that one part of one's identity gets jettisoned in favour of another. I don't do it. Other people do. When I wake up in the morning I'm a halfbreed body dreaming of women, when I go to sleep at night it is the same thing. I find my gender, sexuality, and mixed race identity to be linked, for better or for worse. How else could I live on the borderlands of gender without a lifetime of navigating the borderlands of race? One has prepared me for the other. Even coming out as a lesbian was easy because growing up I had to come out as Aboriginal over and over, often to individuals who had just made a racist statement. I understood the political implications of being open about identity.
So what is my work about? All kinds of things. Whatever is bothering me usually, something gets under my skin and I just have to talk about it. I think that's a good enough motive for art. Being a person who deals with a full deck of oppressions, I have a lot of material to draw from. And while tensions exist between the Aboriginal and the Queer community (racist queers, homophobic Aboriginals), they are both places from which I derive a lot of strength and support. I started making work for the Queer film festival circut, but surprisingly I was welcomed into Aboriginal film festivals as well, even with work that spoke mainly about being a homo. Now I just make work that needs to be made, without concerning myself too much about what communities the content speaks to. I figure it's not worth my time to worry about being Aboriginal enough or queer enough. I am beyond that. And I think a lot of emerging Aboriginal artists want to get beyond it as well. We want to be artists, first and foremost, and if our work takes people places they weren't expecting (whether that be a purely formalist approach to art, politically charged personal narratives, or simply a story about a girl in a dungeon dumping her Evil Queen girlfriend) then so be it.
It's 2004 as I write this, and a lot has already changed since the turn of the millenium. With the horrifying visions of eroding civil rights in the United States and it's continual march towards global imperialism, Queers and Aboriginals have more in common than ever. It's time for us to eradicate racism, transphobia, homophobia, sexism, and all the other isms in order to band together. Any form of oppression hurts us all, including the oppressions we impose on ourselves in looking for "appropriate" subject matter. Aboriginal identity is far more complicated than the current dominant paradigm allows.

Is Bush The Antichrist?

Come on, you know you've suspected it. You've probably heard the reptilian shapeshifting rumours. Or read some Nostradamous quatrain. Well here's some ridiculous Bush links, all to help fuel you for a day of fun Bush Bashing.

George Bush Is The Antichrist!
The only problem with this site is the annoying dramatic music which you cannot turn off. I recommend it only for serious conspiracy buffs, and to read it with your computer sound turned off, or you will go slowly nuts.

George Bush: Mistaken
When asked during a press conference if he had made any mistakes, Bush couldn't recall. So this person made a video to help jog his memory.

The Pope Fears Bush is the Antichrist!
Self explanatory.

Bush Is Lord
A hilarious send up of Bush's messianic delusions. Note the press photos of him as Jesus.

BONUS!!!
Condi Rice is Angry
All the angry photos of Condoleeza Rice.

Happy surfing!

Sorry, Everybody

Photographs of Americans very sorry about their election results and what it means for the world.
Link

"They're really powerful"

he said, as he gave me a small handful of powdery mushrooms. Okay, whatever. It was halloween, and I didn't think of it much. It was supposed to be good time night. And I guess I wasn't really thinking that the last time little mushrooms had crossed my path, I wasn't taking manic depression drugs, specifically Zyprexa.

"So an antipsychotic and a mushroom walk into a halloween party. . ."

And the first hour was okay, and so was the second, although I was starting to feel a little tripped out. Wacky. Slow and slipping into molasses. We go to a friend's apartment for something to drink. Water. La la la. This is nice.

Then everything goes to black.

Waking up and my friends are shaking me asking me if I need an ambulance. I think of the hospital. I think of going crazy. I figure compliance is the best thing. "yes, that could be a good idea," I concur. Some paramedics come. I list everything I've been on for the night. Beer. Antipsychotics. Pot. Mushrooms. Mood Stabilizers. Yep, my body's one big old party. I still feel high. Stay calm stay calm. Whew. This bowtie is hot. Good thing I wasn't wearing my new top hat when all this tragedy hit.

At the hospital time drags on. The nurse is dressed as a ghoul, another one is a princess. Some crazy people come in. Someone who was slipped a hallucinogen and is freaking out. Some guy got his arm broken and is screaming bloody murder. And two people have been stabbed.

Later on I also hear that Halloween is a big time for babies being stolen from hospitals. Weird.

I'm feeling better, but the hours drag on until it's 7:30 in the morning. Grey light filters onto the street as I leave the hospital, vowing to never again mix an anti-psychotic with a hallucinogen.

****************

So they voted for Bush. And the world throws it's hands up in exasperation. I don't even know what to say, but I feel I should post something. Nah. We all know what it means, more freakin' wars, more desperate imperialism for oil. Blah.

Yesterday I bought a persian carpet for only twenty bucks. Woo! It's a bit dirty, I have to find a place to clean it up for me, but at least now I have a rug, which I have needed for a while. Ugh! I really have to clean my room AND write a paper and figure out my presentation of Stanislavsky. Blah.

Anti Bush Music Video

From Eminem
My favorite part is where he makes putting on a bunnyhug a revolutionary act.

I am lonely

Being in Montreal is bizarre, to say the least. It's not the people I am having trouble with, but my own ghosts, the little shadow of Thirza that still walks down these streets, all shattered and fucked up. And it's a strange feeling, because in Vancouver I did a lot of healing work, started feeling really stable, understood what it meant to have both feet on the ground. Rooted in some kind of understanding of myself as a freak, found a community of freaks, found a place that I could call my own. And here I feel strangely disjointed, disconnected, and alone, even with people surrounding me.

I am lonely, it is true. There's no one I can laugh with about my latest weird dream, that Condoleeza Rice was necking with me and gave me the secret papers about 9/11. I mean that's fucked up! I must be watching way too much CNN. I woke up and was all willied about Republicans.

Still, there are some good things about being back here. One is that I have to face my demons, and all those people who saw me do fucked up shit that I don't even remember. Mania is a weird thing, some parts of it are totally blacked out. I only remember this glorious feeling of light, and churchbells. And the hospital, and when the cops came to get me.

My rat did an evil thing which has also made me feel fucked up. He ate my friends hamster. I didn't even know what to say when I found out. How do you apologize for your little friend eating your friend's little friend? I mean, how do you even begin to make that right? And such a grisly thing to do. But how to you stop an animal from doing what animals do?

I am nervous about my performance, always wondering if it's going to be good enough. It's a problem I have. But today I bought fake blood which even "oozes and clots" according to the label. It's basically corn syrup. I want to talk about my body, about my ancestors and where I come from, and how bloodlines are not always something you see on the outside, it's all interior for me. When people of colour start talking about their identity based on the colour of their skin, I always feel left out, because I'm not an obvious person of colour.

Anyway, those are some of my thoughts out here.

Oh yeh, I guess I should give you a link to this whole do. It's La Centrale

I am lonely

Being in Montreal is bizarre, to say the least. It's not the people I am having trouble with, but my own ghosts, the little shadow of Thirza that still walks down these streets, all shattered and fucked up. And it's a strange feeling, because in Vancouver I did a lot of healing work, started feeling really stable, understood what it meant to have both feet on the ground. Rooted in some kind of understanding of myself as a freak, found a community of freaks, found a place that I could call my own. And here I feel strangely disjointed, disconnected, and alone, even with people surrounding me.

I am lonely, it is true. There's no one I can laugh with about my latest weird dream, that Condoleeza Rice was necking with me and gave me the secret papers about 9/11. I mean that's fucked up! I must be watching way too much CNN. I woke up and was all willied about Republicans.

Still, there are some good things about being back here. One is that I have to face my demons, and all those people who saw me do fucked up shit that I don't even remember. Mania is a weird thing, some parts of it are totally blacked out. I only remember this glorious feeling of light, and churchbells. And the hospital, and when the cops came to get me.

My rat did an evil thing which has also made me feel fucked up. He ate my friends hamster. I didn't even know what to say when I found out. How do you apologize for your little friend eating your friend's little friend? I mean, how do you even begin to make that right? And such a grisly thing to do. But how to you stop an animal from doing what animals do?

I am nervous about my performance, always wondering if it's going to be good enough. It's a problem I have. But today I bought fake blood which even "oozes and clots" according to the label. It's basically corn syrup. I want to talk about my body, about my ancestors and where I come from, and how bloodlines are not always something you see on the outside, it's all interior for me. When people of colour start talking about their identity based on the colour of their skin, I always feel left out, because I'm not an obvious person of colour.

Anyway, those are some of my thoughts out here.

Oh yeh, I guess I should give you a link to this whole do. It's La Centrale

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Kiss that Social Anxiety Better

Over the past year I've noticed my social anxiety running amok again. Le sigh. It's pretty silly really, I get all queasy and my hands shake. Shake shake shake. Shake that booty. Damn, that would be funny, if my butt shook instead of my appendages. I wonder if it would be easier to hide. Someone told me that shaky hands are just a medication side effect. Could be true. Sometimes my hands shake when I'm not even thinking about being in public, with everyone's googly eyes looking at me. It's a bit of a liability when you're holding a cup of hot coffee.
Has that ever happened to you? Holding something hot, like soup or tea or whatever, and you get all shaky or spill it on yourself AND IT BURNS!!! Ahhhhhh! But you can't just drop it. And so you have to be all burning, finding a spot to put it down. Ouch!!! Kiss it better someone quick!
What's with that, the kiss it better thing? Kissing something never makes it feel better, except that in your heart you get the warm fuzzies that someone cares enough to put their lips to your ouchie.
Is that even safe these days? I guess no one kisses gross ouches, like oozing bleeding roadburn from a spill on your bike.
When I was a kid my mum would always get so upset when one of us got cuts and the like. She couldn't handle blood very well. She'd say "Ooo, eee, ouch, ah." It was like she was the one who was hurt. I remember barricading myself in the bathroom so I could dig out gravel from my knee without her making me feel worse. Once my sister got all mad one day and threw a bowl on the floor and broke it, then stepped on a huge shard and cut the bottom of her foot open. Mom couldn't even look at it, even as this huge puddle of blood appeared. (Okay, so this is a gross story) So I had to be the one to declare that we needed to go to the hospital. Have you ever tried to take a hundred and thirty pound angry bleeding mentally handicapped woman to the hospital? It's quite an adventure really.
But that's not about social anxiety is it?
Sometimes being crazy in public is kind of goofy, I'm all "ha ha, la le la la, don't pay attention to my little hand quiver."
It's a bit rude to point out a crazy person's symptoms. I've had people IN PUBLIC point to my hands and be all "LOOK AT THAT!! ARE YOU EVER SHAKING!! WHY ARE YOU SHAKING!" And I'm all "shuddup!"
Maybe I should get people to kiss my little hand tremors better. It would be cute if someone who liked me did that, just for your future reference, if you are someone with a wee crush.

"And to your left is a suicidal man on a crane"

These were essentially the words some friends and I heard from a bus driver, as he spoke into the p.a. system. Sure enough there were police, an ambulance, and the fire department, all assembled below a crane on a construction site. I caught myself straining to look at the would-be jumper. Dear lord, suicide as a spectator sport.

"He's just below the orange part" the bus driver continued saying, as he slowed the bus to a crawl so we could all rubberneck this man on the verge of death.

And then we went dancing????

This city's getting to me.

Energy and Bipolar

I need to go for a walk. A long walk. The kind of late night stroll where you listen to cds and take the quiet streets. My legs are itchy. I need to be somewhere, to go somewhere, and yet there isn't a destination.

Somedays I can walk all the way to the downtown eastside.

Other days I can barely get to the bus stop a block away, sometimes I can't even get out of bed. Sometimes showering is a lot of work, and not worth the bother because I'll just get dirty the next day, and the day after, and so on.

I always knew I had probs with my energy levels fluctuating, but now being bipolar explains all. Amazing. I have the best excuse. And except for the little suicidal lemming brain issue that comes up every winter, it's not really an illness that could kill me.

I mean, I suppose it could. A lot of people die from being bipolar. I suppose I've dealt with suicidal tendencies for two decades now, and I feel more equipped to deal with that than with being manic. Being manic is so seductive. Who wouldn't want to be manic? A lot of the drugs people take mimic mania, like coke, or crystal.

This post has no point really, except to say I need to go have a walk, a long walk.

Elderly woman sexually assaulted - doesn't go to police for fear of being committed

This (link) kind of thing makes me so upset. This elderly woman (76) was terrorized by juvenile boys and sexually assaulted, but was so afraid of being committed to a mental health facility again (after a previous sexual assault) that she didn't contact police.

Only someone who has never been in a mental health facility could possibly think it's a healthy space for someone to be in, esp. someone who's just gone through severe trauma. Mental health facilities by their very nature were created as penitentiaries for the "insane." They are not a form of health care so much as a form of segregation. And what does it say about hospitals that this woman was more in fear of them than the boys assaulting her? What kind of treatment did she recieve the last time she was committed?

I don't know what else to say about it, read the article.

Dating and Mad Pride

So school has been taking up a lot of my time, along with keeping up with all my friends, and I haven't had a chance to update as often. Anyway, I am sitting in a big mess, which I simply MUST clean up today. I did some of the readings I have to do for tomorrow's class, and later on tonight I have to do a script analysis. So much work!

And in the middle of all of this, I have decided it's time to leap headfirst into the dating pool again. I've been quasi available for a while, but I think part of me was too busy with me to be able to actually give anything to another person. And probably another part of my whole reluctance to date has to do with my weight gain from my medication, and wondering about when would be a good time to disclose my odd illness. People act wacky when they find out you are crazy.

Recently I ran into yet another old acquaintance who's been relatively recently diagnosed with bipolar. It's a growing trend. It made me kind of sad, because I think she's really worried about the stigma.

Stigma is a sucky thing. And yet so many people who are really talented and lovely are bipolar, or another mental illness.

But then even I carry around some internalized stigma. This whole dating thing, for one thing. When do I say "Oh by the way, I am bipolar." Is that going to keep women away from me? Will they make assumptions about how that impacts my life and therefore themselves? And finally, do I even want to date someone who has a narrow view of life, who demands impossible perfection?

Ugh, I still have this room to clean!! I should go do that now.

On the Rumoured Death of Identity Politics

Recently an old friend told me she was sick of identity politics. I wasn't entirely sure how to respond, especially considering the vast majority of my work concerns identity and the power others attempt to wield over me concerning my identity. I wasn't sure what to say because my identity is so fluid, ever changing and shapeshifting to suit my mood. Being on the borders of male-female, white and red, identity is something I wake up to every morning when I have my coffee and read the news. It's something I struggle with every day, trying to navigate my way through polarized territories which other people rarely consider.

"Identity politics is dead."

Recently during a conversation with some fellow mixed bloods we discussed peoples aversion to identity politics. Someone suggested it's something people say when they are tired of being allies to those of us who carry around some intense identity issues. It's something people say when they're tired of hearing us out, tired of being a part of the struggles of marginalized populations, tired of us "taking space".

And then there are other questions I have about identity, like, is my bipolar disorder an identity? Some people with bipolar disagree, they do not want to be defined by their disorder. However in my case I identify as bipolar because it has made as much of an impact on my life and how I view the world as being queer and a halfbreed and inhabiting a female body. It's something I want to be proud of for forming and influencing who I am today.

So when someone says "I'm sick of identity politics, identity politics is dead," what are they really saying? Are they saying that artists should cease making works about race/class/gender/disability/sexuality? If that's what it means, I am seriously fucked, because I could talk about those things forever and still barely scratch the surface on what it means to live life as an Other.

And who decided identity politics was dead anyway? Probably someone who's in a relative position of power in society, who doesn't have to fight all the fucked up isms every day of their life.

As long as humans and post humans are struggling with hatred, fear, and oppression based on their identities, identity politics is relevant and crucial to artistic practice. As long as people ask me "What are you?" in regards to my race, gender, sexuality, whatever, identity politics is relevant. As long as certain people with certain backgrounds have certain privileges that others are denied, identity politics is relevant.

Spiders on Drugs

Spiders on drugs are always good for a laugh.

(Sorry for such a short post, my brain is currently attempting to percolate some coherant thought. I will be back later.)

At a Coffee shop with Branta canadensis

I'm standing at the counter when who should walk up to me but a Canada Goose. It sort of plodded along, looking around thoughtfully.

"Did you know there's a goose in here?" I asked.

"Yeah, we can't get him to leave."

Indeed, why did this Canada goose want to hang around in a coffee shop? Maybe he wanted some croissant.

Later in the day I saw an orange cat with six fingers. SIX fingers! It was so cute because it made his paw look so huge.

Animals are weird.

I had a disturbing dream recently about a little pig getting slaughtered and feeling so badly for it that I vowed never to eat pork again.

Then I woke up and had bacon.

Terrible.

Detroit Television warps the mind.

Isn't "smoking a cigar with friends under the stars" such an elegant phrase? I found it in this article about the rising death toll in Iraq. It sounds so picturesque.

I hate American word processing software, because it is all the wrong spelling for Canadians and it's slowly but surely colonizing us to American spelling through the spell check. Like colour vs color, cheque vs check.

American imperialism in our own homes. Sigh.

I remember when we didn't have canned pop in Canada, and it was really exciting to get it in the States.

And maybe part of me, a kid growing up in Saskatchewan, watching Detroit television, thought that the Americans were cooler. They had such flash and glamour, and weird processed foods. And they were dangerous, always pulling out guns on a whim. And at Halloween they all ran around setting things on fire. Hell Night, I think they called it.

One halloween in Saskatoon I think some kid decided to try Hell Night in our back alley. I answered the door one halloween, expecting treat or treaters. Two skeletons, or maybe a skeleton and a ghoul(?) asked me for water. So I thought they wanted a glass. Then they yelled No, no, where's your water hose? The back alley garbage can was on fire.

And I think it's all that Detroit television Saskatoonians watched. It has warped us.

I mean, I was seriously scared of Americans, not only for that whole nuke thing, but because they just shot people everyday for any reason. And I thought Americans were all taking drugs, always snorting cocaine.

Canadian television was much gentler. And there was always something sexy late at night on french CBC.

Clive is Not Impressed

Clive is my very old rat, yet still he acts quite baby-ish for such an old guy. Anyway, he had a smelly cardboard box in his cage he was sleeping in, and today I bought him a new, special, "igloo." It's made of purple plastic. He seems to be able to fit it, but he doesn't want to go inside. Keeps kicking it around, probably swearing under his squeaks.

Maybe it is too small. Either way, he's not impressed with it. Fussy.

I finally finished all the tasks I had to do this week. Oh, except go see my doctor. Crumbs.

I bought this really high alcohol level Quebec beer today. I haven't bought beer in a long time. Oh heck, that's a lie, I had beer last Saturday at some opening. But this one is called Fin Du Monde. Isn't that such an apocalyptic name? Oddly though, as soon as I got it home I wanted one of those C2's. Damn. So now I am thirsty for pop. The four horsemen of the apocalypse in alcohol form will have to wait.

Oh, and the other TRAGIC thing that happened to me today was my c.d. player went A.W.O.L. I don't know what terrible kinds of music I was forcing it to play, but it decided to desert me. It did this to me before. And it likes to make me look like a buffoon. For instance, once I was on the bus with a friend and I had just finished this five minute speech about the loss of my c.d. walkman and then I opened the front of my backpack AND THERE IT WAS. That asshole. Just smirking, like "Oh ha ha ha, Thirza can't find anything of hers, she's such a dork!"