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.