Wannabe Saviours

I still feel like crap, but I’m continuing to take all of my vitamins and supplements and homeopathic stuff and the last psych med I’m on, Epival. The blockage in my throat is mostly gone, there’s just a dull pain there now. For the most part I don’t really know what’s going on in my body. I think these recurring illnesses are really bothering me. I’m seeing my g.p. tomorrow, so I’ll see what she has to say about it. God I’m cold.

I didn’t really expect that this attempt at healing would be so painful, I mean, physically painful. I suppose that’s what happens in healing. And I’m also having trouble dealing with incredible bouts of anger and sadness related to being hospitalized.

Last night I was thinking about this idea of spiritual pain and being victimized by the psychiatric industry, and then I was thinking about what it does to the perpetrators of psychiatric abuse. I mean, they think they’re doing good things, they honestly believe they are helping people, and they get feedback from people around them that they are doing good work. But there must be some kind of huge spiritual damage that they’re wreaking on themselves. I’ve never thought about the negative stuff that happens to perpetrators before. I know at death people have to face whatever pain they’ve caused in their lifetimes that they never atoned for. I don’t know what that would look like for someone who has hurt hundreds, thousands of people during the course of an illustrious career.

I’m sure there are people working in that field who haven’t hurt others, but a lot fewer than you would expect. Even people who are very kind are still complicit in what happens on psych wards.

I can’t change the past. And I can’t make people who hurt me see that they hurt me. I wish I could get some kind of compensation for four years of hell, but I probably can’t. And I wish I knew for sure no one would throw me in a bin again, but I don’t know. My mom doesn’t even recognize when I’m being discriminated against for being a nutter, and for the most part other people will agree with me in principle that psych wards are abusive, but won’t do the work to find out an alternative for me. I’m applying to grad school now to write my thesis on alternative ways of dealing with people in psychosis, which will be a fun project. But then I’m worried even after I do that, even after I lay out an entire blueprint for people to treat me humanely, it won’t be followed. It’s frustrating.

Maybe people will kill me with their kindness. I don’t know. I don’t want to be another statistic, one more person killed by meds, or restraints, or whatever. But I can’t help it much either, except to keep doing some kind of advocacy and activist work around raising awareness.

And really, the psychiatric industry is crumbling. People are starting to realize that new illnesses are being invented for things no one really worried about before. I mean, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, ugh, what a crock. Mother Jones had ODD don’t you know? Med students don’t want to go into psychiatry anymore, in the medical field it’s viewed as a bit of a sham.

I’m not saying mental illnesses don’t exist. I am saying, however, that psychiatry has limited the scope of how we can identify and properly treat mental illnesses. A quarter of people being treated for MI’s actually have physical illnesses creating their psychiatric problems. And while the DSM says once an underlying condition is discovered, the psych label has to be abandoned, it’s not happening anymore. Now people have the psych label in addition to their thyroid condition or epilepsy or whatever is going on. And I think the reason for that is purely monetary, big bucks can be made in making sure someone is still identified as a psych patient.

Maybe there are some people with the brain chemical thing going on. But I am seriously doubtful that brain chemicals account for all MIs.

Personally, I think something like bipolar disorder refers to a set of symptoms more than an actual disease. I think a LOT of things cause bipolar disorder, and it’s different for everyone. And our health care system isn’t responsible enough these days to actually provide thorough medical work ups of people with bipolar disorder to find out how to adequately treat them.

So I dunno, it’s a strange thing. I know one thing is for sure, whoever puts me in the hands of the psychiatric industry again in the future is not going to be in my life anymore. I can’t hack the wannabe saviours.

Spiritual Emergence

Oh what the hell. I think, actually I know, I am going through some kind of massive spiritual transformation. I don’t know when it started, but I know it kicked off the Psychosis. I think there were things that could have been done for me around that time specifically which would have made it an easier transition, but obviously that didn’t happen.

I never really paid much attention to stuff about kundalini or chakras, but I didn’t pay much attention to Bipolar Disorder or Temporal Lobe Epilepsy either. Still, I’ve been reading about kundalini rising because a lot of the symptoms are corresponding to what I’ve been going through, particularly some of the things which people maybe haven’t heard me talk about. In the past year my capacity to see spirits has grown exponentially, to the point where seeing something out of the ordinary is, well, ordinary. I know during my hospitalization I had some INTENSE heat coming out of the top of my head, and I was practically shaking and trembling the entire time I was there, not to mention feeling electrical energy roar through my body. Not only that, but I had God realization, which if you’re not ready for does flip one out. I think it’s tempered a lot, I have some more humility around it so I can deal with it. But having a bunch of doctors follow me around pathologizing everything I did did not help me figure this out at all.

In fact, a lot of people warn folks away from kundalini awakenings because there’s a high chance of ending up in psychosis or psychiatric wards, etc. Oops.

I am thinking of all the people I know personally who have gone to the bin in manic states, and how they can all tell you some really advanced theological ideas that they’ve learned solely from going nuts. Something is there.

There are other physical symptoms which have been coming up. There was a week where I kept vomiting up phlegm, I mean HUGE amounts of phlegm, which would then mostly vanish except for small blobs. It was really weird. Then I heard sometimes that happens when a blockage in the solar plexus is being cleared. And then in the last couple of days I got this knot in my throat, which corresponds to vishnu granthi talked about with kundalini rising, it’s kind of a block that keeps energy from going up.

I don’t know what I think of all this. But a lot of people out there are noticing people having spontaneous kundalini awakenings these days, even people who aren’t spiritual at all. I can’t even eat some of the things I used to really like. My body is totally changing on me, and so are my thoughts. In a lot of ways it’s good, because I know I have a lot of healing to do and it can help with that. In other ways it’s not so good, people already think I’m a freak and if I also say I’m having a spiritual emergence then they’ll get even more strange. My mom herself is a die hard born again atheist, so I feel particularly vulnerable around her just because I don’t think she’s safe.

It’s still a health issue essentially, except that it involves spiritual, mental, and physical health all together. And essentially, while it’s a different name with different theories behind it, I’ve already started to discover what works for me. I guess the only big thing is that over the past year it’s really affected my physical health, and that’s been really hard. I could deal with the funny brain stuff, that’s been around for ages, but these die offs keep pissing me off. It feels really crappy.

I’m not interested in becoming only a spiritual person though, like, hmm, maybe you know what I mean. I don’t want to lose sight of the real world and actual human suffering. And I think in that regard it’s actually been a very different kind of spiritual growth than one would think. I think it’s been more about grappling with the fact that I need to learn to take care of or help other people to the best of my capacity. I know I need to spend a lot of time taking care of myself, maybe not so much in the future but right now, but I still want to create work that will improve the lives of millions more people than just myself.

I’ve also realized that I have to put aside thoughts of fame in regard to my film practice. I know it will happen anyway, but I think it’s an illusion that can trap people in their artistic growth. It can be a pitfall, where the desire to be loved overwhelms the desire to tell the truth. I guess I want to focus more on the work itself and spend little time indulging the Persona.

So there are a lot of things I am coming to understand, along with my body evolving, and I think ultimately it’s a good thing. HOWEVER, I would also give a warning to people trying to jump start a spiritual evolution without doing the ground work that it can put you through YEARS of hell and has the potential of destroying everything you ever knew, particularly for those of us living in the colonized West.

I also don’t think it would necessarily have taken this long if I hadn’t been on heavy duty psych drugs for eight years. Detoxing from the meds is what is scaring me right now, but it seems the only other option from withdrawal is death, and I’m not ready for that either.

Throat

I am just writing to let people know I am okay. I seem to be having some kind of problem with my throat which makes me unable to speak English, although I can manage Cree more easily, I guess Cree sounds are made just before this energy blockage in my throat. It feels like I’m being strangled and it really hurts, but I can breath perfectly fine and swallow without any problems besides pain. Either way, I think I know what it is that’s going on and I am probably going to retreat from the world for the weekend to try and deal with it because it is interfering with my daily life. I may act a little strangely, so I hope no one tries to “help” me again. If it does become a more serious problem I’ll go see a doctor, although I have concluded doctors don’t know what they’re doing and will probably try and tell me it is a psychiatric issue, even if something really is going on with my throat. Either way, if I have to go to the ER it definitely won’t be City Hospital.

However, I do have a pretty good idea what it is, and so I’m just working with certain exercises to try and open it up again and get this knot to untie itself. I’m not sure what will happen to me after, but hopefully it will be okay.

And hopefully people will be smart or respectful enough to leave me alone.

Jesse

I didn’t really know you, we met a few times when I got Schrodinger and you were a nice guy, busy with all your gear out on the acreage. I heard about you a lot though, through your mom. And I remember she and my mom used to talk about us, because we both went crazy around the same time. You were on meth and got manic, and I was on Effexor and got manic. It was that time when a whole bunch of people I knew had manic episodes incidentally. I’m not sure why it all happened in that time frame. I know it was just after Clint Alberta committed suicide jumping off a Toronto viaduct. I didn’t know him either, but I had friends who did, and I remember how it impacted the Aboriginal and Film communities. And so I heard about all the things that happened in your life too, I was really hoping you would make it.

I was at your funeral today. I was surprised to find out you were just 23. You did a lot in your life, and a lot of people really loved you. I’m sure a lot of people are asking why right now. And I know why. I mean, I don’t know your specific reason, but I know the feelings you must have felt. I know how scared you must have been, and desperate. I know what it’s like to have a night where you’re not sure there will be a sunrise. I know how time slows down, how every minute aches.

I know what that kind of pain feels like. And I know how alone it feels.

Sometimes people think people who commit suicide are selfish or spiteful, but it’s not true, not with the people I’ve known who’ve done it or thought about it. It really does hurt that much.

I don’t think anyone can judge you for what you did, because I don’t think anyone besides you knows exactly how much suffering you were in. I wish this was a world where people like you and I had less barriers to living with bipolar, places we could have met and talked and figured out things we needed as a minimum to be able to survive. And the sad thing is, you were doing it, you were figuring out how to make a good life for yourself. Even then it happened.

It’s the one thing I hate the most about bipolar, knowing I’ve been trying to check out for the last twenty one years. I hate it. I don’t know why I never did it. I wasn’t smarter than you, or loved more, or anything. In fact, I even did meth for a while when I was nineteen too. Why does one person make it and another doesn’t? There’s no answer. It’s the mystery of manic depression. It’s a brilliant, funny, scary, deadly disability. And it’s so complex, there aren’t easy answers at all.

My friend Elaine was so lost for a while after Clint died. They were going to make films together, he was just waiting for her to get out of Emily Carr. A lot of people had big dreams for him, and they had big dreams for you too. It’s going to be rough seeing how much this impacts all the people in your life, and people you might not even have known well. I know you’re in a beautiful place, with people taking care of your battle scars from this round on earth. I also know I can’t think about that beautiful place you’re in right now, because it’s too damned alluring sometimes.

Jesse Allan (Duvall) Loewy
July 24 1983 – January 28 2007

Various Thoughts on Disability and Human Rights

I did a bit more reading on this missing women, someone made a site that has profiles of all the women Pickton is being charged with murdering. I was sadly not terribly shocked to see that a number of the murdered women had disabilities of various kinds, mainly brain related disabilities like manic depression and developmental disabilities. I think it’s something we don’t recognize, that a lot of survival sex workers are people with disabilities. I remember when two women I knew started doing sex work again it was because they weren’t able to survive on their disability payments and sex work was the only kind of job they had access to that paid well and didn’t involve a set schedule.

You can read about the murdered and missing women here.

Disability does pay crap. And I’m not sure why we as a society think that’s okay. I was reading somewhere about Community Treatment Orders and how arbitrary they are. An example was given that someone on disability or welfare who has only one piece of food in their cupboards could be hospitalized involuntarily for not being able to take care of themselves, even if they have no food simply because they’re living in poverty.

I really think this anniversary has changed a lot of what I feel about the hospital. I used to be really upset that it all happened to me. Now I’m really upset that this happens everyday to a lot of people. And things have happened during this anniversary that have made me feel more in touch with the larger scope of disability rights activists. First there was the Ashley “Treatment,” and then my body being on the verge of organ failiure due to my medication, and then learning about the Critical Disability Studies program, and then reading blogs of other people with disabilities, being denied proper medical treatment because of my disability, deciding to try life without psych meds, and then the saddest of all, finding out another bipolar person died because of their disability. I’ve realized it’s not useful for me to just hold it all inside and feel insular. My experience and feelings are all valid, I just mean that I want to have more contact and alliances with other people with disabilities, of all kinds, and to try and create change around it.

I wanted to be really conscious of what was going on in my healing process this anniversary, so I expected to go through it in a certain way, dealing with certain things. That didn’t happen. But I think it turned out better this way. It feels more like joining a larger world of people struggling with these issues than being all on my own. And I think I’m even more hyper aware of my issues being largely a human rights issue. Why did anyone think the psych ward was a good place for me? How come I had no say in my treatment? And why the hell did people keep assuming I had left my body and they could treat me like shit and I wouldn’t remember? I remember stuff. I had feelings. But somehow I became a non-human for six weeks, and people assumed that was okay, and then wondered why I had such a hard time after.

Having a major psychotic episode was not the worst thing that happened to me. Being hospitalized, the hospital itself, was specifically what fucked me up. Taking medication is what specifically fucked me up. The way people treated me was what made me want to die. Hearing and feeling things that weren’t there wasn’t the big issue that has haunted me. In fact, psychosis was actually pleasant and therapeutic until everyone got terrified and incarcerated me.

Here’s a radical thought: what if psychosis is the minds way of healing itself? It’s like in medicine, symptoms are cured but illnesses are not. I think psychosis is a symptom. We’re finally now realizing that fevers are an important aspect of the immune system fighting off a virus, and while people still try to get rid of fevers, that practice is falling out of favour.

Psychotic episodes allowed to go through their natural process take on average three months. That sounds like a long time, but it’s actually not really. If I had a choice between what I went through and a psychotic episode lasting three months, I would go with the episode. I think there were some things I was trying to heal that I didn’t get to finish up, and it’s taken me WAY longer because I wasn’t allowed to heal the way I was meant to heal.

I think we need to take a different look at psychosis. It is not necessarily a negative thing to undergo, as long as people aren’t forcibly injecting you with Thorazine and strapping you down to a bed for hours while you scream and ignoring requests for medical attention and yelling at you and telling you you’re not human and teasing you about having to behave to get proper care. The horrors of mental illness are the horrors we place on it.

I think there is something I adopted from the drug culture that actually helps me out more than medical intervention. People using psychedelic drugs often have babysitters, someone not on drugs who will hang around and make sure no one puts their hand on a burner or falls off a roof. It’s a really simple little rule around mind altering drug use, and it’s also a tool that people with mental illnesses have used for years. I had two great babysitters who unfortunately live in other places now, but they could be counted on to spend time with me while I was in danger of committing suicide. There wasn’t a huge power imbalance along with it either, they were just my friends making sure I wasn’t going to get hurt.

I think it’s harder to find a babysitter for a psychotic episode, because it lasts a long time and is way more active than a suicidal depression, but I know that there are alternative places out there and private homes for people in psychosis.

Anyway, I’m really liking that this anniversary has brought me to a point where I want to be active within the world in making sure human rights violations don’t continue to happen to people with disabilities. I think there are still things I’m not as aware of as I could be, particularly with non MI related disabilities, but I like that I am learning them. Finding out about other people with disabilities is teaching me more about myself than I expected.

Elegy

I saw my friend Archer Pechawis’ performances last night, including Elegy, which made me cry. It’s about the missing women, Cris Derksen reads out the names and birthdates of the women while he lights a candle for each one. And it’s so simple, but after about seven candles when he just kept lighting more and more the weight of how many women died becomes so clear. About 65 women went missing or so. And I also started thinking about people I knew who worked low track at some point during the murders, and just realizing how scary it was, especially when my lover started hitting the stroll during all that happening.

And it’s weird to listen to the media talk about these women, blaming them for being murdered because they were using drugs, like if they’d just stopped using drugs they wouldn’t have been sex workers anymore and they would have gone on to live regular lives. It’s creepy and simplistic. And this idea that these women were transient and no one noticed them going missing. BULLSHIT. When I moved to Van in 1996 people were talking about the missing women, people were agitating the police to actually get off their asses and do something about it. I remember when protests were being held because there was only one officer assigned to the case for YEARS. And sex workers call their moms like anyone else. Just because they’re doing sex work doesn’t mean they’re cut off from their communities. These women are like anyone else, they have friends, family, lovers, they don’t have only johns and the police in their lives, that’s such a dumb idea.

I also have to say something about the media depictions of the downtown eastside right now, and you’ll see it a lot if you’re watching trial coverage. All the shots are those goddamn drive by camera shots. And it makes these women look more like people for sale than if the footage was shot in a more honest way. Right now it’s all John-cam footage. The downtown eastside is different if you’re gathering footage on foot, the way most of the people in the area travel. That all being said, there are some HUGE issues around taking footage of the downtown eastside and I personally don’t even film there, and won’t, ever. I was a camera person for a film school friend and we were right at Main and Hastings and it was awful, the crew had to talk the director into leaving. If you really want to get good footage of the downtown eastside, you have to give your camera to the residents and let them shoot it for you, and they will, they’re very conscious of having a hand in the creation of images of their neighborhood. Rebecca Belmore has some really amazing things she does to approach marginalized communities to either get footage or do performance work in those areas. You can be ethical about it. But I don’t think a lot of the international press are aware of these issues. Really, someone should do a workshop for the press about the particular ethics and informal regulations of filming in the DTES.

I guess I’m worried about the DTES folks. It was such a long struggle to get justice, and while I don’t think this trial will get justice for these women irregardless of the verdict (because I don’t believe Pickton was a solitary agent), I think it’s opening up more avenues for the exploitation of the people living in that neighborhood. WISH is doing some good work trying to protect the women working by giving them information on their rights with the media and so on. It’s such a vulnerable neighborhood though, and now the whole world is staring at it. I am especially worried because some of those women are going to be exposed as sex workers to their families and so on. Apparently one woman had her full name and the illegal drugs she used published in a major newspaper and her family saw it, and she really just didn’t know that could happen. I really hate hearing about stuff like that, and I know it’s going to keep happening.

Jack and Charlie v. The Queen

I don’t know how I ended up at this page, but I found out about a native hunting rights case that went to the Supreme Court with the most kick ass name, Jack and Charlie v. The Queen. Oh man, that is the most awesome name for a case. It should be a movie title. And then I got curious and found out that my old bosses were the lawyers for the case. Ah yes, those halcyon days at Mandell Pinder. It was my second job ever. Sometimes they got paid for their work in salmon. Aw, they were a nice work environment.

Maybe I should do a courtroom drama sometime.

Oh yeah, how I got onto that was I was looking up burning ceremonies in Google. I’m burning all of my crazy stuff. When I say crazy stuff I mean a huge box full of papers and odds and sods related to my manic psychosis of 2003. Some of it is pretty intense, and I’ve decided I don’t want it around anymore. I’ve been planning on burning it for a really long time, but I never did for whatever reasons. But now I’m ready. It’s all going up in smoke in two weeks. And I’m setting off fireworks and firecrackers. But now I feel like I have to figure out how this ritual is going to work, so I’m reading about other burning ceremonies. It’s a funeral really, but a celebratory funeral. At least that’s the angle I’m trying to go for. I’m so stoked.

I found out today that someone I’d known of who had bipolar disorder committed suicide. It made me think a lot about how hard it is to have bipolar, just thinking about all the other people who had manic episodes the same year as me and what’s happened in their lives since. It’s all different. Some people seemed to do well after finding out, and some people went through hell, and some people don’t make it. You really can’t ever tell how someone is going to weather through it. I wish there was more set up in Saskatoon for peer support. Not like, a support group, but centres where we can just meet and socialize.

I don’t think I would have survived as well as I did if it hadn’t been for making a point of becoming involved with the crazy community. In fact, for at least two years almost all my close friends had a serious mental illness and had been in the hospital or in other crisis situations. And they were totally fun people to hang out with. I guess I had a chance to let my guard down, I could joke about hallucinations and people would laugh because it was true. And we looked out for each other, in our own ways.

I guess finding out about this recent death I started thinking about how important it is for us to know each other, as a crazy community. Some of the best coping skills I have in relation to bipolar disorder come from other Mad people who I’ve known. I know sometimes we do irritate the hell out of each other, but there’s something comforting about having friends who really do know what you mean.

I’m tired. I should sleep. This has been an INTENSE anniversary, oh my god. I feel like things have happened every few days that are making me look at it from really specific angles. And the whole drug withdrawal has been making my body suffer the way it did in the psych ward. I don’t know if people knew that about going crazy and being hospitalized, that it makes your body feel really horrible. Twitchy and shaking and aching and electric zaps and christ almighty, it was a horrid feeling. When I couldn’t read anymore, that’s when I got really upset. And I couldn’t draw either. And everyday, the same as the last. It’s such a banal form of terror, it really is.

Withdrawal

Ugh, this is messed up. I’m going through Lamictal withdrawal, and my Epival has to get adjusted to deal with now being the sole medication in my body, and I’m realizing that I have to be careful. Bleh. Withdrawals are awful with psych meds, it feels like going crazy but it’s just that your brain suddenly has to make major chemical adjustments. I’m not getting zaps, which is nice, brain zaps are awful. And I just got off Celexa a month or so ago too, so I remember the zaps. They also cause auditory hallucinations, and sometimes when I’m falling asleep I yell out random words completely involuntary. It’s just the way withdrawal goes.

A friend of mine was talking about a nightmare he had that he couldn’t get methadone anymore and all these awful things he did to his body because he was in withdrawals. Intense dream man. But I understand it. Some people say psych med withdrawals are as bad as heroin withdrawal, and it is really awful. I used to get psych meds from other people if my prescription ran out and I couldn’t see the doctor fast enough, it was that painful. I’d literally spend my last two dollars on bus fare to a friend’s house across town if she had paxil. It’s like being an addict.

And I still have one more drug to withdraw from after Lamictal, so it’s not going to end right away.

And I saw Children of Men and now I keep listening to Ruby Tuesday over and over. Jesus. Where is the Quietus?

It really is an awful feeling these last few days, bleh. I guess I have to figure out how to take care of myself. I am getting to some amazing personal revelations and healing and stuff though. I realized that I have a psychiatrist in my head. It’s really fucked, I just automatically attribute every emotion to bipolar now. It’s like, I don’t own any of my feelings, it’s weird. So I’m trying to stop labeling my emotions and instead I’m trying to actively find the root cause of whatever emotion is at hand. I guess I’m trying to be mindful. It’s working too, I’m actually figuring out what’s really bugging me. I’m aiming to figure out how to be more in control of my feelings but without shutting myself down.

Either way, the point is I’m kind of all over the place and just trying to pass as normal for long enough that I can get out of withdrawals without someone hauling me away somewhere for observation. I think I’ll be okay, I’m not seeing magic in everything and I’m not making any final arrangements either. As long as I’m not in one extreme I’m not worried. Just irritated and jumping out of my skin and some typical and old old thoughts are showing up to be jerky. I’ve been talking to another friend about alternatives to meds and she mentioned meditation, and I think I should start doing that now. I think it would help me get more balance and self control.

I think stopping Lamictal is harder because the rash meant I had to stop it completely cold turkey, which is a bad thing for psych drugs. Usually I would have eased off of it in smaller increments over a long period of time, but this was just immediate. Bleh to drug withdrawal, icky. Meth is easier to kick than psych drugs, I kid you not.

The Suit

My friends Cindy and Megan are getting married this April and I have spent literally three months already trying to decide what to wear. For a while I was thinking about trying to honour the Scottish roots in me by getting a kilt made with my tartan, but then someone told me how expensive they are and I’ve had to go back to just a suit. But there are already heated debates about The Suit. My mom thinks I need a lady suit, like one tailored for women’s bodies so it would have a “lady shape.” I said I didn’t want to be lady shaped. Then there was a long discussion about mens suits and the difficulties of fitting E cups in them. I know there are issues with large breasts and men’s clothes, I always wear men’s clothes. And I have always thought that someone could make a killing by starting a clothing line for big breasted butch women, but it hasn’t happened yet. Still, I’m sure I can find some suit that will fit me.

But then I was looking at the Sweet Dreams video on Youtube and thinking about how it’s cut for a female figure but it isn’t femmey.

Its kind of an 80’s look though and I’m going for something more classic. Something along the lines of Dietrich in Morocco in this specific scene:

This scene, incidentally, is why I got a top hat. But I don’t have anything to wear with my damn top hat.

Anyway, I found a Dyke Tyke on Youtube! I don’t know if people know about these guys, they’re pretty sweet and sometimes hopelessly tragic, but if you’re a dyke you have one in your life, like, automatically. They’re the equivalent of fag hags really, but a lesbian version. I don’t know why people think men don’t want to sleep with butches, because there’s a fair number of bio “het” guys who go all goofy over butches. I got chased down the street by one once. Actually gay guys sometimes go all silly and crushed out with butch women too. A friend told me about a gay guy he knew who kept sneaking around and staring at a butch friend of ours. Boys and butch lesbians, just silly.

I have one more butch related Youtube video. My one and only decent karaoke song is Boy Named Sue. I don’t know why I can do it and barely any other ones, but its really fun. Anyway, here is Johnny Cash singing Boy Named Sue at San Quentin.

Thirza’s Youtube Aided 80’s Flashback!

I spent the better part of last night watching t.v. from the 80’s on YouTube. I realized that I am largely created as a product of the 80’s. How could I NOT be who I am without the following examples of mass media that were informing my identity? Come with me, back, back to a time of jelly bangles! I recommend you go away and smoke a joint before you return.

Any cultural anthropological journey of the media HAS to start with the commercials. Here are ten minutes of 80’s commercials to orient you to the time period:

Okay, Sesame Street had some weird psychedelic funkiness going on. And people wonder why I ended up taking drugs? One two three four five six seven eight nine ten, eleven twelve!!!

Before Degrassi High, or even Degrassi JUNIOR high, came “Ida Makes A Movie,” the VERY first episode of Kids of Degrassi Street. This is part 2 of 3. I was always so sad when the dolly got thrown away, oh god that was so tragic!!

Clearly I was a baby pervert when Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) came out, but watching the video I also noticed that this would have been the formative experience that showed me how freakin’ hot female masculinity can be. I just thought Annie Lennox was the most beautiful woman in the world. I now think I was going through some Lacanian butch mirror phase, some kind of erotic narcissism, because I usually go for femmes and I ended up wanting to LOOK like Annie Lennox more than fuck her. Either way, this was the first song I used to sing over and over.

And of course, not all of the 80’s media was fun and games. This was one of my clearest memories of the news when I was a kid, The Challenger Explosion. I was living in Montana when it happened and I remember a kid running into the classroom to say the Challenger exploded, and the teacher cried. They all wore black arm bands for a while after. It was the first thing I ever wrote a diary entry about, and I still have that diary, the Ramona Quimby diary. I remember crying because I really liked my grade two teacher then, she inspired me to write. This is the original NASA footage.

I was going to find a clip of the Electric Company, but then I gave up. There were tons of music videos I wanted to put up too, but Sweet Dreams defined me more than the others. Although Girls Just Want To Have Fun was a defining moment in my childhood. It was the first record I ever owned. Okay, here’s Cyndi for you too, enjoy!