September 2005

[interviewer:]Do you think the media have misrepresented you?

[Courtney:] Something went wrong with my context last year – I think it might have been the um, crack.

It’s not a secret that I love Courtney Love. Seriously, anyone who can reply with, “I think it might have been the um, crack” wins my respect – even if she’s on crack. Heh.

Read the rest of the article via Perez Hilton.

“PRONOIA IS THE ANTIDOTE FOR PARANOIA:
How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings”

PRONOIA THERAPY

1. Celebrate Unhappy Hour at least once a month. During this ritual blowout,
you have license to complain and rant about everything that’s driving you crazy.
Get a sympathetic listener to be your receptacle or
deliver your blast straight into the mirror. If you prefer, write it all down.
One way or another, grouse nonstop about your secret shame, raw
sorrow, unspeakable guilt, and unnerving twists of destiny. Feel free to
unleash guttural moans or rueful cackles.

If performed regularly, Unhappy Hour serves as an exorcism that empties
you of psychic toxins. Pronoia will then have a chance to flourish as you
luxuriate more frequently in rosy moods and broad-minded visions.

Read the rest of this entry »

For many years, the changing of seasons – from summer to fall – was celebrated with a quick visit to my doctor and a scrawled Rx for antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds. Then I’d come home clutching the bottle of rattling pills in my hand, and imagine them as a sort of guard against any negative shit creeping into my life. “It may be October, but I’ve got Celexa on my side!”

In truth, I’d pop the little pills and still spend months using up box after box of kleenex, and crusting the front of Coffee’s shirt with snot and dried tears. The little pills kept me sane in some ways – I was on a mostly even keel and my coworkers appreciated the lack of irritability. But there was no end to the spontaneous sadness, locking myself into the bathroom cube at work to sob, or finding myself driving down the highway in mild-hysterics for no apparent reason. While chemicals can be adjusted with medication, the events and the memories cannot. Swallowing a pill doesn’t sugar-coat a bad memory, or stop it from popping up, or erase it from the brain cells that it clings to – and it took me some time to really understand that on a level that went beyond the intellectual.

Autumn is here and I am without a magical Rx to keep me optimistic about the coming months. I have already felt the anxiety plodding in – the sound of someone at the door makes my heart race, the phone ringing early in the morning flashes me back to that November morning a few years ago. And I have started to feel the wistfulness of longing, too. But I am “breathing through it” as the saying goes – shrugging my shoulders, cutting myself some slack, and otherwise going about my life as usual. I’ll cry when I need to, or, uh, randomly. I’ll miss whomever I miss at any given moment. And life goes on.

Curiously, however, I am also feeling an unexpected and very big dose of “fuck you” toward many, many people in varying degrees – whether that’s the irritation of depression speaking or a sensible thing, well, that has yet to be determined. Whereas I tend to go with the flow and not worry much about the myriad ways someone could fuck with me, (often to my own detriment) lately I have found myself questioning everyone’s intentions, observing the duplicity of their behaviours, and fighting the urge to tell nearly everyone to just GO TO HELL. I have no patience, lately, for playing games – I’m anxious enough without worrying about this sort of shit.

It will be interesting to see how that grows (or doesn’t) in the coming months – and whether anyone is still speaking to me when spring rolls around again.

Rena stopped by for a quick “hello!” on her way home from a meeting in the area. Although she apologized for “ranting and running” it was exactly what I need. A nice, short, interesting break from the project I’m working on – not enough to get myself sidetracked, but enough to unclench my shoulders and take some deep breaths.

Sometimes technology is a bitch. Sometimes I am, too. Heh.

Right now:

I have three magazines I want to read.
I have a knitting project I want to work on.
I have a knitting book I want to read.
I have library books I want to read.
I have journals to transcribe.
I have blog entries I’d like to write.
I have to finish scanning images for a project I’m helping a friend with.
I have general organizational things to work on.
I need to harass a woman about my business’ logo.
I have other blogs to READ.
I have to eat dinner.
The dogs need to eat dinner and be walked.

..and about 40 other tasks are sitting patiently for me to get to them.

I am paralyzed! Frozen! Overwhelmed with choices! I wish I was kidding! I don’t have ADD, I just have no ability to make decisions.

I feel the same way in the potato chip aisle of the grocery store. Seriously.

In our usual grocery store, the chips take up almost a full side of one aisle (the rest is “Taco stuff” like seasoning packets and salsa and cans of jalapenos). There are so many options that whenever I decided I’d like to buy some, I have to spend ten minutes walking up and down the aisle, selecting and putting back bag after bag after bag. There are a million brands, flavours, styles. Do I want BBQ chips? Baked-not-fried? Do I want Doritos?

Even when I’ve chosen a type – say, Doritos – there’s still the flavour and sub-flavour to pick. Cheese. Nacho cheese. Extreme Cheese. Spicy Cheese. Cheese from Mars. I get really anxious and tense in the chip aisle, and seriously, how fucked up is THAT? I’m quite certain that there’s no possible way for me to make ‘the right choice’. Sometimes, even if I want chips, I won’t buy them – specifically to avoid the selection process.

What the hell? I mean, why do we need this many chips?! What has life come to when a bag of chips – a non-necessity, a non-healthy food – has more available options than MOST FUCKING CARS DO?

I think I need to add “take a nap” to the list above. Fuuuuuck.

Armed dolphins, trained by the US military to shoot terrorists and pinpoint spies underwater, may be missing in the Gulf of Mexico.

Seriously. SERIOUSLY. Here’s the rest of the article.

As a kid, I really desperately wanted an ant farm. I daydreamed about watching the colony build and grow and renovate the dirt compressed between two thin panes of glass. There was no way on earth, however, that my parents would buy me an ant farm. We lived in the “countryside” and, well, the backyard was chock full of insects – why the hell would they fork out $20 so I could move them indoors?! I sulked a lot over that flat-out denial of my scientific needs. (Heh.)

I was equally adamant about wanting Sea-Monkeys. My parents were equally adamant about not buying them. According to the back of my Archie comic books, I could teach them things and they’d build a castle under the water and.. yeah. Good fun all around. My parents were just being MEAN when they told me that the Sea Monkeys wouldn’t really do all that, and that they were a waste of money. I held tight to my illusions though (along with my sulking about not having them) until a few years ago. We were out shopping, and Coffee found and purchased Sea Monkeys. We started ‘growing’ them in the downstairs bathroom where they’d get some diffused light and be visited fairly regularly (heh).

I was beside myself with glee for about 2 days – until they started to grow. Brine shrimp, for those unaware, are downright disgusting. Like miniature bloated floating penises with eyes. After a few days, I stopped using that bathroom and hiked upstairs whenever I needed to pee.

Knowing how the “Sea Monkey Experiment” turned out (in the end, it involved flushing) I should know better than to get all excited about this. I should. I know I should. But oh, oh, OH, do I ever want one. Seriously.

It’s illuminated! There are ants! I could form a dark army!

I’ve already been informed that without a queen, the colony will die out – but in my (clearly not matured) head, the ants will feel my love and that will be sufficient. My love is magic! MAGIC! I can trump nature!

Yes indeed, I know what to ask for in my letter to Santa this year.

(With thanks to Leigh-Ann for pointing it out!)

One of my key pet peeves is that of presentation – or, in some cases, the lack thereof.

A good example is our local newspaper, the “Stoney Creek News”. It’s delivered free to homes in the area, but after reading a few weeks’ worth of stories and articles, I decided I no longer wanted to receive it. We posted a “No Flyers or Ads” notice on our mailbox.

It isn’t that I’m not interested in local news – I think it’s important to know what’s going on in the community, and to be aware of issues and events of concern or interest. The problem is that the newspaper is absolute shit. It appears there is no editor, no proofreading, no layout checking.

One week, we received a paper that appeared thicker than normal. I leafed through it and read the first part of the paper – then flipped a page and saw that it started right from the beginning again. They had “repeats” of the same articles throughout. It wasn’t a case of two newspapers stuck together, or tucked inside each other, it was an error on someone’s part. Of greater amusement? Not all of the repeat articles were identical – instead, the second copy had typos and layout problems within the writing.

On another occasion, the paper was so rife with spelling mistakes/typos that I couldn’t even read past the second page. I was twitching in pain. PAIN!

I decided to stick to the online version – but oh god, it’s just as bad (if not worse, since online typos and errors can be edited after the fact if required.) Even if you can get past the horrid design of the site (and it’s bad) there are STILL major typos.

Here’s the site: http://stoneycreeknews.com

Note that the headlines, which are clickable links (!), have no consistency in capitalization or punctuation. Revel in the terrible grammar. And scroll down far enough to read the mis-typed headline, “Volunteer for Burlington suseums” which is supposed to be “Museums”.

I think we need to move to a new city.

There are a few new photos up in the “dogs I know and love” album – one of them is a rather cute one of Queen Beaglet of Pancake. To get there, click on “gallery” up above.

Abbie’s friend died and that’s unspeakably sad. I love Abbie and I love Martha. Poor sweetpeas.