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!”

Being An Artist is Boring

At least today it is. I spent the whole day filling in forms, updating my c.v., burning cd’s, sticking things in envelopes, photocopying (at my own home! I love my printer), going to the post office. Waiting in line. Realizing that I could have brought something else with me that needed urgent mailing. Came home and realized the form was more complicated than I thought. Poop.

My fingernails are disgusting. I mean, look at them! Ugh, bits of grimey-grimeness. Blah. And all uneven. I am ashamed of these fingernails. But the nail trimmer is lost in a sea of Thirza flotsam and jetsam. I am not an artist who can’t clean, I’m a performance of a forgotten seawreck.

No really, where is the nail clipper? I’m freaking out!

Okay, whew! Found one.

I think the shipwreck happened somewhere in the Georgia Straight, involving a butch with far too many things and no organizational thought.

In the hospital they called me “disorganized.” I just thought, dear God, I’ve been disorganized my whole life! Go look in my room if you don’t believe me. Once I bought a book called How To Get Organized and I lost it.

True story.

I want chips. I wish I could get chips teleported to me. No, I mustn’t. They are bad for me, but how can little potatoes with seasoning on it be bad? I guess they aren’t potatoes anymore are they? They’re genetically modified jellyfish-orangutan chips. Just my luck, to be born into a world where these things happen and yet there’s still no teleportation device.

Oh, but I have the new Coke. It’s called C2. Can you believe that? I’m drinking C2. Twice the damage to the indigenous peoples, but with reduced carbs and calories. I’m going to try it now.

A little less bite. Hmm, not bad. An aftertaste of guilt and shame at being complicit in the oppression of others.

Plus I got a little squat gnome-like can. If a tin can could be a gnome, this one definately is.

2 Reasons Why I love that Bears are my spirit guides

“A bold amphibious escape bid by a bear at Berlin zoo has been foiled in a dramatic shoot-out. Juan the Andean spectacled bear first paddled across a moat using a log for a raft, then scaled a wall. Finally he appeared to commandeer a bicycle, before zookeepers with brooms cornered him, and a colleague picked him off with a tranquiliser gun… After being stopped with darts from a tranquiliser gun, 294 lb. Juan was carried back to his enclosure. Mr Kloes told the Berliner Kurier newspaper zoo staff would make sure there were no further logs in the moat to prevent Juan’s future bids for freedom.”

-from BBC (Complete with photo of bear getting on the bike)

“A black bear was found passed out at a campground in Washington state recently after guzzling down three dozen cans of a local beer, a campground worker said on Wednesday.

“We noticed a bear sleeping on the common lawn and wondered what was going on until we discovered that there were a lot of beer cans lying around,” said Lisa Broxson, a worker at the Baker Lake Resort, 80 miles (129 kilometers) northeast of Seattle.

The hard-drinking bear, estimated to be about two years old, broke into campers’ coolers and, using his claws and teeth to open the cans, swilled down the suds. It turns out the bear was a bit of a beer sophisticate. He tried a mass-market Busch beer, but switched to Rainier Beer, a local ale, and stuck with it for his drinking binge. They set a trap using as bait some doughnuts, honey and two cans of Rainier Beer. It worked, and the bear was captured for relocation.”

-from CNN

Cops suck

Or at least my experience with cops has been pretty sucky.

Oh but what was I going to tell you? My scriptwriting is coming along okay. Right now I’m averaging five pages a day. Then today I spent a few hours doing corrections and rewrites and moving events around in my script so they make a bit more sense. I keep trying to get my friend to read it, but she’s never home when I call. And I so need to get out of the house, my brain is melting!! But my other friend is doing up a grant proposal, so she’s indisposed.

I guess I will go back to what I was saying about cops.

Well cops came to get me when I went to the hospital. And all I can say is that even though I was buck naked they still treated me like I had a gun or some other weapon. In fact the whole experience was like being arrested for being crazy. Being crazy is treated as a crime in our society. And police are woefully uninformed about mental health issues.

Even when I wasn’t a “crazy” person, cops still sucked. I remember in Saskatoon we had Oscar the talking police car. He wasn’t a car, so much as a Van, with eyes and mouth painted on it, and he could speak. I always wanted to be one of the kids who got to see inside Oscar, but I never was picked. Oscar, what a sucky talking police car!

And then another time as a community initiative the police gave out collectible hockey cards if you flagged them down. But everytime me and my friends would wave, the police officers just waved back and drove on. No hockey cards for us.

I quit my job

I’ve been trying to figure out the best way of going back to school and making it through this time, with the most minimal amount of stress. Soooo, I offloaded the job. I was quite terrible at it really, I’m not a very good telemarketer. Excuse me, teleFundraiser. People treated me as if I was a telemarketer anyway.

So, the job is gone. It’s a bit of a relief really, I was getting sooo miserable from so many people griping at me about calling them at home. I think that kind of a job has a high burnout rate, although some people have been there for a long time.

What else? Life’s okay, getting ready for school. My mommy bought me new school clothes, which was awfully nice of her. And I got a new belt, my other one became way too small, what with the weight gain caused by the drugs I am on. Anyway, it made me feel like a sausage.

Belts are expensive!

What else? Hmm, gearing up for Back To School. I really hope it all works out. I hope my crazyness doesn’t interfer this time around. I have to take some special form to my doctor so that I can get some more access to resources for students with disabilities. Hopefully that will all work out. So many things to think about! I’m excited. I feel like my brain has atrophied. I need intellectual stimulation, not marshmallows. My sister needs marshmallows. That’s like, her absolute favorite food. If she had a choice she would live off of marshmallows. That’s just how she is. Working at a telemarketing place turns your brain into marshmallows. Or maybe that was just me.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

. . . is dead.

“Dying becomes lonely and impersonal because the patient is often taken out of his familiar environment and rushed to an emergency room. He may cry for rest, peace and dignity, but he will get infusions, transfusions, a heart machine, or tracheostomy. … He will get a dozen people around the clock, all busily preoccupied with his heart rate, pulse, electrocardiogram or pulmonary functions, his secretions or excretions — but not with him as a human being.” – Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

More at:

http://www.elisabethkublerross.com/

My reserve is funding me for another year!

Many of you may have noticed my ongoing struggles with getting back into school so I can go on to my Master’s program. Okay, maybe you didn’t notice. Well little crazy me is going back, BACK to ECIAD where I spent 4 1/2 years and then took three years off to wind myself into a completely psychotic state, only to slowly unwind back into what could reasonably be considered normal and grounded. Or at least, as grounded as I think I’m gonna get. Sometimes I still have days when I’m sad, or when my feet seem to be floating off the ground, but I’ve pretty much kept a nice stability for the past year or so.

Anyway, I realized this past week that I have yet to get a letter back from my reserve saying I was going to be funded to go back to school. And little me started to panic. Panicking, trying not to panic, trying to be normal, but with a little knot of worry forming in my guts. Oh god, what if I don’t get funded because I flunked a bunch of classes way back before I quit because I couldn’t cope with school? Eeeeee!!! And I’m so ready to go back, so ready to throw myself into it and really be serious and do it and say “I have a bachelor’s degree!!”

So I emailed. And I called. And I called. And finally today the woman at my reserve’s post secondary office called back to say it was ok. Hooray!! They are sending the letters out this week. Yay! I was so worried I would have to keep working and listening to people tell me off on the phone, getting more and more miserable.

What else? I’m back in Vancouver after my dramatic and also nice trip to Saskatoon. It was good to be there for my family. I came home with a heavy suitcase full of new clothes my mommy bought me, six braids of sweetgrass, Saskatoon berries, and six new york Bison steaks. I didn’t know they had Bison in New York. Ha ha, okay, maybe only I find that funny. Such an Indian’s suitcase. I suppose I should take Salmon back to my mom, but I much prefer bringing back Bison for my friend, maybe because I am a prairie Indian. Plains Cree, and don’t you forget it.

Thank you Little Pine Reserve! Thank you Mommy! And thank you bison, you will be good in my little tummy!