God do I ever need a haircut, I’m getting a mullet and I don’t like it. Someone once told me to embrace the mullet as a symbol of being lower class, but I never hung around with mullet wearers and I was raised X class.

X Class is what bell hooks calls people who work with art and so on and are cultured but don’t necessarily have much money. At least, that’s what I remember from my teen years as an avid reader of bell hooks.

I’m still poor today, no cheques have come in the mail. My mum is taking me out for tom yum soup today, which I’m looking forward to.

I just spent two hours looking at people’s shitty tattoos on Facebook. They were pretty funny. Some of them were executed well but unfortunate nonetheless. And I saw a lot of misspelled kanji. Based on what I’ve heard about kanji tattoos, people really shouldn’t get them unless they can read it. The meanings can be VERY different from what you expect.

The temping thing is not paying off right now, I’ve had no work all week and it looks dubious for the future. So I’m looking for work AGAIN. There’s a dishwashing job at the university which would pay me a little under $1500 a month, which is a far better wage than the call centre. And it would be steady work. I’m determined not to go to the call centre again, I don’t want to still be working in them when I’m fifty, and there are a lot of fifty year old callers! Anyway, something will come up. I don’t want a career, I just want something that can pay the bills. Although I still think I should be getting editing jobs and I’m not.

Le sigh.. Oh well, maybe when I’m forty I’ll have a masters degree and teach somewhere like the rest of my family.

But I really just want to be a full time artist.

I have to write a script for my Mars Recruitment Video. I could be doing that. I could be editing my film. But instead I looked at Lesbian Hair for a while. Lesbians do have cool hair. But it’s very difficult to get a proper boy’s cut in a salon, because hairdressers are always trying to make sure people gender conform. Well, I’m sure some of them have an awareness of gender non-conformity, but not many and definitely not in Saskatoon. You have no idea how hard it can be to get them to use the number two shaver.

The trials and tribulations of being a butch.

Butches can have a very hard time finding employment simply because of the way we present our gender. It’s a rotten deal. There should be employment equity for butches! It should be on employment equity forms, are you butch? Do you have butch hair?

I dunno, But being upset about the lack of jobs for butch women isn’t going to get me a job either. Unless I could start up a non-profit dedicated to butch visibility. But I think Harper would cut the funding on that.

My appointment went well, nothing major to report. I got a number for a local bipolar/unipolar support group, and I’m getting my blood tested tomorrow for cholesterol, blood sugar, and epival levels. She also thinks I would do well with light therapy, so I’m being referred to a group that does light therapy and lends it’s lights out so people can see if they work.

Anyway, that about sums it all up. I was happy to touch base with my shrink again and make sure I’m okay.

I had $675 in my hot sweaty little hands and it vanished onto my mum’s credit card to pay for my flight to Toronto. Lucky for me I have a thousand dollar travel grant coming to me to help pay most of the cost of my little jaunt to the imagineNATIVE film festie. I am World Premiering You Are A Lesbian Vampire there, and I am also showing Madness In Four Actions there. I’m pretty stoked, plus my best friend/ex girlfriend Margaret Flood might come up from Guelph to see me!

Anyway, when I do get my travel grant, most of that money is actually now rent money. dammit!

I am also waiting for a cheque from the National Gallery, they said it would come in October, which is a little vague, but at least that means my income hasn’t dried up totally yet.

Ah, the grant was so lovely. I will hopefully get another grant in January for my MARS recruitment video.

Anyway, enough about my money, or current lack thereof.

I’m listening to a lot of Tegan and Sara these days, it’s awesome to support queer canadian artists. Here’s one of their songs I really like.

I do love living in Canada, for a lot of reasons. Even though we currently (and hopefully not for much longer) have a Conservative government, we do have socialized medicine, same sex marriage, and good bacon. Yay for streaky bacon! It’s what I missed most about Canada, Scottish bacon is kinda weird, and not smoked!

My friends Carrie and Shavonne had bacon mints and even bacon flavoured rolling papers with little pigs everywhere. Bacon everywhere! Once a lover asked me in the middle of the night if I ate bacon, and she was at the time a hard core vegan. I thought she was going to kick me out of bed!

OH MAN

Last night at midnight a horrible sharp ache stabbed me in the right side and refused to go away. Worried my appendix had burst or some other thing ruptured, I called the Healthline and asked a registered nurse what to do. She told me to go to the hospital. And of course I had no money and no car, so I caled my mum to take me but it was 2:30 in the morning. So I had to get an ambulance, ugh. But they took good care of me.

It was weird to see them write “psych” for previous health problems. It’s true, but I was worried they would just think I was bipolar and making up some health problem.

Anyway, they thought it was indigestion or a stomach bug, because I was also throwing up from the pain and had diarreah. Ugh! It was awful!

It was five in the morning when I was done with the doctor, which didn’t actually take that long. The hospital paid for my cab home, which was nice.

I was so exhausted I came home and crashed for ages. I still don’t really know what that pain was.

Vancouver was fun, though I only got to actually see one friend. Oh well, I was only there for three days, not even, two really.

I’m done writing my grant! Now I just have to wait for my mum to come pick me up so I can buy five blank videotapes. I have to get my support material together, and it’s going to take me too long to get it together to burn 5 dvds. Tomorrow I’m off to Vancouver for an interview with Storytellers In Motion. I’m pretty stoked about it. I haven’t been to Vancouver in two years, not that I will be there for very long. I’m back home on Wednesday night.

I really hope I get this grant. I am just going from grant to grant these days, which I guess is the life of an artist. But I won’t be able to apply for another Canada Council grant until I am done this video. I’m excited about this grant though, it really seems like it would be fun to work on. Well, all my videos are fun to work on. It’s just something I like doing.

I think I will still always make short videos without grants though, as long as I have access to the equipment. It’s good for me to be able to make something without relying on the green light. It means I can experiment with ideas.

I’m excited about going to Vancouver. I also applied for a travel grant to go to Toronto, but I haven’t heard back about it yet. I imagine by the time I get back from Vancouver I will know.

I have to remember to bring photos of myself as a child to this thing. Right.

It’s kind of funny that most of my videos are still in analogue form. I should really update. My goal is to make a complete DVD of all my works. At 14 videos over a period of 13 years, it’s kind of a lot to handle.

I am working on my next grant. And I still have grant writer’s block. What the hell. It think I wrote ONE new paragraph this afternoon thus far. And I have at least two more pages to go. Fuck! I sometimes hate writing. Someone once said (and I paraphrase) writing is sitting down to a pad of paper and concentrating until blood pours out of your forehead, and it’s true!!! It’s brutal sometimes. So why am I writing in this blog for fun? I don’t know. Maybe because this is where I can be silly and write whatever I want. Whereas a grant, I have to be very clear and specific about what I intend to do with the money.

Today I had to pick up tapes, and it took forever. I didn’t get together with Mum until about 4:20 (ha ha I know) and then it took us ages to get over the bridge because of an accident. I’m not kidding, it took half an hour to get over the brudge. But we made it to Media Group five minutes before closing so I could get my tapes. And I was close to giving up, in tears!

But I got my tapes!

Now I just have to sort myself out more.

I’ve made fourteen videos now and the battered compilation tape I had has gotten legs and walked off. So getting my whole collection together is kind of a pain in the ass. I should be better organized, but some of my stuff has been in storage and it’s moved around a lot too.

I AM getting organized though, and that must surely count for something!

My mom used to tell me to talk to my mental health professionals about being messy and disorganized, so I did and they told me some people are just messy.

See! I told you mom!

Anyway, I have to burn 5 DVD’s of two videos this weekend, and I have to finish writing my grant, and I have to do laundry, and I have to clean my apartment. And yet tonight I am going out to an opening. And still oddly enough, I am still pecking at this damnable blog!

I’m listening to this song these days:

I’m absolutely swimming in video footage. I don’t know where to start! It’s crazy, absolutely crazy. I ordinarily love editing, but yeah, it’s pretty common for me to sit down and feel lost. It’s such a crazy process, making videos and films. What I should really be doing is making more sequences with the various pieces that I will eventually put together.

I finally got it together to put the rhino video on my facebook. So there it is! I will eventually put it on Youtube I hope.

I am crazy. I’ve realized I talk to myself an awful lot, not so much in public, but I just mutter to myself throughout the day. Is that normal? I don’t know.

My quitting smoking is still going well. I’m starting to not think about it at all! It’s definitely an improvement. I’m about to go off Step 2 for Step 3. And then I’m done! So exciting!

Hey, this is my video!

My psychiatrist had some kind of skiing accident and has been away for a long time. I’ve been back to my g.p., but lately I’ve been wondering if I’m fine. I think I need to make new adjustments to my meds, but I’m not sure if that’s true. And now I’ve realized I’ve just gotten so used to checking in with a doctor about my condition that I have no idea how I really am. I think I’ve been doing well, but it’s hard to get up in the morning early. And that worries me. Plus I’ve commonly had fall depressions, and I think subconsciously I’m worried about that coming up again.

Good thing I have an appointment with her soon.

I guess I do have mild depression. I’d like to shake it off, but I really think it’s related to needing more work and not being able to do mornings for some reason. And the end of the big grant. It lasted a long time, through many adventures. And I miss Scotland still.

Oddly enough I am really liking being single right now. I’m not entirely sure why that is. I guess I like my own company when I am alone. It’s comforting. And I’ve spent so much of my twenties doing things on my own that it’s just fine.

Anyway, I am trying to check in on myself and see if I am really okay or if I am slipping into anything like mania or depression.

Well, I’m not overly happy, that’s for sure. So mania must be out.

That leaves depression. aw crap. Okay, or middle ground, which would be the best.

Well it was the anniversary of a friend’s suicide this past month, that was sad.

But I did come home from Scotland, and that kinda made me sad too.

HMM> i guess there are reasons to be sad at the moment, but it still makes me uncomfortable. I hate having to look out for my moods. It’s a part of my illness I find very difficult. So weird to have to look out for your own moods, and the depressions are the worst because there’s this dark blackness to them, like you can’t see through it to your future. Ugh! I HATE THAT!

Poop on depression.

Plus it’s just sad that summer is over. Aw, no more summer til 2009!

So I’m writing a grant to do a short recruitment video for the Martian Mining Ship that’s going to Terraform Mars for the Indigenous people of earth. It should be pretty funny. It’s based on a performance I’ve been doing here and there. Meaning, Saskatoon and twice in Vancouver.

I have the costumes designed already.

They are black coveralls with MARS CREW beaded on the back in red beads.

It’s kind of based in my desire, however far fetched, to go into space.

But it’s based on a different idea of going into space, because it’s tied in with this idea of home, and leaving home, and making a new home but it will never be the same. There’s an inherent loneliness to the idea of space travel.

Anyway, I am having grant writers block and it sucks. I can’t for the life of me describe my project. I need to read some of my old notes or something.

I can only get 17 000, which is still 17 000 more than I have now.

Damn block! I can’t even write this! I’m going to bed.

This article from the Globe and Mail about various racist comments made by the Conservative party’s folks made me shudder. So many stereotypes, so much hate. What a fucked up party man!

I am leaning towards the NDP right now and then also curious about the Green party. But then there is also the Liberals, and really that’s the only other big party aside from the Bloc, which I can’t vote for since I’m in Saskatchewan. Not that I would vote Bloc. Maybe I should just vote for a fringe independent candidate. Damn, so many choices.

It really makes me wonder about a place like the States where there are only two political parties. Not enough representation of diversity in political opinion. It’s kind of weird. Even though it’s pretty much been either Conservative or Liberal in power, there have been other people in parliament from all the other parties.

And it’s going to be another minority government. Those things seem to have elections pretty quick, and there’s always the confidence vote that can do it in.

One good thing about Canada is we do our elections with pencils and papers. No hanging chads, no electronic voting thinglydoos.

Anyway, the real point of this election is to get rid of the Conservatives. Stephen Harper is evil. He keeps axing arts funding. He gave people something like a hundred bucks a year towards their child care instead of funding day cares and the like. In Fit Of Pique I photoshopped a picture of him as George W. Bush’s Mini Me. Enough said.

Not to mention the, uh, sobering remarks made by a Tory Candidate’s assistant to Native protesters. And that guy who wants me and all my friends to live in Labrador.

LABRADOR?

What will we do there? Sniff government supplied gasoline?