Does Life Get Any Sweeter?

It’s been nearly a month since my last post and too report of my new life have backed right up, but I felt driven to archive the perfection of this morning while it was fresh.

I woke up this morning to the sound of the pouring rain and the bustle of the already alive Vancouver streets. With my bed right under a big old window, I was all a ball of white sheets and white light, and felt like I was in the place where good Charmin kittens go after they die. Stumbling out of this I ran to my kitchen, put on the kettle, and while the water slowly came to a whistle delighted in going through the teas in my sampler pack and selecting the flavor for the morning. This is when memories of the night before flooded back to me. My beautiful, sexy, intelligent, playful, kick ass new boyfriend and I sometimes indulge in a cinnamon bun after dinner. Earlier that day while he waited outside I’d ran into a coffee shop to get one and when they were fresh out bought a big luscious black piece of chocolate cake instead, and didn’t tell him. We were feeling fat and sassy after eating and Jens was in that usual spot in the middle of the carpet vegging out, and instead of a cinnamon roll I immerged from the kitchen with this gorgeous fucking piece of chocolate cake and a mountain of chocolate ice cream (which he keeps my freezer stocked in, god I love this man). I spooned it to Jens and myself, and got a little cheecky and smeared ice cream all over him and a little up his nose. Remembering all this I promptly send him a dirty text message.

Tea steaping, I stepped back into the living room and noticed the heater cord between my feet. I’d lived in a tp floor room in an old character house for years and always been refused a heater because old the electric bill. So while my brother played one of the eleven video game platforms plugged into the cube tap I slept in the frigid cold of winter. The first thing I did when I moved out was go down to the Sally Anne and buy this heinous old retro heater for a toonie, and I love love love it. I plug it in and the room fills with glorious heat.

So here I sit, in the morning light, sipping tea in front of my heater, blogging to the sound of the cars in the rain, and sending the occasional filthy text message to my boyfriend. I have a day off but I’m heading up to the school to have a project put into the student gallery and then go to the Thursday free yoga!

But right now I’m thinking of taking a nice hot bath with a Corona.

I realize I’m failing as a blog writer through this post; who the hell wants to hear about how happy and fulfilled I am? People want to read about people’s disasters and public mortifications and who they boinked and what they do in secret in the bathroom.

None the less,I really just have to ask…

Does life get any sweeter than this??

Diamonds, Daisies, Snowflakes, That Girl

Have you ever just found yourself walking down the road smiling like a jackass?

That’s been me these last few days.

I moved to Kits on Wednesday with the help of my mom and sisters. We rolled out the carpet and hung up some photos, and now the little apartment looks like a home.

After all these years of yearning for my own place, I now have 225 glorious square feet of my own personal space!! This is not to say, however, that it was quite mine to enjoy, just yet.

Mom and the girls decided to stay the night with me in Vancouver.

Now my mother has never been one for physical displays of affection. There was strictly no hugging in my childhood. This always left me feeling somewhat starved, but it terms of childhoods my mother had her own plane of crazy which we won’t even touch with a stick. This isn’t to say she’s frigid, just ever so much less like a huggable panda than a refrigerator.

As you can imagine, sleeping myself, my full grown sister, AND my thixophobic mother in the one bed was an adventure (Aja wisely slept in the papasan chair and enjoyed the best sleep of all of us.) Mom kept wacking us in the night barking, “DON’T TOUCH ME!” or “MOVE YOUR LEG!” Burg and I egged her on by spooning each other and beckoning her to join us.

…..

The next day I got up and was off to my first assembly at Emily Carr. I entered the auditorium of four hundred odd foundations students and sat down among them. First was the business end of things, school history and manifesto, etc, but then came a fascinating guest speaker on the virtualization of media, things like the way music used to be a first hand experience, but could then be recorded and reproduces and now is nothing more than 1’s and 0’s, I’d been having exactly this conversation with Jens, whose an extreme sports addict, just earlier. He bitched that while he went out and mountain biked and surfed and rock climbed, his jerk off friends would rather stay home, immobile and slowly atrophying, playing video games of the same things.

Having found the lecture stimulating and walked out of it with my mind exploding like it hadn’t for a year, I was disgusted to overhear a couple of little 18 year old girls in the halls giggling that “That guy talking about mp3’s was so stupid, god!” “I know, that was so retarded, why did they make us watch that?” This was my first warning bell; I’m four years older than most of these people, but those four years feel more like ten.

After the assembly we all reconvened in the student building for what was described in the email as a “light lunch.” The doors sung opened upon tables and tables of sushi. For a split second I think I went a little blind, I just stood there with my mouth wide open. I’d won the cosmic lottery.

After the lunch came a dessert course. Gorgeous little confections of berries dripping with glazes and big fat mousse cupcakes kissed with shredded gold leaf. It was all incredibly impressive, and quickly gorged upon by the naive young student body. I, in my age and wisedom, was a little more suspicious about the whole thing. “How cruel,” I thought, “to give these fledgeling young artists the impression that this is how they’re going to eat in art school.”

My ladies spent the day at the Vancouver aquarium and pulling the ritualistic Vancouver IKEA pilgrimage, and when we all arrived back at home it was time for them to leave.

We all hugged goodbye, Aja sobbing that she really would miss me and I wasn’t all bad, I asked her to take good care of our twenty five pound cat Tip and make sure to rotate him at least once daily, and then they were gone.

I went back inside and tried to nurse my melancholy with a little red wine and some music. I reported this on facebook and not even five minutes later I got a call from Jens eagerly asking if he could join me in said activities.

The buzzer rang a half hour later. I ran down to get it, and opened to door to only evening darkness. A second later there was a huge bouquet of sunflowers in my face, and Jens swung around the door frame and gave me a kiss.

…

The next day I set off exploring the many back alleys of Kits. The sun was shining and I could feel my back begin to tan. Kits is so pretty. Like New York and my favorite neighbourhood back in Victoria, Fernwood, mixed together; downtowny, with ugly old buildings from the 60’s, but with flowers spilling from all the balconies. Kits is the area of town were all the artists, hippies, and other degenerates use to call home. It was this ambience that drew the neighborhood’s modern inhabitants; trendy, affluent hipsters. They swarmed the place, drove the real estate prices sky high and opened a coffee shop on every corner. The scent of used yoga mat always clings to the air. What does this smell like, you might ask? Yuppy meets men’s locker room.

This populace is so rich it leads to some incredible finds in the back alleys behind all the buildings. Some people will throw away an entire IKEA dinette set after a year. I’m in diver’s paradise.

I found a great free pile where I came by a little dish for my soap and my new little life was thus closer to completion. I found a little village on Oak Street with a cute laundromat with a couple cute guys in it (note to self: roll in more mud) and a market called Sunshine Grocery. I picked up a couple necessities, dish soap, shampoo, light bulbs, bacon…. and because I spent over thirty dollars I got a free Sunshine Grocery tote bag!

Which brings us to smiling like a jackass.

Groceries in tow I nearly skipped home, grinning at all the passersby, humming loudly, resisting the urge to swing around the lamp posts and otherwise feeling as cute as That Girl.

I love it here. I love kits. I love the jingle jangle of my very own keys. I love the color of these walls. I love my tiny kitchen with all the trees out the window.

I talked to Renee the other day who asked me if I was miserable yet. No? Give it a month. I hope the euphoria of finally having my old place will remain long enough to combat the impending bouts of home sickness and winter blues I’ve got coming in the mail. I’ve already had one or two “WTF AM I DOING!?!?!?!!!” moments.

I already miss my sisters and the Inner Harbor and Derek. But so far so good. Classes start next week, and if I could find a job that would be, you know, pretty ok. As for now I have a beautiful apartment in Kits and a bouquet of sunflowers on the kitchen window filled with afternoon light.

Alright New Life, Let’s Dance.

 

 

Moving in T – One Week.

 

Here I am, moving in a week. It’s all happening so fast. This has been hard summer. I spent a very dark and record cold winter longing for the sun to come out again, but now that it’s here I find myself wishing it would quickly give way to a quiet autumn of watching the rain with a cup of soup and a book from my new place in Vancouver.

Last summer I felt like I was coming back to life; this summer feels like a funeral that won’t end.

Everything has been an ending. My beloved Whimsey splintered, all my friends drifted apart. My family is selling my childhood home just as soon as I move out.

Lasts prevail. Last night in Colin and Chelsea’s old apartment. Last day at the beach. Last shift at my job. Last family dinner. Long, long last hugs. Last time I see you.

The only thing that made this summer bearable was my best friend Derek, who, after that long bout of tonsillitis trapped indoors all alone, swept me up and started taking me outside again. We’d hit the beach every day with a crossword and a six pack of Mexican beers. Bored of cable we’d down some tequila and head to the rec center for the mid night swim and sit there in the hot tub scoping out the boys. Endless hours spent at Value Village. Times I miss already. Derek, you kept me sane.

But even he’s been through some rough times. Heartbreak. And I’m not the type of girl who can’t cry when watching someone else do it. So first you’re crying, then I’m crying, then we’re both crying and there’s mascara everywhere, and it’s a disaster! Emotionally I feel like I’ve been hit by a train.

It’s been torture. I wish it would just end.

And so here it is, the end.

All this complaining isn’t to say I don’t love this town. Not at all. I’m in love with Victoria. I love the people. I love my friends. I love the old town and all the buildings. I love the parks. I love the Inner Harbour. I love the abundance of sushi restaurants. I love that little secret cove in Oak Bay where you can go and drink beers and skip pebbles on the water, the bioluminescent plankton shimmering with each step. I love beach fires and the smell of salt on the air on really cold mornings. I love that at any time I can walk down to Fernwood Square and find fifty of my friends dozing in the grass or building a giant slip’n’slide out of on old tarp and a sprinkler, both components most likely stolen.

And as desperate as I am to get all the lasts over with and finally enjoy some firsts, I will miss this last year, this life here, with all my heart.

A few years ago when I was working at Starbucks I had a friend named Ash. She and I celebrated our week’s Fridays on Monday nights with a bottle of spiced rum and a movie, and drag our sorry asses into the little Blue Fox Cafe on Fort Street Tuesday morning for haggered breakfast. Blue Fox is this funky little restaurant with big plants and bright colors and groovy art and salt and pepper shakers on every table each more wacky than the last. The waitress there was a doll, and would have tall cool glasses of hang over ameliorating iced tea in front of us before we could even work up the spit to ask for it.

This tradition went on for a year. Finally someone hailed to the other, “See you next Tuesday!” and our eyes lit up. Like lightening. CUNT was born.

I was contemplating this morning as I looked forward unto my last week in Victoria that I actually have this Tuesday off, and how I’d love to have one last CUNT with all my friends.

But then realized that, I wouldn’t, in fact, see any of them next Tuesday.

 

I’m putting things in boxes. I’m so excited. I’m so scared.

I guess all I can say is, alright new life, let’s dance.

My Findings On the Construction Industry

 

Noticing the date of my previous post I realized it’s been over a month since I’ve written anything. Therein lies the fundamental flaw with diary keeping and its modern manifestation, the blog. When your life sucks and you never have any fun you have all the time in the world to blog, but when you’re actually out accruing material days might go by without access to a terminal, and the danger is that yet more adventure, be it in liquid or powder form, might come along and obliterate all preceedings. A very wise friend, apparently blogging from the prior of aforementioned states of damnation, lamented that “Blogging, is for the bored, the single, and the depressed.“

 

That being said, where do I even start? Where was it that I set off? Oh yes! I’d just been afflicted with tonsillitis! Dr. Montemera, whose name I always thought sounded like a manly sort of cigarette, stood in front of me with her little flashlight and popsicle stick, repeating the words “Oh my god” (stress fluttering from syllable to syllable, “Oh my god.” “Oh my god.” “Oh my god.”). Which was comforting. She told me she’d never seen a worse case in 25 years of practicing. Not to honk my own horn, but we took a picture, and I’d dare you find anything more grotesque in the google image search results. Behold.

 

If you've ever wanted to see the inside of the face, here it is.

 

After five weeks of illness, I strapped on the construction boots and called my boss for some work. …..This was when I was informed that the company had shut down for the summer. There’s no unemployment quite like surprise unemployment.

I have to admit, even with all the drama, heavy lifting, and dizzyingly filthy language, I guess I enjoyed my brief stint in construction. I forgot a few things along the way (how to wear makeup; who I was), but in the end, I learned a few things alwell. Without further ado, my findings on the construction industry:

1. Your name is Tony, and so is mine.
2. Nickleback is the only legitimate form of listening.
3. Men need to spit, wherever they are, right that second, or the die.

I worked on a site called Dockside Green for four months. It was a gigantic undertaking of twelve high rises all in a row, one being built after another. Each time one would go up, the blasting for the next one would begin. When work on tower four was being done, they put the port a potties in the bottom of the gaping hole for number five. You’d exit through the underground parking lot of four into this vasteness of blasted rock and industrial equipment the length of a city block, little green port a potties way in middle of it. One day I was hoisting up my tool belt and work pants after doing my business and happened to look down between my steel toed boots…. at a massive loogie. I was disbelieving. This had to be a guy thing. This had to be because the male salivary gland, different from the female salivary gland, could prove lethal if not emptied immediately upon salivation. Why? Why spit in the nine square feet enfortressed by those four green walls? Why not just swing open the door, step out side, and gush like Yellow Stone National fucking Park in the seeming atomic wasteland surrounding you for hundred of feet in all directions?

Men.

 

This is stretching so far back now, I can’t believe it’s been so long. More catching up later. As for the moment, I have to be off to my new job, and, dear readers, it’s pretty damn bad. You’re gonna love it. I’ll give you a clue, I’m back in tourism.

Craigslist: My Daily Dose of Pessimism

 

 

 

 

It’s as the title says. Moving to Vancouver soon has had me spending a lot of time scoping out the apartment scene on craigslist; outlook not so good. Basement suites so ugly you’d be sure they were being rented out by Mephistopheles. Upon viewing an ad the other night for an L shaped bachelor with a twin sized bed, a fold down wall mounted table surface the size of a dinner plate, a single folding metal chair, microwave eleven feet up on an ikea shelving unit and one bunsen burner -no fridge, television, windows or bathroom- for $765, I underwent a mild panic attic.

 

Quickly one learns that euphemisms like quirky, funky, artsy, cozy, and snug translate to damp, cavernous, subterranean, and practically Dickensian. Cabin means garage. Garden suite means basement. Basement suite means bomb shelter. Budget priced means bat cave.

 

Get this. I’d be paying four hundred bananas just to SHARE a living room with another human being. How much money does a person have to fork out to secure a sex life in this world?

 

It’s craigslist Vancouver that has opened my mind to the concept of the exposed bathroom. “Come on in guys. So this is my place, and this is….. uh….. my toilet……” I suppose I was too I shock by what I’d just seen to think of saving the pictures from that add, or rest assured I’d be backing this up. Another ad bragged about the in suite Jacuzzi, imagine, it urged, that that could be YOUR lifestyle! The luxury! But, wait, you guess it, the Jacuzzi is in the living room, which is also the bedroom and kitchen! Only once in my life have I seen an exposed Jacuzzi before now, and I was staying in a motel in New Jersey in a swamp under a bridge because of a lightening storm. And in case you don’t believe me, this time I got evidence.

 

High roller!

 

Another new found pet peeve; turquoise carpeting. Turquoise. Bright fucking aquamarine. Nothing quite brings out the lowness of a ceiling like a vast expanse of pure chromatic nightmare. There must have been some sort of boom in the 1980’s in Vancouver when an enormous amount of affluence was spent on an enormous amount of carpet. This must be how the Germans feel looking back on Hitler. All I can imagine is some evil carpet factory somewhere in Surrey or Delta, smoke stacks spewing toxic black clouds, pumping out a single, unending sheet of turquoise carpeting out to the horizon, evil foreman overseeing it all, fingers curling in malevolent delight as he laughs diabolically.

As you can see in the carpet sample below, at some point someone thought it appropriate to finish an entire suite in lego grass.

 

 

And another example. Check out this rug!! Red, someone passionate must have picked this out. Funny, it kind of reminds me of the colour and pattern they used in Super Mario to represent deadly LAVA.

 

 

Now say you’re sitting on your ass after a long day smoking pot and working at Ikea as I imagine most Vancouverites do. All of a sudden the craving strikes you for a slice of delicious plastic wrapped Kraft cheese. Now most assholes would have to get up, walk to the kitchen, get the cheese, and come all the way back. Suckers.

 

Your life is complete!

 

Ok, so I might seem outspokenly superficial here. I can respect that not everybody has the money to re-renovate their heinous 80’s renovations. So what Surrey and Burnaby and Richmond are so ugly the ambience drains one of their will to live? I know that at the end of the day everyone’s just trying to pay their mortgage… That’s not the point. The point is that even the apartments I’ve listed here are out of my price range. 

 

I’m seriously freaking out. I’m going insane. I’m so nervous I’m falling back into my old habits; I find empty chip bags and have no idea where they came from! I’m fighting my old nemesis, the carb-devil, and losing!

 

How the hell is this going to happen?? How am I going to make the next year of my life work? Even working, even with student loans, even with what little help my mom can give, I won’t have enough. Not by a long shot.

 

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I’m gonna either have to start hooking or killing people.

 

Is There Life After Facebook?

As facebook becomes increasingly unbearable, I wonder how long I can take it. I’ll be the first to admit to my hardcore addiction. I check it every fifteen minutes; the laptop never closes. Get up, check facebook. Make dinner, check facebook. Check facebook….. reload facebook. I thrive off those little red updates. Recent camping trips made me feel like a Borg disconnected from the collective.

Sometimes when peoples lips are moving I wonder what’s happening on facebook.

But what alternatives are there? Is there life after facebook?

 

Pray For Facebook

Traffic

WordPress’ statistics tool informs me my avaerage daily 3.65 hits originate from the search terms ‘David Lynch,’ ‘Mad House,’ and ‘big black cock.’ Fascinating.

I’ve been medicating myself with David Lynch. It hasn’t helped.

 

 

Written Tuesday June 2, 2009

 

Being Amy for a day was terrific. Those who got the costume loved it, those who didn’t kept gently motioning me to wipe the faux blow off my face. “You’ve got a little, no, to the, more down, just, no….”

 

I’m certainly glad I did a test run of the outfit because as it turns out getting the wig to stay on my head was a more complicated affair than anticipated. I won’t expose my methods, but let’s just say my emergency coat hangers may have come in handy….

 

In a memory half lost to the time fog I recall dancing passionately in the living room, transformed into a dance floor, packed with glistening bodies. I was drenched in sweat and remember thinking how prickly my scalp was, ripping the wig off my head, swinging it around thrice, and letting it fly. Luckily my friend found it later when looking for her bra and brought it to me. With all that dancing I’d done it smelled even worse than before. But, on the plus side, someone had stashed a cigarette in it! LIFE WIN!!!11!!1111one

 

I got home, crashed, and woke up the next day feeling like I’d been run over by an 18 wheeler filled with African elephants.

 

Dragged my ass to the doctor where I was diagnosed with tonsillitis.

 

So now my tonsils are the size of new born babies and look something like whole heads of kimchied cabbage. God I’ve been sick. I can’t sleep more than two hours at a time so I’m exhausted. My ears and neck and throat are throbbing. My week has been fever, chills, fever, chills, fever, chills. One morning I woke up drenched in sweat but frozen to the bone under four blankets. I ran myself a bath and strip down, quaking with chills, only to catch sight of my reflection. My lips were blue. I’ve never seen that before, ever, even on anybody else.

 

God, I’m not even sure what day it is.

 

I’d passed out in full makeup before getting sick, and haven’t yet had the strength to remove all the fake tattoos. What’s more is now they’re all chipping off bit by bit (I am fascinated to observe that the el cheapo two packs for a buck High School Musical 3 tattoos are far outlasting the deluxe Dollar Twenty Five Giant brand). I’ve been sick so long. I forget what I looked like before I looked like a hobo. Once I wore make up. Once my hair wasn’t steam curled by fever into a permanent Cosmo Kramer. Once I did stuff and left the house. Now if I can change my socks it’s a good day.

 

Stuck inside I’ve taken my week off work as an opportunity to a little cinematic homework, getting versed on the works of one David Lynch. A friend showed me Eraserhead a few months ago. It stuck in my head and stayed there. I’d had no fucking clue what I was in for. It was so bleak, so depressing, so incredibly black, it makes Schindler’s List look like a Spice Girls video. At first I wondered why I’d subjected myself to something that harrowing, that traumatising, why I couldn’t just be like everyone else and rent the new Jennifer Anniston flick. But the more I digested it, the more I realised he’d pulled off his cinematic experiment to perfection; he’d wanted to effect a nightmare, he had. In my mind Eraserhead is a masterpiece, but belongs on a wall in a frame more than in a dvd player. So many of my friends rave about his films, so I have to see what the fuss is all about. It’s been a long time since I had a good movie marathon. So I got my dvd’s ready, my pop corn popped, my ginger ale fizzing gently, and my numerous pill bottles lined like Russian dolls.

 

I was pleasantly surprised by the sneak attack lesbians in Mulholland Drive. Why didn’t anyone tell me there were lesbians????? Christ. That’s critical! You’d think that would be something someone would remember to inform you. All in all, meh, I guess it was ok. Everything sort of clicked into place and it was the rare David Lynch movie where answers are even optional. There were a few obvious explanations laid out for one to chose from, unlike Eraserhead, where all Lynch gives you is the darkness of your bedroom ceiling at 4am and the cyclical lyrics to “In Heaven everything is fine…..”

 

Inland Empire on the other hand….. Like with Mulholland Drive’s lesbians, again, the things you’d expect your friend to mention about a movie! I had to find out the hard way Inland Empire is three hours long. Now I don’t mind a little abstract expressionism, but, like with waxing one’s bikini zone, you have to have a delicate hand. And quite frankly I can’t picture ol’ Dave being very good at either. If I wanted to have a trippy introspective nightmare, I’d do salvia.

 

I’ve been sick as a dog and medicating myself with David Lynch. It hasn’t helped.

 

In fact I think if I saw him in the streets tomorrow I’d punch him in the back of the head.

 

Then I’d say he was just reaping what he done sowed; some kinda heavy SHIT!

 

HA! Take that David Lynch.

 

So, with a vociferous needle scratch, David Lynch has been pulled, and I’ve opted for something a little more therapeutic by attaching myself to the teat of the almighty informercial. I’m a sucker for informercials. Oooooh, I love the ones with a host so decrepit it looks like they stepped out of a wheel chair and took out their oxygen tubes just to be there selling juicers and knives sets! Or the one for “male enhancement” with the buttoned down, frightened looking host, as if calculated to look threatened to appeal to the target audience. “You have a small penis, but don’t worry, so do I! I know you’re scared, I am too!!” He obviously buys his shirts at the same place as Martha Stewart and Jerry Seinfeld. The boxy blue, never was in style, so it can’t go out. They stand him next to a tanned nineteen year old nymphomaniac and have him “interview” her. “So Tanya, do you prefer men to be larger?” “Oh my GAWD! I LOVE the big cock!!! Teehee!!” “And if you found out someone special to you, the love of your life, was, maybe not the biggest, would that effect your relationship?” “I’d kick that shrimp dick to the curb! Then I’d go find some big cock and suck on it!”

But my favourite kind are the ones with half baked attempts at plots. The Magic Bullet, for instance, which is in my mind the end all be all of informercials. I have almost every line memorised. It’s just a bunch of yuppies sitting around nursing hangovers the morning after what we gather was a wild night of margaritas and swinging. What I don’t understand is how none of these people notice their friends are trying to sell them a blender. Oh, oh, and then of course the Jewish aunt strolls in and parks her fat ass at the counter, cigarette dangling from her lips, droning some anecdote about garlic in a Jersey drawl, thirty years older than any of the rest of them, completely without explanation. Who invited her?! 

 

Ok, so obviously I’ve been trapped in doors a little too long.

 

I promise not to write again till I’ve got something legitimate to say:)

 

 

 

I just think you’re depressed. Kiss me, yeah baby, and the rest.

 

Written May 27, 2009

 

 

I’m not ashamed to admit it. I’m a huge Amy Winehouse fan. She’s gained notoriety with her wacky crack whore antics, and the majority of people first came to know her as this drunken, staggering, head butting, tooth chipping, caricature. But I’ve loved Amy since long before the H, the K, the E, the GHB, and all the other drugs in the alphabet. I’m a long time fan. You could even say, I invented Amy Winehouse.

 

Sure, the girl could stand to do a little less crack, but couldn’t we all? She’s gotten me through some rough times.

 

Amy looms large in my personal pantheon, right up there with Betty Davis, Akira Kurosawa, and that gay guy on How To Look Good Naked. It’s for this reason that when the farewell flail of a local party pad known as Mad House was announced, I knew this was the time….. This was finally the time to bust out my Amy Winehouse costume.

 

Mad House is a giant old character house rented by hippies right in the rich end of town where the Brits like to retire. Any given night there could spontaneously be a hundred kids there, having a heated drum circle in the kitchen or building complex multi room forts out of floral bed sheets and enough mattresses to make you wonder just who owns this many mattresses? It’s no misnomer; Mad House is nuts. I’ve seen kids do things there I can’t even articulate the next day. I’ve done things there I can’t even articulate the next day. It was at Mad House that I first crossed that mysterious line between fivesome and orgy. Investigating my camera card after a night at Mad House is like Christmas morning, if tinsel was pictures you can’t post on facebook and egg nog was future black mail and gently falling snow was unidentifiable ball sacks. One theme of the abode is that more often than not a Tickle Trunk of sorts somewhere in the basement is broken into, a cardboard fridge box full of Halloween costumes is tipped over, and you’ll find yourself sitting next to Elmo, a unicorn, and a ninja turtle. Costumes are always in vogue with the Mad House Kids, so this is the perfect opportunity.

 

Last Halloween I’d tormented over the decision to go as her or to wear my yearly Rocky Horror Picture Show fair. I chose the Rocky Horror as it would be the first time for a number of friends and I just hate to miss a deflowering. Unable to find a cab, I wound up walking the couple miles home in garters and a boa that night and spent All Saints Day with a nasty chest cold.

 

But now the timing is perfect. It still leaves next Halloween open for my eerily realistic Elaine Benes guise.

 

So I set off down to Value Village for what we call, in my home town, a Village Pillage. Value Village is a big old factory that must have used to be where the gutted the fish the brought in, and smells pretty much the same to this day. Now it’s the seediest second hand store you’ve ever been to. You need an 8 track? Ninja turtle bed sheets? Macrame? You got it.

The place was full of hipsters digging through the millions of pounds of stinking, unlaundered second hand cloths in search of that perfect too tight t shirt to match their greasy bang and clever tattoo. I wonder if they realise how much like a bunch of malnourished little third world brown kids picking for copper wire in a big pile of old pampers and pizza boxes and personal computers they look.

 

Having many times seen the tangled disgusting wigs sold at Value Village and marveled how in the world the had the balls to charge a dollar for them, I knew it was the place to go for the Winehouse ambience I sought. It took all of five seconds. “Ok, I need something that screams pestilence-oh, perfect!” As you can see in the photo of the bounty of my Winehouse themed Village Pillage, I couldn’t have found a more wretched, filthy, loathsome, perfect hunk of hair if it was the beehive from the bitch’s very head!!!

 

Well, it’s all coming together now, and the party is Friday. Wish me luck!

 

 

Pandora’s Recipe for Home Made Amy Winehouse:

1 repulsive, disgusting, smelly 1 dollar Wig

1 bandana (In which to store coke)

1 pair short shorts

5 packs fake tattoos, including butterfly, unicorn and High School Musical 3

1 stick oily black eye makeup

1 cockney accent

1 bottle white glue*

1 tbsp. all purpose flour*

 

*Note: The last two ingredients used to create cocaine residue, but can be omitted in lieu of actual coke.

 

 

 

Practical Anthropology

When I was sixteen I took a road trip to Kelowna to visit a friend. It was a gorgeous week in August and the young people of the Okanagan Valley wore golden tans and cut off jean shorts. Being a good girl from Victoria BC I had no idea the corruption I was in for, but very soon I found myself buck naked at midnight, singing at the top of my lungs in Lake Okanagan. Something stirred me from my impassioned performance of, well, I think it was ‘That’s Amore’. I heard sounds approaching…. All at once a barrage of lights flashed across the white slickness of my wet, naked body, and, blinded, I clutched my bottle of Wiser’s closer to me. “Put your hands up!” I heard. Terrified, sure I was about to be beamed up to the mother ship, I obliged. The next thing I knew my friend was in the water next to me, shielding me, shouting to stop pointing flashlights at me. She wrapped me in a towel and dragged me to shore, and with the lights lowered I could see a half dozen thick thighed, crew cut, bike mounted lesbian cops watching me pass with hungry eyes.

 

That was the summer I was busted for skinny dipping by the Kelowna Beach Patrol.

 

This is how I feel now, naked, frightened, ….maybe a little turned on. Putting my writing out there for the world to see like so many nipply bits. Can what I have to contribute to the information superhighway really compete with say, this, or this, or possibly this?? Will my friends laugh at me, pity me??

 

I’m not sure right now is even the best time to start a blog; I’m at a strange place in my life. I’m lifting roots from my childhood home and about to make the move to a metropolis. I’m in the middle of an end. What’s more I’m working a hard hat construction job that’s a million miles from my usual schtick. 

 

But this happens to be one of the very reasons I’ve been itching to start this blog. The construction industry’s cultural osmosis has left me, well, less than articulate. That isn’t to say that my time in the trades hasn’t enriched my vocabulary, but in the end, how many words does one really need to describe a homosexual? When the f word made the leap from every third to every second word in my daily speech, I knew it was time to blow the dust off my lexicon and do something that would awaken all the dormant polysyllabic terms in my repertoire.

 

I hope if anything this blog helps to defibrillate my intellect, pump some juices back into the organ of my imagination! I haven’t done anything creative in ages….

 

And I used to be a such a creative person…. Summer vacation meant handing in a math text book brimming with Narutos and Sponge Bobs. I used to be in choir and write and draw, and, you know, make stuff with out of pipe cleaners and googly eyes and glitter…. I used to have my fingers in a dozen different projects at once.

 

But a few months ago when I laid on my bed, twiddling a pen in my fingers and reading aloud my application for Emily Carr University of Art and Design to my sisters, I reached the question “What are your hobbies?” and a knowing look crossed all of our faces. How does one euphamize the fact that they spend every last spare moment out partying? I’d replaced art with adventure, portraits with people, water colours with ecstasy, and pastels with wild crazy group sex. We settled on what we felt was an adequate non-answer to the question; practical anthropology, gardening.

 

The reason for my upcoming move is to attend Emily Carr in Vancouver. Iknowright? Global economic recession, why not go to art school? It’s so near suicide they could write a My Chemical Romance song and name it Pandora. Alas, I’ll be attending art school, but I haven’t drawn or written for almost a year! I feel like a fake….

 

It was this time last year that my life began to change. I was miserable. I hated my life and myself. I’d just hit the 200lb mark and had graduated to the extra, extra large stretch pants at Le Chateau. (Thanks, btw, Le Chateau, for kicking fat chicks when they’re already down with your fucked up, arbitrary sizing system. Go die.) Every attempt I made to lose weight resulted in a gaining of about ten more pounds; this had happened three times in a row. I remember describing to someone the prospect of weight loss for me being akin to two little hobbits crossing Mordor to return the one ring to Mount Doom from whence it came…..

I worked for a bloodless, soul sucking corporation. Ok, Starbucks may be the cuddliest of the evil corporations, but evil none the less. I stank like coffee all the time, it wouldn’t wash off. My job was a joke, and I was the punch line.

School? Well, let’s just say if I wasn’t afraid of guns and authority and find the idea of killing living things reprehensible, I was damn near pulling a Columbine.

Worst of all I was on a stint of involuntary celibacy verging on the two year mark. If I rubbed against the corner of a table the wrong way I had to go into another room and calm down.

I was bored. All my friends ever did was play Guitar Hero in somebody’s basement. There was a wildness, an applied creativity that needed to break free. I felt dead inside.

 

I was sarcastic. I was jaded. The only colour Starbucks would let me wear was black. Ironically, it was at this time that someone told me I they thought I was incredibly glamourous. 

 

That person was Paul.

 

Paul was a beautiful young gay man with a taste for cocaine to whom I was briefly facebook married.

 

The day I met Paul I arrived for my shift Starbucks to see a tall blonde boy there at the bar. I told some dirty joke and was taken by surprise when he let out a hearty squeal of delight. If you knew Paul you’d know the laugh I’m talking about. I’d long since gotten used to having my jet black humour ignored by my sweet, sparkly eyed, sixteen year old coworkers. “So,” I thought, “someone is listening.” I don’t know how we got on the subject, but he pulled up his pant let to show me his tattoo. “Andy’s banana!” I said, recognising Warhol’s Velvet Underground cover. “Yea!” he replied, “Almost no one gets that!” There was a spark. I didn’t know it, but my life was about to change.

 

The first night we went out together we found ourselves running around naked on a beach at 4am. Through my crippling cynicism he brought a little fun into my life. He taught me to say yes to everything. I came to feel alive again.

 

He was an artist too, and try as we might to make art together we’d always wind up having an adventure instead. Most nights by the time I’d lay myself to sleep I had a disbelieving grin on my face, amazed by what I’d seen and done just by saying “Why the fuck not?”

 

Living his lifestyle I lost 65lbs. 50lb in four months. You do the math. All I can say to Weight Watchers, on which I wasted months of my life, is to eat your heart out. You’ve eaten everything else.

I told Starbucks I was sick of the sadomasochistic nature of working for them -in those words, it was a world class resignation!- and I started working new and exciting colours into my wardrobe! First ash grey, then midnight blue, then dark brown!

I dropped out of my dead end major to do a little living, and in that time have done a great many highly recommendable recreational drugs.

And the celibacy? Well, I shook that inch by inch, which is a long and winding story I’ll need a glass or several of wine for.

 

My life is made of beach fires and hippy circles and bathing with ten of my closest friends at once and running all over hell’s half acre till 5am getting up to anything and everything. With all the fun I’ve been having my pen and pad lay forgotten in the drawer. There’s been nothing to vent through art.

 

I’m happy now. I have a body that will let me run around and play and, hell, even get laid once in a while. I get a lot of fresh air and sun. I have more friends than I can keep track of. But I don’t create. Will creation only ever serve as as escape from misery? Do I really have to get obese and depressed again before get back into it? Maybe creativity was only ever a side effect from a wretched existence of unhappiness.

I’m happy now, but can I be happy if I don’t create?

Is god just a bitch?

Can the once glamourous Pandora be glamourous once more?

Will Michaela reach the burning barn in time to rescue Beau? Find out on the next exciting episode of Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman!

 

Whatever the results, I suppose it’s time to take a deep breath and strip down. Here goes.