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