INVASION of the SPIDERLINGS!!!

I was sitting outside having a smoke with my coworker when we noticed a little white string flying around. That’s weird. Then she noticed a tiny spider on me. I brushed it off. More kept showing up. Before I knew it I had about fifteen black spiderlings all over my head and shoulders. It drove me crazy for the next half hour as wee babes kept crawling around in my hair. ARG! They were really cute when I finally saw one, a chubby shiny black body with teeny weeny legs, completely out of proportion like most babies are. Anyway, remember that scene in Charlottes Web with all her babies flying away on webby parachutes saying “Goodbye, goodbye!” That’s what these little dudes were doing. And evidently I was downwind from their nest.

I have a strange history with spiders. Once a spider was on me at the Grunt and I freaked and smacked it off and demanded my friend Elaine kill it. She refused and began to carefully escort it out of the opening, following it’s slow spider progress. Finally she gave up and got it on an invite and dropped it outside. She was lauded for her compassion towards arachnids and I felt like an attempted murderer.

Currently we have three orb spiders living in our backyard, the most celebrated one being the ingenious tan spider who built her web over the sunporch light fixture. As you can imagine, she’s living pretty large. We’ve had to save her from visitors numerous times. My cousin wanted to kill her by spraying her down with Pledge, but I pointed out that it would only polish her and make her nice and shiny. Since then she’s resigned herself to hurling verbal abuse at the spider, whom she has named The Bitch.

Ever since today’s fiasco with the spiderlings, I’ve grown concerned about The Bitch and her potential offspring. Certainly she must have had suitors this summer considering the explosion of orb spiders in Saskatchewan. And the sunporch is completely encased in glass and screens. So this weekend, to save the babies, and our sunporch, and our sanity, we have to construct some kind of mosquito netting holding pen for the orb spiderlings, while still taking care to ensure that she can have her food flying to the web. It’s going to be tricky.

And finally a Public Spider Announcement. This is your web:

This is your web on caffeine:

Any questions?

Bree Van De Kamp’s First Orgasm EVER!

If you missed the premiere of Desperate Housewives last night you missed a fuckin’ CLASSIC Bree moment. Remember the sex scene that was gossiped about when it was released on Youtube and then taken down? Well, as it turns out it was oral sex, which made Bree squeal, jump out of bed, and run to the doctor convinced she had a stroke, describing this pleasurable spasm she felt. When the doctor said it was probably an orgasm she said “Oh no, I’ve had those lots of times, that warm tingly feeling, the relief that it’s over.” Oh man Bree, this explains SO much about you. Yup, her first orgasm, and it’s with a murdering murderer. (He killed his wife! He killed her parakeet! He ran over MIKE!) Damn. I don’t want her to date yet ANOTHER murderer, but now that Orson’s given her an orgasm she’s gonna be hooked!! Aw, maybe Gabby will buy Bree a Hitachi Magic Wand to save her from a disasterous marriage.

Anyway, this clip isn’t Bree’s first orgasm (I’m waiting for it to get posted, believe me), but it’s a pretty juicy promo music video of this whole next season.

Oooh, and I also heard a rumour Bree’s gay son Andrew is coming back (yay!) and it will turn out he’s been supporting himself as a gay porn star since his mom left him by the side of the road.

I feel badly for women who have never orgasmed. I had my first orgasm at an embarrassingly young age (self induced ya perv), I wonder why it’s so hard for women to learn how to come. And why are heterosexual men so stupid that so many have no clue how to satisfy a woman? Questions questions.

So the moral of the blog is, go have an orgasm tonight and send loving orgasm energy out to women like Bree Van De Kamp.

****MEH! This came in TODAY from Youtube. It took like, a week and a half!!! WTF. Anyway, update, Andrew will be coming back as a hustler (so the rumour goes) this Sunday. I have no other DH news. And a bazillion other posts I sent from Youtube showed up today, but since I already posted them I deleted them all. So if you came here and saw a great big mess, blame Youtube.

Girls
I still remember watching the National (with Barbara Frum) on December 6, 1989. Marc Lepine had just murdered fourteen women at Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal because he hated feminists. The women who died were Geneviève Bergeron, Hélène Colgan, Nathalie Croteau, Barbara Daigneault, Anne-Marie Edward, Maud Haviernick, Maryse Laganière, Maryse Leclair, Anne-Marie Lemay, Sonia Pelletier, Michèle Richard, Annie St-Arneault, Annie Turcotte, and Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz. I still remember that cold shaking fear I felt that night, that men could hate women so much. I was eleven, a girl, and already a feminist, and it made me realize how much power men exerted over women, or how much they wanted power. Even how much people hate feminists, men AND women alike. It wasn’t feminists who stopped him getting into engineering school. He was rejected because he hadn’t completed his prerequisites.

We all said it would never happen again, we all did annual marches, we all tried to raise awareness of violence towards women. Did we succeed? Women are still beaten, raped, and murdered. Aboriginal women go missing or are targeted by serial killers at an alarming rate.

And now, within the space of two weeks, two male gun men have entered two different American schools and taken girls hostage and either sexually assaulted them or planned to, and murdered them. Both men killed themselves. So did Marc Lepine. And in the beginning of September a man went on a rampage in a college in Montreal which killed one woman, he also killed himself. Throughout this the media have focused on the topic of school shootings, in generalized terms. But these weren’t ordinary school shootings. The gunmen weren’t students. They were adult men preying on girls. Girls specifically. And yet the American mass media won’t touch the gender issue, won’t look at the role of misogyny in any of these recent shootings.

One news report I read talked about the rope, board with eye holes, and lubricant that the killer at the Amish school brought with him. They said “Something worse could have happened to them than what did.” Five girls are dead, shot point blank in the head. Five other girls are in critical care, and will probably die. I don’t think rape and murder should be compared, it’s too weird. Both are awful things in their own seperate distinct way. But this line implies that a woman’s virginity is more important than her life. And it sickens me.

I can’t say the Montreal Massacre opened all Canadian’s eyes to violence against women, but we did ask each other a lot of tough questions, we were confronted with it, news reporters discussed the issue.

The other creepy thing about American media is the coverage on these shootings compared to the coverage on Rep. Foley’s explicit emails and text messages to male pages. TONS of stories are published every day on this issue, people are outraged, people are using it as an excuse to bash homosexuals, people want an investigation. But the lives of girls are merely a footnote. While people frantically try to ensure the protection of male pages, few people are concerned about the safety of females of any age. Think about how many sexual harrassment issues women in Washington deal with continually. Would people be upset if these pages were women instead of men? I doubt it.

Survey Says

Some interesting surveys came out this past week. So far it’s been confirmed; lesbians have better and more frequent orgasms than straight women; liberals have more imaginative and sexual dreams than conservatives; napping makes you smarter; people blog as therapy; women are aroused just as fast as men; Christians are more likely to have unprotected sex; and Thirza Cuthand is undoubtedly the most beautiful butch on the planet. Ha ha, I made that last one up. But really, two of those things I could have told the researchers. I don’t know where this whole bullshit came from women having to be “in the mood,” although in romantic situations, yeah, we’d want it timed right and stuff, but more for various relationship goals or in the interest of self protection than because we’re not wet as a waterslide. Sometimes I’ve walked home from people/situations with drenched panties but that didn’t mean I wanted to do it. And porn turns me on really fast, erotica takes a little while longer because there’s character development or some form of a plot. Even some of the amateur erotica has like, three paragraphs describing some blondie’s butt, boobs, measurements, age, etc etc. BORING! Plus the average dick size goes from 7.5 to 15 inches, HA! In reality average is about five inches.

As for the lesbians have better sex, FER SURE! And I don’t think it’s that men can’t please women just as well, it’s that a lot of them are sadly lazy. They think penetration is enough and totally forget the all important little nubbly bit that’s the size of a pencil eraser (well, for some, other’s have huge schlongy clits). And I think women fake it a lot because they just give up all hope of coming because it’s getting late and they’re getting tired and he’s all sweaty and smelly and it’s just not going to happen with the old in out. Poor ladies. There needs to be some kind of clitoral outreach program for straight men, vans that travel around handing out pamphletes and showing where the clit is on a little rubber model of a vag.

As for the Christians, I suspect there is going to be an HIV/AIDS outbreak in Christian communities that their church leaders are going to have to deal with, and sadly then I think we’ll finally see real progress in research and prevention.

The Hays Code and it’s Continuing Influence on Queer Subtext in Media

I’m bookish, so I always wanted to write about this.

Very briefly, the Hays Code (or Production Code) was imposed on American cinema in 1930 by the MPPDA, which is now know as the MPAA. Basically it restricted what could be shown, talked about, or eluded to. It envisioned motion pictures as upholding the morals of puritan descendants. No sex, nudity, violence, interracial relationships, lustful kissing, homosexuality, disrespecting the flag, etc. Films made during this period alluded to homosexuality, inferences that sometimes only other Queers could catch on. Sometimes the responsibility for the implied queerness came from the writer, sometimes from the directors, and sometimes from the actors. Sometimes the other actor would be totally clueless that this is what was going on in their scene. Literally, the Hays Code fostered a hidden code for queer spectators to see tinges of their lives briefly appear on screen. This became subtext, think Spartacus, or Dave and Hal in 2001 a Space Odyssey, or a slew of Hitchcock films. The Hays Code officially died in 1967, and became the MPAA ratings system. Although one might think that’s a positive step, consider how often queer films have been given the dreaded NC17 label, effectively hampering it’s distribution and audience. Some out there directors (ie Todd Haynes) still shoot alternate scenes in case they need to squeak under to an R rating.

Anyway, back to subtext. I was an avid subtextual audience member. I loved subtext, and I have to admit I still do. Oh sure, I love blatantly queer work for sure, but in uber mainstream stuff subtext cranks my nipples. The last great subtextual lesbian relationship I was obsessed with was Captain Janeway and Seven of Nine. It was a great plot, starship captain meets borg, liberates her, and succumbs to her feelings. Only that’s not what really happened. But I liked to live in a world where it did happen, and so did lots of other lesbians.

Which brings me to slash, or fan fic. It was a natural progression from subtextual readings. Some of the most popular slash is Kirk/Spock, Xena/Gabrielle, and Janeway/Seven. A billion other pairings exist out there from shows such as CSI, Buffy, all Star Treks, Lord of The Rings, Batman/Robin, etc. Some of it’s romantic, some of it’s sexual, and some of it is violent. What I like about slash is how people were able to interact and engage with mainstream characters and make them more complex, more queer, sometimes even tell WAY better stories than the originals. These iconic figures are our modern day folk heros, and like any good stories, people change them, people retell them differently, they grow and evolve. This is a natural occurance in all cultures with story telling traditions. Of course now we have things called copyright and trademarks and so forth. But it’s hard to send someone a cease and desist for sending out photocopies of stories or posting writing on message boards under pseodonyms.

Another interesting thing somewhat related to the Hays Code and the later MPAA is the rise of Queer Film Festivals. The need was obviously there, film and video equipment was becoming more available to the public and experimental films were being created. People wanted to see their lives depicted by people from their communities, we wanted our own stories told. So voila, film festival. If their films were screened for the MPAA ratings board (which was a must in all films being screened), too many films would be censored. So the smart thing to do was for the festivals to require the audience to buy a membership. You can screen whatever you like to members of your society. A lot of festivals do this nowadays, even the big international festivals. Sadly, I think the hayday of the Queer film festival is fading. Programmers are making more conservative choices, shorts aren’t being screened as often, and the audiences are demanding films and videos that are more slick and Hollywood, even though we were shunned out of Hollywood all those years ago and still are. There’s a lack of decent funding for queer work, and yet DIY work is kind of poo poohed, even though it’s the medium for the most marginalized voices.

Anyway, I have one more thing somewhat related. My first video was being screened at The Fire I’ve Become, a queer film fest at the Glenbow in Calgary. I had just turned a squeaky clean seventeen. I wasn’t out at school. Some people knew, but not a lot. I still had another year to go. The title of my video was Lessons In Baby Dyke Theory. I thought it was a funny title. The cast were some pipe cleaner dolls and a monologue of me wondering where all the other teenage lesbians were. Well, the Ratings Board in Alberta got a hold of it. Basically it was rated so that even if I was at the screening I wouldn’t be allowed admission because I was underage to see my own video. Not only that, but I got outed by Alberta MP’s and MLA’s. It’s true. One sleepy morning my mom showed me the paper and there was my name, along with a whole lot of garbage about how it was a recruiting film targeting children. The irony of all of this was that my friend Christopher was being kicked out of his MFA program for outing Sylvia Fedoruk, the then Lieutenant Governor of Saskatchewan. She was a prominent official and if word got out she was a rug muncher she could have problems. Whereas I was just a teenage lesbian in a redneck city in a teeny closeminded high school subject to bullying, harrassment, and violence, and my life didn’t mean much.

Yup. And that’s my story of how the Hays code came to bite me in the ass when I was a teen.

Oh yah, and to illustrate subtext from my fav pairing, check out Captain Janeway checking out Seven’s breasts. I too noticed she kept checking out that bust.

LGBTTQ History Month (Or Queer, as I will refer to it)

I just found out it is Queer History month. I didn’t really have time to prepare a blog for this, so I’m going to totally wing it and take you back, back, to 1993. It is Saskatoon in midwinter. I had just hugged a girl with breasts and realized a) I liked breasts and b) I was a lesbian. I was fourteen years old. I did not have the internet. We had the Teenage Body Book, so I looked for the section on homosexuality (what a dry clinical word). Basically it said that LOTS of teenagers had these same sex feelings but most everybody moved on to happy heterosexual relationships, and not to pin a label on yourself at such a young age, of course pinning a heterosexual label is fine at ANY age.

Fast forward to coming out, Mum took it well but she said two things which she has denied saying ever since, “Are you sure?” and “Can’t you just be bisexual?” Anyway, she went to Ottawa and crashed the women’s bookstore for me to buy volumes of lesbian literature, some adolescent stuff, some sex books (no pictures), some comics, I forget what else. Her friend gave me two dozen roses to celebrate. And life pretty much continued like that for a while. I carefully selected people to come out to, I read everything I could get my hands on, I started buying the Advocate and learning politics, I rented Desert of The Heart over and over until I found Madchen in Uniform which I watched over and over. And I found the local queer youth group.

Finding the youth group was a fluke. I’d actually gone down to AIDS Saskatoon because I realized my safe sex knowledge was woefully inadequate with my sexuality. Use a condom. Hmmm. I mean, I had no dildos, I didn’t know anyone else my age with dildos, and I knew I’d do other things (I still wasn’t totally sure what). So I ended up at AIDS Saskatoon with a ziplock bag of dental dams, finger cots, and a latex glove and a wee pamphlete on Safer Lesbian Sex. Remember, this was the early Nineties. The AIDS epidemic was still HUGELY on peoples minds and all the people my age were getting drilled with safer sex messages (I believe this has sadly fallen by the wayside). Anyway, I noticed a pamphelete for a group called QYSS (pronounced Kiss). It stood for Queer Youth Support Service or something like that. And I was underage to go. By then I was fifteen, and you had to be sixteen (I later sucessfully lobbied for this to change to twelve). Anyway, I went to my first meeting on a chilly winter day and met a sweet boy who is now a well known DJ, and a round lesbian. Nobody else was there. Attendance was always erratic and dependant on infighting and who had just broke up with who. Anyway, they took my for french fries and the boy kept saying Mary and I was so green I thought the lesbian’s name was Mary.

I kept going, we met in a tacky tiny boardroom with wood panelling and went through circle check. Everybody talked about how they were doing. That was mostly all we did, and then go for fries and dish. One boy told the round lesbian her peanut buster parfait looked like a bad rim job. I had to learn all these terms really quick or they could zing me and I wouldn’t know it. Gay boys taught me how to dish, be catty, look good, and be generally flamboyant. They were great. We learned about a lot of things but the gay community really wasn’t interested in giving much to us. Mostly we were an exploitable labour force for the annual Pride Dance decorating community. God, blowing up fucking balloons, hanging garlands off those ridiculous heads at the Ukrainian Hall. It was pretty boring. But we all did it because there was nothing else to do.

Oh yeah, and we changed QYSS to OPY, Out And Proud Youth, which seemed happier. But then a facilitator wanted us to be more mature, and a smart ass gay boy said “So what should we call ourselves then? MOPY?”

A drag queen tried to seduce me while we watched Egoyan’s Exotica.

I met my first lover in art class. We’d been at high school in the same grade ever since grade nine, but even though she was cute I never paid much attention to her. I think she just sat down at my table because there was no where else to sit. The other person sitting with us was my friend the cutter, but she’s not really relevant to the story. Anyway, we started chatting, I started getting crushed out, my best friend told me to forget it because she had to be straight to look like that. (Ha! My first introduction to high femmes!) Anyway, flirt flirt flirt, we’d flirt all over. I gushed about her to the queer youth group. Then my friend the bisexual man met her and fell in love. ARGGGG! This happened just after I came home from my second ever screening of my first ever video at Out On Screen in Vancouver (about 1995). They went on a date and I was heartbroken and seethed.

And then we had a threesome. (And her nails were really long)

And then we all had a fight.

And then his house burnt down.

And then . . . it was grade twelve by then. People had cottoned on to the fact they had a budding bulldagger roaming the halls, so I’d get shoved or have epithets yelled at me, people threw cans from moving cars, that sort of thing. I was really hating Saskatoon by this point and kept reading the catalogue for Emily Carr to get through the year. I tried to start a GSA at my school but no one was very interested in the meetings on the front lawn even though I brought chips. We all knew who we were at the school, the queers I mean. Mostly bisexuals and a couple gay boys. And I guess the five of us felt conspicuous to all sit together, some were quite stealth.

I went to my grad with two dates who were women, one of whom has since died. And then I swirled out of high school and by the end of the summer I was on a plane to Vancouver.

I’ve seen a couple people from high school since then, one of my best friends, my first lover, a girl who since came out, I know one of my high school pals is a 911 operator now. I’ve been tempted to dial those three numbers just to find her, but that’s too much trouble. I found a guy I was sure was gay and yeah, he’s come out since then.

And that’s about it for my queer teen history. I wish there was more salacious stuff in there, like wild nights of lesbian debauchery, but I didn’t get much play.

Hk 119

Hk 119 is my new favorite electroclash band. Hk 119 is essentially Heidi Kilpelainen, a performance artist from Finland currently residing in London who is now working under One Little Indian, Bjork’s record label. Her work is “influenced by sci-fi, futurism and Russian constructivism.” She has been compared to Siouxsie Sioux, Nina Hagen, Grace Jones, Kate Bush, and is influenced by Bowie and Iggy Pop.

The 119 represents September 11 (911 as written in Finnish) and her work is comparably dystopian, an audio/visual warning of worlds to come.

Her music videos are very much DIY, she does her own costumes, choreography, and her set is a black curtain against her living room wall. She’s utilized tinfoil and garbage bags to make outre outfits for her demonic alter ego. She is in complete control of her songs utilizing 8 tracks, Cubase, and now Logic. She’s completed her BA and MA at Central Saint Martins, where other students resented the fact that they catagorized her as a musician and she was working in an art school.

While my favorite song remains “Friend For Dinner” (quite possibly the sexiest song I have heard in years), the rest of her album has notable songs as well, referencing things such as Hal and Dave in 2001 a Space Odyssey in her track Malfunction.

Anyway, here is the music video for the ultra hot Friend For Dinner.

If you liked that, check out Malfunction.

A Glut of Youtubing

Okay, so for some reason my blogging from Youtube is crap these days and won’t work. So, I’m going to try something different. Here are my recent favorite videos, perfect for a lazy Saturday afternoon.

Kittycat Dance

I wish Schrodinger danced.

Telling Truth Gently

(BTW, North American Genocide towards First Nations People killed 150 000 000 of us.)

Red Bull Music

One man with a can.

Andrew Imitates Bree Van De Kamp Having an Orgasm

(but she actually never had one until Season 3 Episode 1)
The acrimonious relationship between uptight Bree and her gay son Andrew kicks butt, and he’s coming back!! Last we saw of him she left him on the side of a road after he slept with her boyfriend, rumour has it he’s been supporting himself as a hustler.

Parker Posey Desperately Seeks a Bumblebee

Classic scene from Best In Show, I’m embarrassed to say I too looked desperately for a particular dog squeaky toy, a pig to be exact. I made mom go to five different pet shops in town. No piggie, they got squeaky hamburgers instead.

Remember remember the Groove of November

Deanna introduced me to V for Vendetta and I have to say it kicks ass. But every anarchist/revolutionary needs some downtime, and this is V’s.

Apparently I am “fat” that needs to be trimmed

I’ve lost nine pounds. I consider this an achievement. However now my identity itself is considered fat, if you believe Stephen Harper’s recent defense of his budget cuts which have been targeted towards women, minorities, poor/working class people, the arts, the environment, health care, and education, among many other things I am still researching. We have a 13.2 billion dollar surplus, yet Harper’s alliances to the so called middle class, big business, and oil and gas companies have been given top priority.

This list is by no means exhaustive, but here are some of the programs which have been cut (either partially or entirely):
Adult literacy programs.
Child care and development.
Arts and museum funding.
First Nations and Inuit Tobacco Control Strategy (non aboriginal stop smoking programs have not been affected).
The Status of Women.
Pine Beetle Management (Pine beetles are threatening to destroy most of the forests in British Columbia’s interior).
Medical Marijuana research.
Youth International Internship Program.
The Court Challenges Program (an organization which advances federal court cases relating to language and equality rights)
Employment Initiatives.
Technology partnerships Canada (which funds high tech research and development)
15 Kyoto related programs
Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation
Funding for softwood-lumber trade litigation
Elimination of National Defence High-Frequency Surface Wave Radar Project
Elimination of Centre for Research and Information on Canada
Canada Firearms Centre
Museum assistance
Elimination of the RCMP drug-impaired-driving program’s training budget
Law Commission of Canada

Not only that, but only Canada and Russian OUT OF THE ENTIRE WORLD declined to sign/participate in the Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Now, I know people bitch about taxes, people ALWAYS bitch about taxes. But to be perfectly honest, I get creeped out when someone swoops into office promising to cut taxes because A) Tax cuts are aimed at the wealthy; and B) Tax cuts are subsidized by the poor. And this is a clear example.

Technically we could have this racist/sexist/ignorant/redneck asshole in office until 2011. I don’t want to wait that long, dammit. Only 36% of us were stupid enough to vote for him, and hopefully he’ll lose a vote of confidence and all our MP’s can paddle his ass on the way out, which means an election would happen in 2007 or 2008. I’m not confident in him, that’s for sure. He’s shown where his priorities lie, as if we didn’t know before. I mean, my god, even Joe Clark doesn’t like this new Conservative party (which is really the Reform party with a new name). HOWEVER the Conservatives are trying to amend the election act to make elections fixed, which means we couldn’t boot him out until 2009 at the earliest. How much more damage can they wreak on Canada in three more years?

Oh you don’t even want to know.

So, if you’re a concerned Canadian, let him know. Emails are good but tactically phone calls are more effective. If you’re not Canadian, write anyway, hell, let him know he’s making Canada look bad in the global sphere.

Rt. Hon. Stephen Harper
Office of the Prime Minister
80 Wellington Street
Ottawa, K1A 0A2
Phone: (613) 992-4211
E-mail: pm@pm.gc.ca

PostScript:
Since we don’t have quit smoking programs anymore, Natives will still be buying smokes. HOWEVER the Imperial tobacco company has decided to discriminate against First Nations stores carrying tobacco and thusly we will be paying more for our smokes from them. The brands involved are Players, Du maurier, Cameo, Avanti, and Peter Jackson. Already I’ve noticed Aboriginal stores running out of these brands due to a lack of effective distribution. I encourage all Aboriginal people and our allies who are still unable to quit smoking to switch brands. I’ve given up Du Maurier for Export A, which I actually like better.

Bukwas on Entertainment Tonight

The other night I was innocently reading a book about a manic depressive who committed art fraud, went to prison, and then had electroshock treatments when my mother inturrupted my revery by saying, “Look at her! She looks like Bukwas!”

Maria Shriver was on television.

In case you don’t remember, she looks like this.

And this is Bukwas:

I must say, the resemblance is striking. For those of you not up on your kwakiutl mythology, Bukwas is a wild man cannibal who lives in the woods. Contemporary Sasquatchologists (I think I just made that word up) say Bukwas is a Sasquatch.

Hmmm . . .