Coming Out Day

It’s coming out day. I blew my wad describing my teenage coming out experience, so enough about me. And I’m not soliciting other people’s coming out stories eiether, because they’re only so interesting and then everything sounds the same. There’s a formula, ya know. It goes like this:

I always suspected ever since I was __ and got a crush on/really liked _____________.
When I was __ I fell in love with a girl/boy.
I told ________ and they _________
I realized _________ hated queers.
I rented Desert of The Heart/Auntie Mame over and over.
I told my mum and she _________.

Anyway, none of that. I’m falling asleep remembering.

I’d rather this be a visionary type blog about coming out. I want to talk about all the sexy babes I want to come out of the closet, not because I think they’ll be good role models for the LGBT community or because they’ll improve the lot of the LGBT community. I want them to come out so I can sleep with them. Come on, hot lesbian starfucker sex where you don’t have to sign a legal document declaring you will never out them, or being the anonymous gal pal, or sleeping in the same house as the *husband*. That is hot. Relationships and sex without fear and oppression is sexy as hell, especially if you get to escort some hottie down a red carpet, even if your name is misspelled in all the captions (which mine definitely would be). I know some people would say secrecy and mystery is sexy, and in a way it is, but think of the practicalities, it is a pain in the ass.

Okay, so here is who I want to come out already.

#1 Jorja Fox

This image alone should seal the deal. But an even funnier quote from a message board says it all:
“Fox’s cunt-lapping proclivities has been on this forum many times. She plays in an all-lesbian band, her best friends are all lesbians, and she has never denied being a lesbian, and has appeared in various gay and lesbian magazines. “
I also read that she and her long time girlfriend broke up. ooh la la.

#2 Marcia Cross

Okay, so consider this. In real life she meets a guy and in six months they’re engaged, soon after they’re married, and now she’s pregnant. In the show she meets a guy, six months later they are engaged, and soon after they are married. That’s kind of bizarre. And it was such a coverup type marriage. I mean, I could go find a scared little gay boy to marry from a Craigslist posting. Whatev. Anyway, everyone heard about all the coming out frou fra, it’s kind of old news now. She allegedly has a girlfriend (do you think I could break them up?). Some anonymous folks in the life have mentioned seeing her at LA Dyke Bars (why have I never been to these bars? 🙁 ), and she kissed Felicity Huffman and pinched Eva Longoria’s butt during the infamous Vanity Fair Shoot. Which brings me to # 3, who rumour has it is also a regular at LA Dyke Bars.

#3 Nicole Kidman

God, OBVIOUSLY I need to get a Canada Council grant to research the celebrity demographics of LA dyke bars, with lots of field research and hands on experimentation. I forget my good gossip on her, except that she seemed awfully snuggly with Naomi Watts and went to stay with her after the Cruise breakup (which was supposedly orchestrated in their prenumptials to take place after a certain period of time. OMG, but listen to this: “Jane Campion came to my school and wanted to cast me in her student film, but she wanted me to wear a shower cap on my head and kiss another girl” I don’t find shower caps sexy either.

#4 Jodie Foster

Like the famous Leonard Cohen song, Everybody Knows. I mean, COME ON! Why can she not come out? Why won’t she? It’s not like people would be surprised.

Okay, so to end this Coming Out Day blog, here is a classic scene from Ellen’s coming out episode. Take CAREFUL note of the celebrity cameo in here.

Crumbs

So now North Korea is itching for war. Crumbs. I don’t know what to say about all of this, except that it reminds me of a sad conversation I’ve been having with various people I know. This summer a friend told me she thought the Americans would get nuked. I’m not sure, I’ve just been thinking something really bad will happen down there to a lot of Americans who don’t believe in their government either. So strange, what a strange world. And if they do nuke the US, I wonder if Vancouver will get hit. Or any other countries.

Oh, and a tiny plane flew into a building in New York.

News is weird.

The Doomsday Clock is still at 7 minutes to midnight.

Okay this is funny. The following is a direct paragraph from Wikipedia. Bear in mind that people can edit at any time.

“Prognosis

Acute bronchitis usually lasts approximately 10 or 11 days. It may accompany or closely follow a cold or the flu, or it may arrive unaccompanied by any other condition. It is contagious, and it starts out with a dry cough, frequently waking the sufferer up at night. After a few days, it progresses to a wetter, productive cough, which may be accompanied by a low grade fever, fatigue, and headache. The fever, fatigue, and malaise may last only a few days, but the wet cough may last up to several weeks. For some people, the cough may last as long as a few months as the bronchial tubes heal slowly.
Should the cough last longer than a month, some doctors may issue a referral to an ENT Doctor to see if a cause other than bronchitis is causing the irritation. It is possible that having irritated bronchial tubes for as long as a few months may inspire asthmatic conditions in some patients.
In addition, if one starts coughing up mucus tinged with blood, one should see a doctor. In rare cases, doctors may conduct tests to see if the cause is a serious condition such as tuberculosis or lung cancer.
The prognosis for patients with severe chronic bronchitis varies, but recovery is harder for those patients with additional severe illnesses (lung diseases or heart conditions). Pulmonary hypertension, cor pulmonale, and chronic respiratory failure are possible complications from chronic bronchitis.
oh my god!”

The irony is after I read all this I too thought Oh my god because it sounds suspiciously like what I have.

CREEPY!

Someone rang the doorbell so I went to go look. The big dog was in the backyard, and I couldn’t see who this guy was. Then I went and let in my mom’s rather ferocious sounding huge ass dog, opened the door, and some skeezy looking guy walked away as the dog barked his huge bark. Ewwww. Creepy!! WTF?

Cough Cough Blorgg!

I’m REALLY REALLY sick right now, I think I have to see the doctor actually. I’d had this low frade cough for over two weeks and then last night after Thanksgiving dinner I was smoking with two cousins when I started coughing so hard I BARFED out a huge glob of plegm. And I mean HUGE! I did that a few more times that evening before going to bed, where I have stayed until half an hour ago.

Sooo, yeah, had to call in sick to work. Had some REALLY weird dreams. My little dog kept coming around to see what was wrong with me.

Anyway, I wanted to write a more uplifting goofy post. I also found it it is Aboriginal Women’s History Month and since Halloween is ALSO coming up, I have to start on my scary posts. And I have ten days to get an application in. Eeee! Deadlines are scary enough in and of themselves.

So since I’m sick I can’t post much funny stuff. We looked at possessions on Sunday to freak us out, but this was the best one (btw it’s quite short).

It’s Tickle Me Elmo with audio from the Exorcism of Emily Rose over top.

The Myth of Violence Among the Mentally Ill

Sooo, I guess I should start this with a recap of me.

Diagnosis:
Bipolar Disorder (aka Manic Depression) with possible Schizoaffective Disorder
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
Anxiety Disorder (generalized and social)
Attention Deficit Disorder
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (after hospitalization)

Onset of illness:
First suicide attempt age 7
First Manic Psychosis age 24

Psychiatric Medicines:
Paxil, Imovane, Wellbutrin, Celexa, Zyprexa, Effexor, Lithium, Epival, Serzone, Lamictal. Currently on Epival, Celexa, and Lamictal.

It’s strange to start with such a basic reduced profile of who I am. It’s really not the whole picture in anyway what so ever. I was an honour roll student, I have a bachelors degree, I’m a filmmaker/video artist, I took care of my mentally handicapped sister while growing up, I read all kinds of stuff, from fiction to comics to academic theory. I watched foreign and independent films since my teen years. I’ve been a feminist ever since I could use the word. I try to keep abreast of current politics and connect it to history. I’ve spent my whole life being involved in my culture as a Cree woman. I was out in high school. I’ve had hamsters, turtles, rats, dogs and cats. I consider my art practice to be political in nature. I’m involved in my communities.

But the fact is, once I tell people my diagnosis, none of the rest of it matters. Suddenly I am Bipolar, a mental patient. I am distilled down to the tiniest essence. Certainly my disorders have shaped my view of the world, my experiences, my beliefs. I’ve tried since my hospitalization to be outspoken on the rights of the mentally ill. It’s hard. The saddest for me is when I’m speaking out about abuse in the psychiatric system and someone else is too, but they distance themselves from me by stating emphatically that they are not crazy. Therefore, they do not deserve the treatment that they got because they’re one of the normals. Another peeve I have is when friends insist I am not mentally ill, when I know I am. I finally accept it. But they can’t accept that about me, because I don’t fit in with what they believe about the mentally ill.

But what I really want to talk about is the myth that we are more violent than the rest of society, what we call the normals. I recently had a squabble with a commenter on another blog about the way the killer of those Amish girls was termed mentally ill by everybody writing on him. She said that schizophrenics were inherantly more violent than regular people. I told her she was prejudiced and should go meet people with mental illnesses. Anyway, it got me thinking. Sometimes when people find out about my illness, they do really weird things, like edge away from me in case I flip and try to kill them. They cut off friendships, I’ve been discriminated against on the job, lovers ditch me because they think I’m high maintanence.

Because people think we’re violent, we start to believe it. A lot of people can’t handle accepting their diagnosis because they’ve been brainwashed with stigma. I know that was a big issue for me. We don’t want to take our meds, we try to handle things on our own, we end up denied housing and living on the street.

Why do people think such bad things about us? A few reasons. People are scared of difference, and what they don’t understand. People generally are not educated about mental illnesses. Take schizophrenia for an example. People CONSISTENTLY think schizophrenia means having a split personality. It is totally different. That’s more like Dissociative Identity Disorder (AKA Multiple Personality Disorder). Also certain symptoms of our illnesses scare the beezus out of people, such as delusions and hallucinations (visual, auditory, and tactile, which is a lesser known hallucination). Some of our symptoms are actually side effects of our meds (shuffling, tics, and shakes).

But probably the worst contributor to stigma towards the mentally ill is the media. Television shows, movies, and news. We’re killers, stalkers, etc etc. And a lot of times a violent criminal who’s a normal will get slapped with the psycho label just to ease people’s comfort levels. As long as it’s THOSE people doing this shit, they don’t have to worry. The fact is since normal people make up the majority, and since violence is the same among sane/insane populations, the majority of violent crime is committed by normals. Also consider that the crimes committed by people with mental health issues get more sensationalized press time. People eat up stories about the looney tune who flipped compared to the methodical killer who amassed an aresenal of guns over a few years.

Since my diagnosis of Manic Depression I’ve spent more time among others of my ilk, people with schizophrenia, DID, OCD, Anxiety, etc etc. Even in the hospital, I have never seen one of us become violent. In fact, the few times in my life I’ve actually been scared for my life has been around normals. I’d much rather have tea with a group of schizophrenics than have beers with a group of normals.

Incidentally, I haven’t assaulted anyone. I have been assaulted five times.

Interesting side note: My shakes. Since getting on psychiatric drugs (particularily anti-psychotic/anti-manic drugs) I’ve had the shakes at certain times, when I’m scared, nervous, upset, doing public speaking, etc. Spilling hot coffee on my hand is the worst. I was trying to figure out where it came from, since I’d never had them B.D. (before drugs). I have a theory now. All of those situations involve rushes of adrenaline, which obviously goes through your brain. It’s probable that medication and adrenaline interacts and produces the shakes. It would be nice if they could get rid of that side effect, because it’s really hard to cover up fear/nervousness when everyone can see you shaking. Whatever. They should just get over it anyway.

Back to Queer Month (or whatever they called it)

So anyway, back to Queer History month.

Hollywood is crawling with queers. I mean, you would not believe how many. The best one i heard was Julie Andrews and her partner Carol Burnett.

Anyway, here is a sweet video I found on Youtube about successful queers (a lot in Hollywood)

Um, hmm, I have some other non related things to talk about.

Last night I broke my bed. I’d started my period in the middle of the night and was getting out to put on a pad, when I had all my weight on one knee and the slat beneath me snapped and I plunged! Half a foot. Luckily the other part of the slat rested on a board in the middle of the bed, so I could inch over that way.

I’ve got some stuff on my mind right now. Actually, maybe I will post this and then come back and post my other one on it’s own.

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.