Gently Used Crappy Art for Sale

Being a blogger as opposed to a semi-anonymous diarist has changed my life in small ways. For one: I feel compelled to have a more interesting life than I currently lead, so that people reading these words won’t feel cheated out of a good time. On the other hand, I know that some people become these weird public figures by having a blog, column, or other publicly read/viewed series.

I’m anti-everything though. So because these people become semi-known individuals, because I could become one of THEM, I have decided to avoid an interesting life. Nope, I will not start having sexual romps that take on mythic proportions. I will not subject myself to situations which put my life in the hands of fate. I won’t eat worms, ew. I won’t carve reader’s names in my arms and sell the dirty bandages later. And you can’t buy my used underwear.

My gently used underwear.

Remember when things were gently used instead of secondhand?

However, I have been considering putting out a small t-shirt series. As in, the series will be small, not the t-shirts, unless you like that sort of thing. Proceeds go to me and my art practice, and to little Clive who looks so cute when he wants food. More info will be coming soon!

You wouldn’t want my underwear anyway, it’s full of holes and the elastic is starting to show. I have the most un-sexy underwear, I mean, they aren’t gramma gaunchies, but they’re pretty boring.

In other news, I am working on that new tape, tomorrow I get the camera and then the fun begins, I really hope that it turns out. I think that it will. Eeeee, a new tape, how exciting and nervous! I hope I don’t make crap. I’m always terrified of making crap, because it’s such an easy thing to do. Oops, who put that crappy art there? I did? Oh my gosh, how embarrassing. It’s this fine line between intelligent and crap. Eeeep!

Spooky times People!

This country is poised to swing all the way to the right again, there’s a strange mp3 floating around on the net with an impact date of June 19th, artists are getting in trouble with the Patriot Act (it was bound to happen), and a weird killer rash is spreading around. I’ve been having tons of dreams about girls too. Kissing girls. Cute ones. I think one was Nicole Kidman. Speaking of which, to totally switch gears, did you see the Robbie Williams video she’s in where she totally cruises a woman at the bar? Ow! Hot! It’s so hot she sizzles! Ah, I love femmes.

What was I talking about? Oh yeah, the whole world going to hell in a handbasket. Well, yeah, it was going to happen eventually. I blame the baby boomers.

It’s called Something Stupid. That song, the cover by Robbie Williams and Nicole Kidman. Go download it because I said so and I’m the boss. 😛

The Mayan calendar runs out in 2012. That gives us eight years to get our shit together. But I see stuff like this, and this, and I wonder what’s going to happen to us. Maybe we’ll find out we were just a science project that went incredibly awry and they’ve decided to start with a clean slate. My mother would like that, she’s so stubborn. She’d point and laugh at all of us who believed in God. It would be like being on Candid Camera on a grander, more cosmic scale. You’ve been had, this was all an experiment. Although some noble things came out of the experiment. Like Mrs Butterworth. What could be nobler than Mrs. Butterworth? In my interior iconography she outdoes Mount Rushmore as a statuesque symbol of America. She doesn’t outdo Miss Liberty though. Maybe I have unresolved issues with domesticity. Oh hooray, one more thing to process.

Pharmaceutical Chicken Little?

I think all of us, at some time or another, become terrified that we have some horrible ailment that is going to complicate or shorten our lives. For those of us who are lucky, we turn out to be wrong. I am lucky enough to be wrong. The doctor checked me out top to bottom, ran a battery of blood tests, and as it happens, I am in tip top shape. No diabetes, no parkinsons, just my bipolar tinging my life with a touch of sadness these days.

I am relieved. I am tired of worrying that my drugs, which really do help, could be responsible for destroying other parts of my health.

Aw, I’m hungry. I’m gonna run to the wee cafe in the hood and eat something. I will write something more intelligent later.

Heaven is for Worker Ants

Once when I was a little kid I was watching this little ant. A little red ant, it had found a large white feather. It had decided it needed this feather, needed to take it across this side walk. Centimetre by centimetre it struggled mightily, pulling with it the feather. I was amazed at how brazen it was, how determined and noble. It pulled and pulled. Half an hour later it was in the middle of the the sidewalk.

Somebody stepped on it. I cried. The little ant was dead, expired. Gone to ant heaven. The feather remained where the little ant comrade had fallen. I wanted to give the little ant meaning, wanted it’s life to be worth something as noble as it had been. All I could do was move the feather to the other side of the sidewalk. After death, it’s mission had finally been accomplished.

Sometimes I still cry when I think of the little ant, a tear seeps out larger than the ant’s body had been. Sometimes I wonder if I should have moved the feather and the ant, but I know that would have wrecked the story.

On the Outside/From the Inside

I am listening to Karen Carpenter sing “I’m on top of the world, looking down on creation, and the only explaination I can find, is the love that I’ve found ever since you’ve been around. You’ve put me at the top of the world. Something in the wind has learned my name, and it’s telling me that things aren’t the same.” Strangely appropriate these days. A friend seems to be slowly spinning into the maelstrom that is mania.

I know what it’s like to be in the inside of a manic episode. The edges of everything have a magical sparkle, and while you feel like you’re happy and brilliant and finally standing up for yourself, friends drop away, look confused, upset, and you don’t understand why. I know what it’s like to be inside of all that.

But today I am on the outside. Madness doesn’t have any easy answers, only uneasy questions. Is this person REALLY the person I knew of as my friend? Or is this an entirely new being? Is it her fault she is terrorizing everyone around her? Or is it the disease that she won’t admit she has?

So many questions. I know I was a holy terror when I was a maniac. She’s a maniac, maniac, on the floor. Ah, memories I wish I no longer had.

Life has a funny way of balancing itself out. It wasn’t until months and months after my episode that I started meeting and talking with people who have been there on the outside of madness, trying desperately to reach their loved ones and bring them back to the safe places. But to get people to safer places, often one must take them someplace colder, more inhuman, like the psychiatric system. I think there need to be alternatives. But how? And what?

My friend needs help, of some sort, but people are too afraid to do anything. I don’t think there’s danger yet, but there is that unravelling. When I think of her I see a person who’s life is in tatters at her feet and she is so unaware of it. When I think of her I see myself.

How Do You Fill YOUR Hole?

Yes, I affirm that it is important for lesbians to have access to pornographic materials which “do it” for them. God, I hope Nike doesn’t get after me for using their slogan. Recently I went with a friend to a lesbian strip show. An hour before the show we were full of sushi and feeling psyched. Bring on the boobies! Four hours later, we were depleted. Sucked dry and horny as hell, surrounded by dykes on the make. Meat Market Madness, ladiez were taking it off and sweating all over each other while I quietly sipped my beer.

Some of us are not players, looking deperately for a happy medium between burlezzque and potlucks. Something sexy yet serious, monogamous leather ladies. Where are they? I am disillusioned with the dyke dating scene. Tired of being treated like an easy lay by the easy lays. The hottest dyke sex scene in a film recently was Mullholland Drive, and yet there was no sex if you really look at it. Sometimes the hint of something is dreadfully hotter than getting it all.

No one knows this better than me. With a list of unrequieted loves longer than the string on my mittens, I have had tortured moments of agony that in their own strange way become exquisite. But I am digressing. I was not going to talk about my non-existent love life. I was going to talk about The Hole.

The Hole is what everyone feels but no one talks about, like a fart in polite company. We all have a hole in our life that we try to fill with some meaning to make the meaninglessness of it all a little more bearable. Some people fill it with casual sex. In fact, this is how I got onto the topic of The Hole to begin with.

My ex’s have all moved on to have millions of romps. And they seem to have filled their Hole, and it makes me jealous in a way, because it’s so celebratory. whereas for me, it seems so much quieter, my own private passions. But what do I fill my Hole with? Not casual sex, the last time I did that I got lonely halfway through and wanted to go to sleep. I’m not really the type to have sex outside of marriage. Good thing it’s finally legal for me to get married. I’m only being half serious.

But really, what is my Hole filling hobby? I have an internationally recognized art practice that sometimes is fulfilling. But if I had to say what fills my Hole, I would say Media. The Internet, Television, and Movies. Thank God I was born in the 20th Century or I would be completely empty. Is that shallow?

And what is the Hole? Is it really emptiness, the void? Or is it the core essence of ourselves, the one part of being human that we avoid dealing with out of fear of being the embodiment of mediocrity?

Too many questions. I wish I was shallow enough that all I needed was meaningless sex. Or that I had enough sense that I could be happy with casual sex. Oh well. Time to smoke a j and surf the net and ponder big worldly events so I don’t have to think about my own teetertotter existence.

UPDATE: Relevant Link to The Parking Lot Is Full comic that I’ve been reading today.

Type 2 Diabetes

I’m in trouble at work. Last night I suddenly felt all nauseous and disgustingly gross, felt like passing out or puking my brains out. Called in sick to work, but for some reason they didn’t get my message and are now mad at me for not coming in. Crap. I’m still waiting for my blood tests to come back, but I’m pretty sure I already know what the results will be. Type 2 Diabetes. It’s quite common among people with mood disorders. Some people say it’s connected to the disorder, some say it’s connected to the meds. But I have honestly had Type 2 symptoms for many years, even before I was on medication.

Another awful medical problem for me to worry about. I know so many people who have Type 2 Diabetes and manic depression. It’s unfair. I mean, if you have a mental health problem, that should be it. You should get a get out of jail free card from all the other awful health problems. But no, that’s not how life works.

Reading the list of symptoms of Type 2 Diabetes is like reading a menu of all the strange symptoms in my life. Being poor doesn’t help either, by not having any food to eat I put mysekf at risk of going into a diabetic coma. Sucks. This all sucks.

Anyway, I haven’t gotten my results back yet, and I am still learning what this all means for me. But my lifestyle is going to be changing this year, that’s one thing I know for sure.

Shoo Fly Shoo!

My room is full of flies. Flies I tells ya! Today after cleaning up the room and making sure there was absolutely no more food items for the flies, I trotted off to the hardwear store. Fly strips please. Came home and got stuck. Oh secours! Unstuck myself, taped the strips to my closet doorway, where the flies seem to enjoy congregating. Within minutes there were already two flies trapped forever in 62% Rosin rubber mineral oil and 38% Tack paper tape.

An ignoble way to depart this earth, for sure.

And yet there still seems to be some kind of shoo fly shoo and the little fly flew dance party happening in the centre of my room. I am tempted to place yet another fly strip there, but I just know when I get up in the middle of the night to piss I am going to get stuck to it.

Oh, and I keep listening to Alannah Myles Song Instead of a Kiss. How maudlin.

This is a blog instead of a kiss.

No way can I have a girlfriend with all these flies in my room. THE FLIES MUST DIE!!!! I declare war on the flies. No amount of buddhist wisdom can deter me from my mercenary position on the flies!

Any advice on destroying the flies would be greatly appreciated. Perhaps a shock and awe campaign with big mean spiders.

Fuck Normal

Quite possibly the scariest thing about being involuntarily hospitalized is realizing that your freedom is now essentially determined by outside forces. Questions multiply as you wonder exactly what constitutes normal. Was I ever normal? Little kid memories of crying underneath the bed in a fetal position are so vivid. Who decides what normal is? What about when your identity is just so complex, how do you ever reach the measuring stick of normality?

I remember one of the things they noted in my psych report was that I was morbid. Morbidity is a sign of mental illness. Tell that to all the horror flick fans, or the Edgar Allen Poe readers, or even viewers of 10 o’clock news.

Who can really be considered normal and healthy anymore in this crazy world. Everyone has some major flaw, an addiction, a co-dependency thing, depression, acting out to avoid themselves, I mean, we are all pretty fucked up when you think about it.

One of the things that upset me the most in the hospital was watching George W Bush on television. He was considered normal and healthy, running a country into the ground and advocating for a war on fictional grounds. He was a pathological liar, a sociopath. He thought he was the new jesus, america’s neo-colonialist messiah. And yet dignitaries shook his hand and a nation rallied around their troops in mob mentality fashion, while I waited for six weeks in a psych ward eating gross hospital food and becoming more and more dependent on the institution.

So who is normal? I was locked up for being a danger to self or others, while the american president was and is a danger on an even more massive scale.

On a side note, you know what is so obviously going to happen to the united states? While they’ve got their troops embroiled in an unnecessary conflict, another part of the world is going to smack them in the face, and they’re not going to be able to respond because they’ve already made a military commitment some place else. Going to war in Iraq to prove military might has been the worst decision a president has made in recent times.

But what do I know? I’m the mental patient.

In other news, today I went for my diabetes screening. The anti-psychotic I am on can cause diabetes in people, along with a bunch of other awful things. But it keeps me from getting those odd thoughts, so you know. Nursey couldn’t get a vein in my arm, I have crap veins, no way I could be an I.V. drug user. She had to take blood from the back of my hand. In the hospital they once had to use my wrist. Bleh.

I’m nervous about my test results. My family has diabetes running all through it, as do most aboriginal families. Kind of tricky. We’ll see what happens, I think I have to change my life style drastically to stay healthy.

Suicide as an alternative to Insanity

It’s a fact, suicide is a huge concern among people with mental illnesses. I should know, I have survived it too many times to count. Those bleak nights, that impossible emptiness. It can make you feel dead even when you’re still breathing. Make you ache like you’re bleeding, and you’re so shocked that no one can see these gaping soul wounds.

I think that it is more than depression that makes the suicide rate in our little sub-group so high. There are a lot of socio-economic factors to consider. A study found that the cornerstones for good mental health are a home, a friend, and a job. Homelessness is a tremendously huge issue for us little crazies. There is the stigma to overcome, and there is the money thing, the jobs. Capitalist society doesn’t allow for disabilities, you’re either always a good worker or you’re on welfare or disability, constantly trying to prove you’re crazy and making yourself sick so that you don’t lose your meager income. Lose your income – lose your home. Lose your sanity and you could lose your home too, this almost happened to me in fact. I was insane and therefore not ‘deserving’ of a home.

Then there’s the stigma in day to day life. We are the pariahs, the lowest of the low, the scary people, the losers, the freaks and the weirdos and the psychos. Everyday our position in society as subhumans is reiterated, to make sure we remember that we don’t deserve the good life.

And there’s the fear, that quiet little voice sneaking up in the middle of the night to remind you of all your hopes and to tell you lies that they will never be now that you’re a crazy person.

Mostly though, I think it is how our society shuns people in mental crisis. Even if you’re not in mental crisis, even if the crisis is over, you can tell that people act differently around you, they tip toe, they back away. They stop calling. They leave you. They act like you’re an idiot, even if you can still do all the crosswords. And they can make you feel very guilty and small about all the weird things you did when you were crazy.

For probably a good year after my break with reality I was going to do it. I was going to leave this planet and hope that there would be something better on the other side. Something kinder, more human. People close to me were telling me how scary I was and how I had to give up my dreams of this, that, and the other thing. And I didn’t want to live a life like that. But since they were the ‘sane’ people and I was the crazy person, they had more power, and maybe more insight. So I believed them, and I didn’t want to trouble people anymore. I wanted to go away.

Suicide can be prevented by three simple things. Respect. Dignity. Love. There are a lot of hurdles that crazy people jump to survive in life, more than the average person. But if our allies would remember to respect us, treat us with dignity, and love us, so much would be different. How terrible a society we live in, how inhumane, when a person thinks that they are too much trouble to stay alive anymore!