And now for something completely different, I give you the musical stylings of my best friend, Alexandria Gillespie:

And now onto other things…

Blake & I had a pretty wicked fight last night where he called me a “bigot” due to a misunderstanding about whether or not I accepted people who identify as gender neutral as valid (I do) and we were up until about 3am talking about it. There are 2 things you never ever call me, ever: 1. A “cunt”, unless you’re being playful and 2. A bigot because I accept everyone for whoever or whatever they are or say they are. I am very much a live and let live kinda person and it killed me last night that the person in the world who knows me best and loves me the most would call me such a thing when they should know me better than to think that was true in any capacity.

But everything’s okay now and the misunderstanding has been cleared up.

Yesterday was a pretty rough day emotionally between that situation, thinking earlier in the day that Blake was mad at me and ignoring me for reasons I couldn’t fathom and because I watched the series finale of Six Feet Under which utterly destroyed me for most of the afternoon. Not to mention the fact that I’m not the most emotionally stable person these days and I’ve been “bleeding brown” for the last week & a half despite only being halfway through my last month of birth control pills. (For those not in the know, I take them for 3 months non-stop, without a period, then have a period and repeat because of my endometriosis. The last month and the period following it is always brutal and requires lots and lots of drugs.)

I think when I see my shrink on the 8th, I’m going to ask her to up my medication because clearly I’m not stable right now. The normal dose for my mood stabilizer is 4 pills a day (I forget the mg dosage) and I currently take 3. I’m thinking I should probably be at 4. I’m also going to ask her for a new anti-anxiety medication because the clonazepam doesn’t seem to be cutting it these days. I usually take 2 before I go to sleep to curb “racing thoughts” and I can take it during the day if I’m having anxiety, but lately I’ve been having to take 3 or 4 just to get to sleep and some days I need to take 2 of them, plus Ativan (lorazepam) to keep my anxiety somewhat under control. I’ve heard good things about Xanax so maybe she’ll put me on that. She’s no doubt going to ask me what I think is causing the anxiety and I honest to god have no idea. I mean, normally I’m good at pinpointing things like that, but this is just coming straight out of left field. Yeah, I’m really stressed out about Wes’ birthday party, but I’ve been at that level of stress before and I’ve never had a problem with keeping things under control with the medications available to me. So I dunno.

And I haven’t been depressed, necessarily, but sad and unmotivated. Kinda numb and neutral. I have two paintings I should be working on right now, one that’s been in the works for over a year now, and while they sit on my coffee table waiting to be completed, I don’t seem to have the drive right now to work on them.

And Etsy…holy shit, Etsy. At the suggestion of my internet buddy, Ashley, whose grandmother sells aprons on Etsy and has for quite some time, I spent most of this week in the Etsy forums (and chat) talking to people and learning as much as I can and really, selling on Etsy has about as many tricks and rules as selling on eBay, which is a site I completely hate. Now, I’m not going to abandon Etsy, I still think it’s the best venue for my work at this time, but the suggestions as far as getting sales are VAST and there’s a lot more marketing involved than I’d previously anticipated. Naively, I figured I’d just list stuff and walk away, but oh ho ho, that is so not how Etsy works.

First, there’s the renewing game. With how Etsy’s search results work, which they’re actually in the process of tweaking but that’s kind of besides the point, it’s easy for your items to get buried if they haven’t been recently put up so what people do is they “renew” items, which pretty much means relisting them again so they show up at the top of the search results and stay on the main page and thus, more visible, longer. This of course costs $0.20, the same as listing an item to begin with. Most people, or at least the successful ones, renew several items per day, every single day. This week I’ve been doing that myself with mixed results, yes my hearts and views have gone up, but no sales have come from it.

Everyone on Etsy says to be patient, some people go 6 months to a year before making their first sale. That’s not exactly encouraging, but at least I know it’s not just me or what I’m selling. In fact a lot of the threads in the Etsy forums are about how sales are down for just about everyone due to the economy taking a giant shit.

But back to promotion. So Etsy gives you a couple of tools for promoting your shop. One is the “Etsy mini”, which you can see in my shop here on my site because I added it the other day. You can add this to various blogs and websites etc. but really, the only venue I have for this item is here on my site. The other tool they give you is a Facebook app that adds a tab to your profile or fan page (another reason to go the fan page route rather than a group) that basically shows your entire shop. It’s actually pretty cool and you can see it in action on my fan page. (I added it to my personal profile as well.) But that’s really the only tools Etsy gives you for promoting your shop.

Advice from other people though, well, there’s plenty. Some suggest that your personal avatar (your user icon) should be a picture of something you sell because if you post in the forums and they like the item in your avatar, they’re more likely to visit your shop. And buyers DO read the forums apparently. On the same token however, if they don’t like the item in your avatar, they may pass your shop over. That’s why I’ve chosen to stick with the picture of myself that I’ve had on Etsy since I opened my account a few years ago. Well that and Etsy won’t seem to let me change it. Using a picture of yourself, especially an interesting one, was also recommended in several threads.

Other  buts of advice were to make sure your spelling and grammar are impeccable, which I absolutely agree with, and to make your shop announcement interesting but not too long. Honestly, mine is probably too long. The other bit of advice to do with this was to make sure you fill out your shop’s policies in full and be as clear (and as entertaining) as possible. Also, filling out your personal profile is something you want to do as well because apparently people actually read those. (I haven’t really filled mine out yet, but I plan on it.) Some people suggested that in your personal profile or in the first section of your shop policies, you discuss your creative process and how each item is made. I still have to do that too, but as some people pointed out after that piece of advice popped up in the forums, you don’t want to give away too much because that can lead to copycats.

Then comes other forms of marketing that you do off-site. The main gist of most of these promotional topics was that you shouldn’t rely on Etsy’s current market to make your sales, you should concentrate on bringing outside people from your world into your Etsy shop and there are literally a million ways to do this. One suggestion, which I’d already planned on, was to register a domain name and have it point to your Etsy shop so people can find you easier and your Googlability goes up. Another suggestion was to create bookmarks or postcards or other small items with the url to your shop and give a stack of whatever those items are to your family, friends and co-workers to hand out for you. Most people can do this with whatever kind of printer they have at home. I don’t have a printer (well, not one that really works anyway) so this isn’t an option for me yet, but it’s something that I’ve been giving a great deal of thought to.

More suggestions came in the form of advertising on the internet, like with Facebook ads and advertising on blogs. That’s too rich for my blood, so I’m not going to do that, but apparently it works. One woman said that she makes postcard-sized business cards with her Etsy shop’s url on them and she goes to Barnes & Noble once a month to insert these cards into all of the craft magazines. She swears this works. (I’m skeptical, but it’s still an interesting idea.)

There is just this whole world of Etsy that I never knew existed until I started reading the forums and while a lot of it is really just good common sense marketing, there are levels to it I’d  never even considered, like advertising outside of the internet or playing the “renewing” game. My brain is pretty fried from absorbing all of this information, but I’m determined to put some of it into practice over the weekend, especially simple things like coming up with a wicked bio for my personal profile page.

Oh and more things to consider is your “relevancy”, which is part of Etsy’s new, experimental search system. LIke, for your titles, you should say what the thing is and then what it’s called. For example my titles for items were originally just what I called them, like “just like honey”, but after readong more about it, I changed them to “Original Painting – just like honey” because people search for original paintings, they don’t search for “just like honey”. And then there’s also your tags, which you have two sets of. One is categorical as far as what your item is and one is based on the materials used in the item. There’s like, a whole science to using tags, which I understand due to using tags and metatags for search engine optimization on websites, but when my mom starts selling on Etsy, I may have to help her with that.

And Etsy even has RULES on tags. For example, you can’t tag something “valentines day” because it would make a nice Valentine’s Day gift, you can only tag it with that if it’s something Valentine’s related like a heart-shaped soap or a hand-made V-Day card. There’s even a similar rule pertaining to tagging your items by colour, which admittedly I don’t fully understand but I’ll look into it more when I start selling my ACEOs by colour.

Isn’t all this shit crazy though? I mean, who knew Etsy was this complicated? I certainly didn’t. I gotta say, my inner ad geek is kinda loving it though and I can’t wait to have a little bit of capital to spend on things like advertising.

And speaking of Etsy, I still need a banner! E-mail me your 760 x 100 px submissions by February 20th and if I like yours enough to use it, I’ll PayPal you $20! Sunny@SunnyCrittenden.com!

Anyway, that’s what’s been on my mind this week. Blake’s going to be here any minute with our lunch, so I better wrap this up, but chances are I’ll write more later because my brain’s been all over the place and I have shit to say!

I’m an idiot. I just gave Blake (more or less) my last $25 cash and asked him to go to Curry’s on his lunch break tomorrow to pick me up a pack of three 12×12 inch canvases. I have ideas in my head that I think would be a waste on either of the 8×8 inch canvases I have sitting in my canvas cupboard and I’m going to do those ideas even though I know my bigger paintings aren’t selling right now and that smaller ones or the ACEOs I’m currently ignoring probably would. I can’t help it though, I have ideas and those ideas tell me what to do more than the other way around. As the title says, the Muse wants what the Muse wants and she wants 12×12 inch canvases.

Blake’s also currently helping me with a painting I started to do in the summer but never finished because it involves some code I don’t know how to write. The background’s completely finished for that one and the girl would be too, except I don’t know how long the code’s going to end up being so I don’t know how big to make her. She’s going to be in the same vein as “Binary Ballerina” though and guess what else? There’s MARABOU involved.

So creatively, that’s what I’m up to these days. Or will be as of tomorrow while I finish the final  season of Six Feet Under.

I also have a proposition for some of you. I know that some of the people on my Live Journal friends list are graphic designers and that’s what I happen to need. I don’t have much money to offer, but I do have $20 in my PayPal for anyone who designs me a nice banner that I can use on my Etsy shop. What I have up there right now is just something fast and dumb I threw together just so I’d have something up there and technically the fonts I used aren’t kosher as far as commercial use so I need to put something else up. My problem is that when I installed CS3, all of my paintbrushes stopped working, so I can’t even make a banner like the one on my site. Ideally what I would want is something that shows the kind of artwork I do, but really that’s all I know. Feel free to use pictures of my paintings or whatnot and if you don’t go that route then the pink I use on my site is #FF6699 and the blue is #99CCCC. The banner needs to be 760 x 100 px and I guess the way we’ll do this is, if you’re interested, just e-mail me your banners (Sunny@SunnyCrittenden.com) by say….February 20th and I’ll pick the one I like the best and send whoever made it $20 via PayPal. I realize it’s not a whole lot of money but it’s all I’ve got to offer. :o/ Anyway, I thank you all in advance for helping me out, I really appreciate it.

Speaking of Etsy, last weekend I made my very first sale! I was so excited to see the e-mail, you have no idea. I ended up selling both of the Bitch Barometers I had left, meaning that they’re now all gone, never to be created again! Those things were such a bitch to paint, let me tell ya, and I made 25 of them over 6 YEARS AGO and I just finally sold the last two this weekend. I’m so glad to have them out of my house! And thank you very much to the person who bought them!

My paintings on Etsy are getting a hell of a lot of views, but so far no purchases. That’s okay though, I didn’t really expect them to go flying off the shelves and putting them on Etsy was just an easier process than putting them on my site. As I explained at the time, I have an audience and my audience has seen all of my paintings, if someone in my audience was going to purchase one of them, it would have happened by now and hey, now that they’re on Etsy, I’ll be widening my audience while still enabling my current audience to purchase them if they so choose. Plus, it hasn’t even been a month yet since I added the first ones, so there’s plenty of time to see what happens.

Anyway, I was going to write more but I just remembered something I was supposed to do like, yesterday, that I haven’t even started yet so maybe I’ll post more later, after I’m finished this thing I’m supposed to be doing. Stupid obligations!

Oh dear am I ever in rough shape today. Well, I was in rough shape, but I’m slowly starting to feel better.

Here’s a little known fact about me: I don’t really drink and I have strong opinions on drinking, which I won’t get into in this post, but the fact is, I pretty much stopped drinking about 6 years ago. No real reason, I just sort of had my fill of it when I was working for Scratching Post and being on tour and everything. We were wasted just about every single Friday and Saturday and even some Sundays. The Jagermeister flowed freely, because you see, when you’re in a band you have what’s called a rider, which is sort of like a list of demands that have to be met for the band to perform at your venue. In Scratching Post’s rider they put down that the venue had to give them a 26 oz bottle of Jager and a case of beer, and then near the end they added a clause that said “the panty girl gets free drinks”. And back then, I could drink, like REALLY drink. I may only be 5 feet tall and at the time, 100 lbs, but at that point in my life, I’d never met anyone that could outdrink me.

But when I got pregnant with Wes and stopped working for Scratching Post, I just kind of decided that that part of my life was over and ever since I’ve only really drank alcohol maybe twice a year. This year was a stressful one and admittedly I’ve drank more than twice, but my tolerance is nowhere near what it used to be.

This was proven last night.

Last night Blake and Alex (and Ronny) were on assignment for Buttercup and went to a rock show in Toronto. I had to stay home with the kids. (And actually that’s sort of a lie. Wayne & Judy said they’d watch the kids if I wanted to go, but I decided I couldn’t go basically because I’m too fat and grotesque to be seen at a rock show. Yes, my self esteem is that low.) Anyway, I asked Blake to buy me a 26 oz bottle of Canadian Club, which is rye whiskey, and two 2 liter bottles of Coke and my plan for the evening was that once the kids were in bed, I’d go next door to drink and play cards with Wayne & Judy. And before someone jumps my shit for drinking and leaving the kids “alone”, Wayne & Judy’s house is literally 6 feet from mine and Madison’s now a very mature 11 and they were sleeping anyway. I was just a phone call away and would have come home in 2 seconds if anything was wrong or if the kids didn’t feel comfortable being “alone”.

That said, my kids’ bedtime is 9pm but Madison’s allowed to stay up until 10pm on weekends to read in her room, so at 9 I made sure everything was kosher with Madison and then I went over to Wayne & Judy’s to get my drink on. They re-taught me how to play rummy in a way that I’d never played before and also I hadn’t played rummy since I was about 11 years old when I used to go to my great Aunt’s house in the summers for a couple of weeks. Judy plays rummy where there are wild cards, so for the first hand, the wild card would be an ace, the second hand the wild card would be a 2, third hand would be a 3 – all the way up to king. Also, say I laid down 3 aces and a wild card, but Judy had the 4th ace, she could “steal” my wild card and give me her ace and you want to do that because wild cards are worth 20 while face cards are worth 10, aces are 15 and everything below 10 is worth 5.

Because I wasn’t drunk yet, I cleaned their clocks during the first game.

As we played and listened to CDs I made and brought over, I kept drinking. In fact, earlier that afternoon, I’d brought over two frosty mugs – y’know, the kind with liquid within the outside that you put in the freezer instead of using ice cubes – which were rather large and I was making my drinks very strong.

Now, when I get drunk, I get honest, so now Wayne & Judy know that Blake and I had simulated sex on The Discovery Channel and that I was a naked camgirl for almost 8 years. Oddly enough, they were cool with that. (I thought they’d freak.)

Around 12:30am – I think – Blake came home from the rock show and joined us for the second game of rummy. I made him a drink and made myself another drink and by this point I was pretty fucking shitfaced which caused me to lose our game of rummy miserably. I kept dropping my cards and I couldn’t follow the suits and they were all basically laughing at me.

Well, shortly after the second game ended, we were all sitting around Wayne & Judy’s table just shooting the shit and the room started spinning. And then I proceeded to barf in Judy’s kitchen sink for about half an hour. Then I sat back down at their kitchen table while they fed me water and I thought I was okay, but nope, back to the kitchen sink I went where I barfed for maybe another 15 minutes. While barfing sucks, I think it was really sweet of Wayne to rub my back as I did so, that’s a friend right there, y’know?

Post-barfing, I went back to the kitchen table and drank more water and Blake decided to take me home. The walk home is about 20 feet and they were very wobbly feet, but we got home, I was sober enough to plug in my cellphone and Blake and i just sat in my office where he told me all about his night with Ronny and Alex and the top secret stuff we’re doing in October on Buttercup. And then I had to barf again. Projectile vomiting mostly water into my toilet with such force that I actually peed my pants. Honest to god, I hadn’t been this drunk since I went to Vegas for the Camgirls documentary and this is only the 4th time I’ve ever puked from drinking. It suuuuuucked.

Once I was empty, I went back to my office and Blake helped me find new clothes as I’d gotten barf on mine and there was also the whole pissing myself thing. So I got pajamas on and was sober and empty enough to be hungry, so I made myself a roast beef sandwich, which I ate and kept down, while Blake told me more about his night.

By this time it was 4am so Blake and I decided to go to bed. For some ungodly reason, I woke up at 8am – still drunk – and could NOT get back to sleep. I was so hot that I stripped down to my underwear and just laid in bed until about 10am when I finally decided that sleep was futile, I was sober again and it was time to just get up.

I immediately started drinking water, then I took my pills, which included Tylenol 1 for my giant headache and I fucked around on the internets while feeling completely wrecked.

Wayne & Judy weren’t home when I got up and Blake was still sleeping so I just did nothing until Blake got up and Wayne & Judy came home. When they came home, I went over there and we all laughed at our evening and Wayne pointed out that I drank about 24 oz of liquor all by myself in a span of 5 hours. No wonder I puked my guts up!

So today was one of those days where you think “I am never drinking again”, but slowly I’m recovering and I’m sure I’ll be fine by tomorrow.

Speaking of tomorrow, which I guess is actually today since it’s almost 2am, I’m going to get majorly Wayned. Y’see, Wayne has Mondays off and he gets lonely, so when I wake up, I pretty much brush my teeth and head over there to shoot the shit and keep him company. Last Monday we spent the day listening to the radio because they have this contest thing right now that’s based on the show Deal or No Deal, where you open pretend cases and can win up to $10,000 or something. Wayne’s obsessed with Deal or No Deal and tries every Monday to be the 7th caller so he can play the radio station’s version (which is called Cool or Not Cool – lame). They do it multiple times a day and every time they do it, he calls in and never gets through.

Last week when I got to his house, around 11am, he’d been waiting 4 hours for them to start the game and while we waited, I tried to get his wireless to pick up our wifi so they could have internet. I get 3 or 4 bars (out of 5) when I take my MacBook over there in their kitchen which is actually pretty strong for being in a whole other house, but I could only get one bar on their computer. But when I got their wireless working and it detected our signal (called “Sunnyland” if you must know, ha) it asked me for our WEP code/pass thing, which I didn’t know, so I called Blake at work and he gave it to me. About 10 minutes later, the radio station announced that people should call in for Cool or Not Cool and Wayne hit redial because he’d had the station on redial so he could just keep trying to get through but since I’d called Blake, Wayne called Blake and missed his chance to play the game. It’s hard to really convey how funny that was here, but I felt bad and at the same time I could not stop laughing. And the funniest thing is that after that happened and they played the game, Wayne called the station to request a song for Judy at work and they said they’d do it, so then he called Judy at work to make sure she’d be listening and then maybe 3 hours later they announced that people should call in for Cool or Not Cool and he hit redial and called Judy’s work, missing his chance AGAIN. OMG I was dying.

So I figure tomorrow is probably going to be a repeat of last Monday, with him trying to be caller 7 while I patiently rip CDs onto his computer and manually type in their track listings because without them having internet the track listings on CDs don’t show up in friggin’ iTunes.

———————

I started typing this post at around 2am and was interrupted by my friend Kevin of Camwhores (uh, NSFW) and we had a very interesting conversation. I know people are skeptical when I talk about this, but the site really is changing for the better. New things and being added, there are some new policies, some new ways for girls to make money have been implemented with more on the way and with everything that’s going on, I really feel the site’s going to recover from its downturn over the past few years. I mean, it already IS picking up and many oldschool girls have come back now that Stile is gone and things are changing, but I think that momentum is only going to increase over the next few months as these things I can’t discuss are implemented.

Oh yeah, and I’m coming back. That’s right, you heard me. Apparently by Wednesday there’ll be a webcam at my door, which means I’ll probably actually pick it up Thursday or Friday and Kevin’s going to help me figure out what cam software I need and I should be up and running and back on Camwhores’ front page by October 6th-ish.

I’m gonna be upfront about the fact that I have no intentions of doing much in regards to nudity because I think I’m kind of beyond that at this point and I’m also 50 lbs heavier than I was when I was on there before, which I’m really insecure about. BUT I’m the same old Sunny on the inside and I plan to bring back my own brand of fun and humour to the site and just have a damn good time while I do it. Hopefully everyone else will have a damn good time as well. :o)

In other news, last week I decided to take Live Journal up on their offer to monetize my journal using Google’s AdSense, meaning that there are now ads on my Live Journal. So far I think I’ve made a decent amount from this in just one week, so I’m going to continue with it and I’ll be totally honest, I love that I’m making a little bit of money for doing something I’d be doing normally anyway and that played a big part in my decision to return to Camwhores.

As I said, there are going to be more opportunities to make a little bit of money from camming and that’s money I could really use. And again, it’s just like adding ads to my Live Journal, it’s making money from doing something that I’d be doing anyway.

And the fact of the matter is, I miss camming. I was talking to Blake about it just tonight in fact. I don’t really go anywhere, as we all know I’m agoraphobic so I go to Wayne & Judy’s, which is next door, and sometimes I go to the post office or to The Beer Store with Wayne. And that’s pretty much it. Maybe once every two months I’ll go to the grocery store with Blake or when I sell a painting, which I really need to do soon (:o/), I go to Michael’s and Curry’s to stock up on art supplies. NONE of these places require me to get dressed properly, most of the time I’m either in pajamas or sweats, and I don’t even bother with makeup anymore because I just kind of don’t care. Camming made me care. Camming gave me an excuse to wear a nice top and put on some lipstick even though I wasn’t going anywhere and really, my self esteem needs that right now. Looking your best just makes you feel good, y’know?

Anyway, it’s just an avenue I’m going to re-examine and if it’s a positive thing, I’ll stick with it and if it’s not, I won’t. It’s as I said when I first started camming, “I’ll do it until it’s not fun anymore”. When I quit camming last year, it was because it stopped being fun, but now there’s all this opportunity for it to be fun again, so hey, I’m gonna give it another shot.

So that’s – I guess – my big news for the week.

Now I’m going to finish watching the movie I’ve got saved on my OnDemand thingy (Last Chance Harvey I think it’s called…it’s kind of crappy), have something to eat and then get to bed. If I sleep past noon, Wayne’ll start calling the house and bugging me to come over.

Have a happy Monday!

Hello internets. How are you today? Good I hope.

I realize I haven’t been much of a textibitionist lately and that it seems like I haven’t been online a whole lot and I thought I’d write a bit about why that is and then share with you all some interesting things about this website.

My neighbours are having a tough time of things right now and to help them save money on childcare costs, I’ve been watching their 9-year-old daughter in the afternoons from the time her mom goes to work and her dad comes home from work. That means that from about 2pm until about 6:30pm there are three very loud, very bored, very ready to go back to school children in my house and I’ve found that this makes it next to impossible to stick to my usual routine of making art and internetting.

Along with five other girls, plus Blake, I’ve been busy working on that TOP SEKRIT PROJEKT I’ve not been talking about since the spring and very very soon it’s going to launch and not be so TOP SEKRIT anymore. Because of that, it’s sort of crunch time and I’ve been pretty stressed out about it.

On top of that there’s getting the kids ready for school, which starts in a week, a shrink appointment on September 4th that I need to prepare for (she’s going to ask me about immersion therapy which is totally something I don’t even want to talk about right now) and my post-op appointment with the endo specialist on September 10th in Toronto. Plus I think my in-laws are going to be visiting during the last two weeks of September as well.

Along with all of the above, I’ve been working really hard to get my last series of paintings done (“Sparkle”, “Shimmer” & “Shine) and ready to submit to the Touched By Fire people for entry into the show this year, as well as writing what basically ended up being like, an artist bio/press release to be used in media for the show, which I know I mentioned previously.

In between all of that, I’ve been spending a lot of time with my neighbours, who I’ve now dubbed “my second family” because I’ve been hanging out with them so much and we also spent a day at my mother’s boyfriend’s cottage where we swam, jumped on a water trampoline thing, watched his son do wakeboard tricks and even got to see Blake on a pair of water skis. In the last two weeks I’ve had two REALLY bad sunburns back to back, which wasn’t fun. In fact, I’m still really itchy from the burn I got the day we went to the cottage.

The scratches are where I made Blake scratch the shit out of me because I was so itchy.

Blake water skiing.

So that’s what I/we’ve been up to in a nutshell. Also, I recently discovered this extremely stupid, extremely addictive video game called Plants vs. Zombies that everyone in this house is currently obsessed with. (Thanks a lot KATIE. :oP) I’m hoping that once the kids start school and my days are free again, that I’ll be able to get the paintings that I have on the go finished and ready for sale (including “Devil Girl”) and to be able to pay more attention to expanding my horizons. This is the first year both kids are going to be at school every day (jr. & sr. kindergarten was Mondays, Wednesdays and every other Friday) and I’m not quite sure yet how I’m going to spend most of my time. Making art, definitely, but in between making art I’m not entirely sure.

There’s also the matter of moving, which has been on mine & Blake’s minds a lot over the summer. he doesn’t feel as though his current position within the company is as secure as it was before the economy went to shit and the number of departments closing is kind of scary, so he’s started positioning himself for a better job within the company. Right now he’s a…I dunno, a technology analyst (??) and the new job he’s hoping to get is something to do with databases. The issue though, is that the database stuff is all based out of Toronto, which is about an h our & a half away from us. This makes for a brutal commute, especially in the winter which hits our area pretty hard causing roads to often close and snow days galore. That means it would make more sense to move further south both so we’re not spending crazy amounts of money on gas and car maintenance and also so we aren’t forced to spend less time together as a family. The problem is, we don’t know where to move, what kind of house to move into, whether we want to live in a rural area or into a town or even what kind of life we want for ourselves and the kids when we do move. There are so many pros and cons to all of the above, that we don’t even know where to begin sorting it all out. But I’ll save that for another post because right now, in the immediate present, he doesn’t have the job, hasn’t even applied for the job (because the job doesn’t technically exist yet), so we’re staying put.

Anyway, onto analytics.

Like most people with websites, I run stats on mine using Google Analytics. Truthfully, I rarely log in anymore to check them out because my traffic hasn’t changed in years (2500-3000 unique visitors per month…why like, 0.01% of these people actually make contact or post comments is beyond me) and I don’t really care what people are reading or paying attention to because I’m going to post whatever I want anyway. I do find the referrals interesting, but again, they don’t really change much from month to month and I’ve found myself caring less and less as the years go by.

That said, tonight I logged into my analytics just out of boredom and found myself on the “Keywords” page, the page that tells me what people are putting into search engines to land on my site, and some of this stuff cracked me up so as I do every now & then, I thought I’d share and give a little commentary.

The #1 search criteria to find me is of course, my name. That’s a given. But I had 9 visits in the last 30 days from someone (or maybe a few someones) searching for “sunny crittenden + marketing magazine“. Hmmm. Yes, this month I was in Marketing magazine due to the Hypercube debacle, but I’ve also written articles for Marketing magazine in the past and I wonder what exactly this person or persons were looking for – the Hypercube article or the articles I’d written for them in the past. Curious.

Next on the list was “sucking cock“, “blowjobs” and “elf porn“. The former two likely due to my guide on doing just that, and the latter is because I referenced it ONCE in a blog post I made probably two years ago now when I was playing World of Warcraft. Also in the same vein there was “girl guides suck cock“, “what to expect after anal sex“, “are blowjobs good for the tongue muscles“, “cock loving nurses teach cock sucking galleries” (wut?), “does sucking dick actually turns your lips pink?“, “elderly man’s cock in my pussy“, “girls sucking own clit” (very flexible girls?), “how to put lube in asshole“, “suck head penis until blow up sperms“, “sucking cock whilst giving birth” (WTF?) and “why do some ladies don’t enjoy giving a man a blowjob“.

Below that was “sarah sunny crittenden“, which I also found curious. “Sarah”, as most of you know, is the name my mother gave me. So who would be searching for that? Three people, apparently. o_O

Oddly enough, further down the list were “suzi blu“, “suzi blu drama“, “suzi blu is a fake“, “suziblu.ning.com“, “+ suzi blu“, “disenchanted with suzi blu“, “suzi blu and willowing drama“,  “suzi blu doesn’t refund“, “suzi blu ning“, “suziblu insanity bitch” and “encyclopedia dramatica suzi blu“. (Sidenote: If you weren’t aware, Encyclopedia Dramatica lampooned Suzi pretty good a few months back.) It appears as though there are at least 8 people this month who are unhappy with Suzi Blu for whatever reason and their searches are landing on the few posts I made about my experiences with her this spring. To those who are here due to Suzi Blu, I’d like to redirect you to Marylin, the internet’s resident Suzi Blu expert.

Also interesting, yet not all that surprising, were Nissan Cube, Hypercube and Capital C searches, such as these: “cubecommunity.ca” (which launched last week I think and as suspected it’s a fucking joke), “tony chapman fake“, “can a dog fit in the back of a nissan cube“, “length of bed in nissan cube“, “capital c nissan“, “hypercube aftermath“, “hypercube contest fix“, “nissan cube bra“, “sunny nissan key code reader“, “sunny crittenden hypercube“, “tony chapman + cube” and “tony chapman + douchebag“.

Others I found entertaining were the following: “sunny camwhore styleproject“, “stileproject cam portal” (someone oldschool must be looking for me- here I am! *waves*), “thank you universe” (I’m glad I’m not the only one who’s thankful), “i am so over humanity“, “president’s choice decadent cookies” (the only store-bought cookies worth putting in your mouth, imo), “shaved my head” (neat! so did I! *high five*), “born without arms boy” (???), “cam girl documentary” (don’t even ask me when it’s coming out…it’s been in post for like, 4 years), “camwhore chali” (hey Chali, someone oldschool must be looking for you too!), “camwhores password“, “camwhores.com password“, “how do i save videos from camwhores.com” (good luck finding a password, my CW password is actually more secure than my online banking password and as far as saving videos…there are programs that record anything you see on your screen but I don’t remember what any of them are called. I think the Mac one might be Snapz?), “camwhores the documentary” (non-existent), “can risperidone slow down your metabolism” (YES and to add to its evil nature, it also increases your appetite), “memoirs of a web cam girl” (one day, one day…), “prevent hacking taking risperidone” (I have no idea what this means), “sunny crittenden selfish” (hahaha! well whatever, one person out there on the world wide web thinks I’m selfish, I think I can live with that), “well aren’t we just a ray of fucking sunshine canada“, “which pills will kill me” (:o(), and last but not least (and definitely my favourite), “sunny crittenden bitch“.

Long story short, since it’s damn near 6am, people search for weird crap and end up finding me. I’m honoured and I hope all of you new people stick around to see that there’s much more to me than blowjobs, webcams and that goddamn Nissan Cube.

Goodnight!

I made a Live Journal post today I’d like everyone to take a look at if it isn’t  too much trouble.

I was interviewed by Marketing magazine this afternoon and I’m not sure how I feel about that.
This doesn’t have anything to do with the Hypercube contest, really, it has more to do with the Canadian ad industry as a whole and Marketing magazine in particular.

As most of you are aware, I went to college to be a copywriter and have been flirting with a career in advertising for damn near the past decade, even writing two articles ABOUT advertising and the internet for Marketing magazine. I was even offered my own column, as I’ve relayed before, but that fell apart amongst a regime change and budget cuts. I also subscribed to said publication for about 4 years and as such, I have very mixed feelings about it and how this article on the Hypercube contest is probably going to go.

Marketing magazine, for those who don’t know, is Canada’s largest (only?) trade publication for our ad industry and it’s kind of known for being one big circle jerk when it comes to things ad agencies have actually done. When they talk about hypotheticals and what agencies should do and things like that, they’re actually pretty brazen and often open-minded, but when it comes to agencies, everyone seems to be touching everyone else’s dick.

I don’t know for certain what kind of article is going to be written about the Hypercube contest, but I do know the author contacted Capital C, Nissan and the Competition Bureau before talking to me and a lady I know from the contest named Lori (at my suggestion). Of course, it was also my understanding that the now infamous Encyclopedia Dramatica article about the contest (which is still ongoing, it appears) was the catalyst for writing an article at all, so I guess that’s something, but by the questions that were asked and what was focused on, I’m not very optimistic at reading a truthful, in-depth piece on what really went down and I’m afraid that Lori and I are just going to come across as butthurt sore losers as we’ve both been accused of being for not sitting here like nice little ladies and allowing ourselves to be spoon-fed bullshit.

For me, this whole thing, this whole “Hypercube Aftermath” as ED calls it on their second page on the topic, is muddled and confusing. There are so many issues to address and questions left unanswered and where to go from here – and just so many directions this could go, I literally have a hard time trying to keep up. And I’m usually pretty good at keeping up.

Some people want to focus on the fact that Blake and I didn’t win. Well, Blake and I are long over that, that’s not even an issue anymore. What is an issue, however, is the fact that from the very beginning there was no way Blake or I could have won, yet they made us believe we could and they used us. In order to win,  at least according to the game we were presented with, we had to use every bit of social persuasion we had and we had to maintain a momentum that had me glued to Twitter from the time I woke up to the time I went to bed. It had me spamming forums, placing fake car ads, getting people to make fansigns – creatively using social media to spread their message. And Tony Chapman himself said that they were looking to reward social creativity. Yet most of the people who won (I won’t say all) didn’t participate in any meaningful way, if at all, or signed up for Twitter just to be a part of the contest, or signed up for Twitter to just be part of the contest but only tweeted a few times here and there and only to the “voice” of the contest, @thehypercube. And they certainly weren’t being socially creative.

And as I said to Matt Semansky, the guy writing the article, Capital C, namely Tony “Douchebag” Chapman, was talking about the “net generation” a whole lot, yet they didn’t seem to know who or what the “net generation” is and in the process of choosing people who are not the “net generation”, they alienated and even angered the actual “net generation” (which doesn’t actually exist, it’s a stupid marketing term, but those who are in it, know they’re in it). The people I hang with, the power users of the internet who were lulled to sleep at night by the sound of a dial-up modem connecting and who are literally online or connected to the internet in some way every breathing moment and have been since they were children, they are not buying this car. But that’s who Nissan wanted to buy this car, I think anyway. At least that’s what the tech package and branding it a “mobile device” seems to imply. But they threw out the latest marketing buzz term “creative class” too, so I’m not sure if they knew WHO the hell they wanted to buy this car. Obviously there’s going to be some overlap between groups and maybe those who fall into the overlap are what they desired, but that’s not what they got, so to me, this entire contest just ended up being one giant clusterfuck of epic proportions. Some are already calling it “the most botched contest Canada’s ever seen”. On the internet. Where this whole contest took place. Where they were hoping to reach their target and build brand awareness and loyalty through community…except in their choices, they decimated the community that had formed during the contest and created full-on brand hatred that has only grown as the dirty truth about what went on behind the scenes has begun to surface. Um. I don’t think that’s a win, people.

When folks are clogging up (basically) your brand’s hashtag on Twitter by saying things like, they want to key every Cube they see or they’d like to vacation on the inside of a Cube with a blowtorch, or even that your product is ugly (check out the #nissan hashtag some time and watch it for a day) there was a problem along the way. But Nissan and Cap C? They refuse to acknowledge there was or is any problem and that in and of itself is the problem.

Matt Semansky asked me today what I thought Nissan could do to turn this around and while I forget my exact wording, I basically said that the best they could do is trash this whole campaign, kill CubeCommunity.ca, cut their losses and start over with a traditional media campaign aimed at the very people they didn’t want driving this car, because those are the only people who are going to buy it now. The fact of the matter is, their attempt at a social media campaign, their social media “experiment”, well, it failed. There’s no denying it, it failed in every way imaginable.

And in CubeCommunity.ca? With what little is on that domain right now? Even that is a complete fail and all they’re asking for is for you to join their mailing list. If the site is gone by the time you’re reading this, which is a possibility, there’s a photo of a Nissan Cube on the page with a speech bubble that says “oh hai!” They are ever so slightly co-opting the speech and memes of the same “net generation” they managed to alienate during the course of this campaign. That little “oh hai!” may seem like nothing on the surface, but it’s a rub for a lot of us. It reminds me of a Gap ad I saw in the 90’s with a guy wearing Gap jeans and a flannel shirt falling through the air and the tagline was “Plunge into grunge”. It was vile and completely offensive. I mean dammit, people, didn’t you watch Reality Bites? There was a reason why working at the Gap was considered the worst possible job there was and that poster pretty much summed it up.

For the record, I have never been in a Gap store in my life. And it’s all because of that ad.

But I digress…

I know it’s been pretty negative in the virtual world of Sunnyland the last couple of months because of this contest and that you’re all probably sick of hearing about it, but the thing is, I am of a breed, we’ll say,  that doesn’t deal well with injustice and some say that’s a trait of my generation, whatever generation I may be. Whatever it is, it eats at me. Unfortunately, I’m also a person prone to extreme anxiety and it took 4, count ‘em 4, Ativans to even function today because of Hypercube crap being brought up again and for my own sanity I hope that this article in Marketing magazine either ends this insanity or blows it wide open. I’m sick of all this whispering to each other behind the scenes and keeping secrets and flat out gossiping and people blocking people on Twitter and sock puppet accounts and all the rest of it. I’m sick of it, I want it to be done.

But as I said to Matt this afternoon, it probably won’t be the end. CubeCommunity.ca is going to launch (eventually) and it’s going to be a whole new thing. I’m no psychic or anything, but the future I see with this is not a positive one and it’s only going to be the final nails in the Hypercube campaign’s coffin. At one end of the spectrum, you’ll have people tweeting or blogging about what mouth-breathers the “winners” are and at the other end of the spectrum you’ve got the wrath of Anonymous and DDoS attacks. The reaction to CubeCommunity.ca is going to fall somewhere  within that spectrum and for that reason, if I were Nissan, I wouldn’t even launch it. As I said earlier, I’d cut my losses and start over with a different demographic. They failed with this one. But that’s just me. And they’re not prone to listening to me, so I guess I’ll sit back and *facepalm* with the rest of my “generation” as they flounder some more.

So that’s, more or less, what I conveyed to Matt Semansky of Marketing magazine. Or at least tried to. As I said in my Live Journal post, I’m just not any good on the phone, especially with this muddled topic, so god only knows how I came across.

Anyway, it’s almost 5am, I’m starving and I’ve gotten absolutey no work done tonight so I have to go eat and accomplish something.

“Each day, 1,000 young people under the age of 18 become new regular, daily smokers, and almost 90 percent of all smokers began at or before their 18th birthday…”

“I know; I was one of these teenagers. And so I know how difficult it can be to break this habit when it’s been with you for a long time.”

- President Barack Obama

Read the article here.

So…it’s been a few days since I made a post and I figured it was time that I made another one.

As I’ve been doing since release, I’ve been playing a lot of Sims 3 except I’ve put Zennish Moody and Johnny Awesome on the back burner because their story started to bore me (they’re my pseudo-legacy family so they’re basically just going to max out skills, have great careers, have babies, paint each family member to hang in the legacy house and die), so I decided to make a new family, one with less than desirable traits, in another town, as I was inspired by Alice & Kev. Thus, The Moody Cousins – Luna, Sunshine and Star – were born.

Luna is evil, dislikes children, she’s insane, flirty and a great kisser. Her cousin Sunshine is childish, good, excitable, easily impressed and also flirty. Sunshine’s daughter, Star, is over-emotional, flirty, a genius and a computer whiz and she’s who you’re going to meet today because she’s in looooooove.

Star brought Dallas Shallow home from school one day and they hit it off instantly. All she knows about him is that he’s flirty and a good kisser, but at 17, that’s all she needs to know.

Star and Dallas hitting it off.

In other news, there are only 6 days until the big Hypercube event in Toronto where we’ll find out the people who have won the 50 Nissan Cubes up for grabs. I sincerely doubt I’m going to be among them, as I’m just not that lucky and the more I think about it, the more reasons I can think of for them to not award me one, but I’ve bought a dress and I’m going anyway, if only to put the entire thing to rest by drinking my face off in a club I’ve never been to downtown.

Normally this whole event would be triggering massive anxiety and while I’m not exactly jumping for joy at the prospect of going, particularly since it’s looking like Blake & I will be going alone, I’m pretty level as far as my agoraphobic tendencies. Who knows how I’ll be on the 23rd though, there’s still a very good chance that I’ll completely chicken out and not go at all.

At this point in the process, to be totally honest, I don’t even care if I win or not, I just want it to be over and done with so I can stop thinking about it and move on with my life.

Of course, on the very slim chance that I am a winner, it’ll mean that it’s just the beginning of things and I guess I’ll have no choice but to take that as it comes. There’s a very large part of me that’s absolutely terrified of winning because of all it means and the things I’m going to have to do if that ends up being the case. Not the blogging for Nissan part, that’s cake, it the whole driving thing and the fact that having a Cube of my own is going to change life as I know it in a really drastic kind of way. I don’t even know how to express what having a gassed up car in my driveway at 2pm on a Thursday in August means in my world, let alone the opportunities it’s going to afford me creatively. Going to Curry’s by myself? That just not even something I could have imagined before this contest.

She’s mesmerized.

Speaking of creativity…I haven’t really been painting and the reason for that is because I simply don’t tend to paint as much in the warmer months. As I’ve explained before, the spring and summer is when I catch up on things I couldn’t absorb throughout the rest of the year (because I’m painting!). It’s when I do most of my reading and of course, gardening, partying, going to the park across the road and swinging in my bra & underwear on particularly hot nights…spring and summer is when I live and experience, fall and winter is when I hibernate and produce.

There are also two other reasons why I haven’t been painting:

1. I’m busy. The end of the school year, getting myself together for this Hypercube party and having a house full of drunk people (one of whom I’ve never met!) on the 26th means that there is a lot on my plate right now and a lot going on. I may not be physically busy, but my mind sure is and every brainless moment of Sims 3 is welcome.
2. I’m working on a side-project that’s going to turn into a full-time writing project come September. It’s (of course) internet-based and that’s pretty much all I can tell you about it, except that only about half of you are going to have any interest in it.

I just feel like I’m in this Hypercube contest that’s like, all about creativity and here I am doing nothing creative at all. Except that I am, I promise, it’s just behind the scenes and I can’t talk about it!

Art shows have been on my mind in the last few days though. I’ve decided I’m definitely going to submit to Touched By Fire again this year because unlike last year, I can actually be prepared and have some pieces to sell and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have a good time last year. I’ve been wondering what other art shows I can submit to, I’m not really a part of that world so I don’t know what’s what and I don’t even know how to find out. One of my goals for 2009 was to do two art shows though, so TBF is one of them…but what about the other? If anyone out there can teach me how to navigate the Toronto art world, that’d be lovely because I have no fucking clue.

Because Dallas is a good kisser, Star gets a 3 hour mood boost every time their lips touch.

Immersion therapy…well, I haven’t been doing it. On May 25th I walked downtown to a restaurant all by myself, ordered and ate breakfast and it really did a number on me because it proved to be too big of a step. As a result, I think anyway, I found myself in a low that lasted more or less until yesterday, so 2 & a half weeks. I’m not totally sure how bipolar disorder works and if life events can trigger highs and lows (I know lack of sleep can trigger a high), but the whole restaurant thing definitely put me in a funk that I’m only coming out of now so I have to be a little more careful about what I do from now on and be careful of getting ahead of myself. Immersion therapy is a process and you can’t run before you walk. As much as I’m loathe to admit it, I’m still in the walking phase and can’t afford to rush things when they result in 2 week long setbacks. I’m on a schedule here!

So, I’m back to driving to the post office in the middle of the night with Lucky and little else. (Chali godammit, I need your current mailing address.)

I did think of two other things I’d like to do today, though.

Remember when I went for a walk down the Trans-Canada Trail by my house that one time? Well, when I did that there were barely buds on the trees and the ground was just starting to thaw out, but now the trail is covered by a canopy of leaves and right now the whole thing is covered in these white and purple flowers I don’t know the name of. One day soon, before those flowers stop blooming, I want to take Wes down the trail and take pictures of him. It’s supposed to rain for the rest of the week, so this week’s out, so next week it’ll probably have to be. I don’t think the flowers are going to last much longer than that, they bloom for only a very short period of time.

Going places by myself is difficult for me, but actually going places by myself but with my kids, like being the only responsible adult around, is even more difficult so this one’s going to be a fairly large step, but not too big that it’ll send me into a depression because I get freaked out.

The other thing I wanted to do is this: Two doors down from me, there’s a condemned house that the bank owns and according to my neighbour, Wayne, the bank is going to demolish it soon. Before they do, I want to go in there and take pictures. I’ve never been in there, so I’m not sure what to expect, but Wayne does tell me that there’s a TREE growing through the middle of the house and if it’s as cool in person as it is in my head, it’s going to make for some pretty amazing pictures, pending I get the light right.

I walked over there today to take some pictures of the buttercups growing in the house’s front yard but I was too chickenshit to go in. I don’t think this is something I can do on my own. For one, you never know who’s going to be in that house. Runaways, homeless people and people wanted by the police have been known to hide out in there – or at least the cops have been in and out of there enough times looking for all of those kinds of people that it’s possible someone could be in there. Number two is that the house is condemned and thus unsafe. I wouldn’t want to go in there by myself and have something happen and no one know that I’m there or be stuck in there with a broken leg or whatever until someone finds me. I dunno, I have to talk this one over with Blake and see what he thinks. I think afternoon light would probably be best, so that means it’ll probably have to happen on a weekend.

Anyway, those were my thoughts this morning.

Ahhhhhh, hormones.

As I mentioned above, on Saturday the 26th, we’re having a party at our house in honour of our “internet friend” Marylin coming up and becoming a real life friend. Ronny, who lives in Michigan and is engaged to Alex, will be picking Marylin up from Hamilton on his way up here to Barrie. Then he’ll either drop Marylin off here or we’ll come get her. This will happen either late on the 25th or earlier on the 26th. So, it’s going to me, me, Blake, the kids, Ronny & Alex, Marylin, Jesse and Jesse’s friend Patricia all getting wasted (well, not the kids…) in honour of Marylin and our fine country’s birthday.

Because of this event, I spent all of last night on Wikipedia going through music of the 90’s, trying to find stuff to download in order to replenish my iTunes. None of you probably recall, but about a year ago my iBook’s hard drive died completely and I lost EVERYTHING, including a LOT of writing and all of my music. As such, my music collection is less than 4GB right now and if we’re going to have a party, I’m going to have to rectify that. So last night i went through the 90’s and at some point this week I’ll do the 80’s and 2001-present.

The shitty thing, though? Soulseek doesn’t seem to want to participate with my plan. It seems fine if I want to download an entire album, but song by song? No way. I don’t know why this is. Hopefully whatever the issue is, it’ll fix itself in time for me to download the 3 pages worth of songs I’ve written down already and the other 10 I’ll probably write down before I’m done.

WTF? Get off my computer!
Can Dallas handle a girl who’s more 1337 than he is?

And that’s pretty much all I’ve got to say. Today I made potato salad for the first time this year and it’s calling my name, so I’m going to go have dinner and get ready for my super secret meeting tonight! I hope you all have a wonderful evening and stay tuned for the next installment of The Moody Cousins!

So here’s the thing: a couple of people have called me crazy and possibly stupid for calling Tony Chapman, the CEO of Capital C, the ad agency behind Nissan’s Hypercube contest of which I’m a contestant, a douchebag the other day. (Alternalink with more comments.) They don’t care about what I said, they care about it hurting my chances of winning a new Cube, which I so desperately need and if a couple of people have said this, then I know at least triple that are thinking it so I figured I’d address that briefly. (Briefly! HA! I’ve never been brief in my life!)

First, let it be said that I have it on very good authority that Tony Chapman is a nice guy, but you can be a nice guy and still be a phony ad douche at the same time. Believe me, it’s totally possible. As I explained in my original post, I became disappointed in Tony after the Twitter debacle and silently took the post down that I’d made a couple of weeks prior where I praised him for being a forward thinker in a sea of what I consider to be mostly backwards thinkers.  At that point I was merely saddened that I’d been duped, it wouldn’t be until Tony said idiotic, douchebaggy things to the press about who should win these Cubes that I got mad. He said things that may impress other ad douches, but they didn’t impress me and they didn’t impress a lot of other people in the Hypercube contest and I wouldn’t have been true to nature if I didn’t write something about it.

I have called out my own mother on this blog a thousand times worse, the fact of the matter is, if  I have a legitimate beef about someone or some thing I’m probably going to blog about it and I don’t really care who you are or what the cost is to me. Speaking my mind, being true to my own thoughts and feelings and being HONEST is more important to me than just about anything.

I felt that saying something now, before I knew if I was a winner or loser in this contest, was my only option. If I was a winner and pissed off “the man in charge” and they changed their minds, I’d never know so it wouldn’t make a difference. I couldn’t wait until after the winners were announced because if I won, I think I’d basically be contractually obligated not to say anything and I’d be an asshole if I did (“hey here’s this awesome gift!” “oh thanks, hey btw I think you’re a douchebag!” – it just doesn’t work). Believe it or not, even I know when to shut up and just say “thank you”. If I lost and then said my piece, it would sound like sour grapes and that I was a sore loser.

So, I did what I always do and just wrote what I felt as I felt it, consequences be damned.  And don’t get me wrong, before I hit “publish” on that post, I wondered out loud if it was a good idea and obviously I ultimately decided that I didn’t care. Will what I said have an effect on the outcome of the contest? It’s possible, but the more I’ve thought about it over the past couple of days, the more I’ve though that if there is an effect, it’s just as possible that it’ll be a positive one. They chose the winners two weeks ago and if I happened to be one, then it’s just possible that the powers that be read what I wrote and it reaffirmed their decision. I’m not saying that would definitely be the case, I’m saying it’s just as possible as Cap C being totally offended and choosing someone else instead.

My point is that if I’m not a winner on the 23rd, I’m never going to wonder if the outcome would have been any different had I kept my mouth shut.

According to Bennett Klein in the comments on the x-post to Live Journal of the original post, Tony Chapman was to send me a “note” that day, but he must be a busy guy, as all admen tend to be, because as of right now, nothing’s shown up in my inbox. Truth be told, I haven’t the foggiest idea of what he would want to say to me but that’s what I was told so I guess we’ll see. Maybe he’ll be at the Hypercube event in Toronto on the 23rd and we can have a little chat. (If I even go…as per usual, I’m agonizing over that very decision and it basically boils down to whether or not I can find something decent at Value Village this weekend to wear. I have an outfit in mind, I’m just not all that confident I’ll be able to afford to put it together.)

Okay so that’s all I have to say about Tony Chapman. I thought I’d said it all in my last post, but people got all worried about me blowing my shot at a Cube that I thought I’d explain my thought process a little better. If you still think it was a stupid thing to do, so be it, what’s done is done and neither of us will ever know for sure, so it doesn’t even matter.

Moving right along, yet staying on the topic of advertising…

This week my friends over at I Have An Idea launched the new version of their site and I gotta say it’s pretty spiffy. I even tested out their blogging tools for them because I’m a good friend like that. So, if you have any interest in joining the ad industry at all, IHAI is probably a good place to start lurking.

As I said in my blog post over there, I can’t seem to shake the ad industry and give up that interest for good, so I’m going to stop trying. It’s obvious the universe likes when I get in a huff over something stupid an advertiser or agency has done and when I get giddy about something done right, so I intend to share more of that here in this blog, along with posting on IHAI a little more. A job in the ad industry is still never going to happen though and I just wanted to say that in case of my post being misread.

Anyway, I’m running on the usual 3 hours of sleep, my back is absolutely killing me and I can’t really think of anything else to say, so I guess I’m going to shut the fuck up and go take a nap.

I hope everyone has an awesome weekend!

(Oh and obviously this was x-posted to LJ for consistency’s sake.)

I wish I could tell you that I’ve been doing anything but sleeping and playing Sims during the past week or so, but I really haven’t done anything else so this post could be incredibly boring. I am working on a side project that I think some of you will find very interesting once it’s finished, but that won’t be until September at the earliest, so for now I’m not even going to talk about it.

Officer Awesome

I have some ideas for paintings in my head and I’ve really been thinking about getting my paints out and actually creating something, but last week’s visit to Toronto and my excursion out for breakfast by myself the week before has put me in a pretty serious funk. I went from having the problem of only being able to sleep for 3 hours at a time (then being up for 4 hours, then sleeping for another 3) to sleeping constantly. Sleeping constantly is a sign of depression. I don’t even really feel that depressed, I just kinda feel “blah”, grey, neutral, not giving of a shit. Blake and I had a 4 hour inspired conversation on Saturday morning but that’s the closest I’ve been to “myself” in the last couple of weeks.

Officer Awesome looking around to make sure no one’s watching…

So he can creepily go through Zennish’s garbage to write a report on her for work.

I haven’t been doing any of my immersion therapy during the past couple of weeks. I have some stuff I need to mail and I have some other stuff I have to get ready to mail, but sitting at home in my comfy sweats and not showering for 4 days seems preferable to going to the post office at 4am. The one thing I was expecting to get in the mail, a small shipment of Pocky (which I’d never had before!) from our new friend Anne, who lives in Quebec and who we met through the Hypercube contest, Blake picked up, so there didn’t seem to be much point in me even bothering.

Mayor Zennish
(who’s actually the governor now but I don’t have a screencap of that)

I don’t foresee this week being much different than last, except for the fact that I might be persuaded to get out a canvas or a piece of wood out and mess around. Blake’s been downloading Xena:Warrior Princess episodes over the last little while and Weeds premieres tonight so at least I have something to watch on TV. I have a hard time painting unless the TV’s on, which I don’t even watch, I just listen to it, but if it’s something stupid I can’t stand it. It can’t just be something brainless like Ellen or something. That’s why I watch so many movies over & over & over again. Since I’ve already seen them, I can just listen to them and “see” what’s happening in the movie in my head. Lately I’ve been watching The Tudors online, at the suggestion of my cousin Haylie, but I can’t paint while I watch stuff online because I don’t have the desk space to do so. SO, I figure once I get The Tudors out of the way (I’m on the finale of season 2 and have season 3 downloaded) that’s one less thing to be done on the computer which frees up more time for doing other things on the other side of my desk. (I have a U-shaped desk, one side computer & junk, one side notebooks, sketchbooks, journals & other junk, the other side for painting.)

Zennish & Johnny cuddling on the bed.

The neighbour’s kid is coming over tomorrow after school and again on Wednesday…and then probably every day until the end of the school year. I’m not exactly thrilled by this, but they’re in a tight spot and A) I’m trying to be a good neighbour,  B) having another kid in the house that I have to be responsible for means no napping in the afternoons and C) it’ll force me to actually talk to my neighbours which is probably good for me even though I don’t wanna do it.

Zennish & Johnny making out.

There are 16 days until the big Hypercube party in Toronto where we find out the winners of the 50 Nissan Cubes they’ll be giving away. Yesterday an article came out that really soured me on the whole contest because of some of the comments Tony Chapman, the CEO of Capital C – the agency running the whole thing – had to say.

“[People] think of Nissan as kind of a mom-and-dad car, but we are much more interested in the Cube benefiting from the creative class going, ‘This is a cool car,’ ” says Mr. Chapman, chief executive of Capital C. “I want non-conformists. I don’t want dad pulling the groceries out of the car in Markham.” The Cube, he explained, “is a quirky, function-follows-form kind of car. It is not for everybody; it is not meant to be. The person getting out of there will have dreadlocks and a courier bag, or they will have their modelling [sic] portfolio under their arm — they are not giving in. They are pursuing their creative dreams.

And 20 years from now, as this creative class grows up, they will be as attached to the Cube as they were at the time when their next cheque was [spent on] new jeans or going to a concert.”

He doesn’t want non-conformists, he wants cliches and because I’m not a beautiful, childfree cliche, I probably won’t be winning a new Cube. After reading that, I decided yesterday that Blake may be going to the Hypercube event solo because if I’m not going to win, I don’t see the point in putting myself through a stressful situation and if I am a winner, they’re going to give me the car whether I’m there or not. Yeah, it might be kind of cool to meet some of the people I’ve been talking with online the last 3 months, but I’ve met over 200 people from the Internet during the last 10 years and I’m kind of over it, so that’s not really a plus for me.

Oh yeah and Tony Chapman? I’ve come to the conclusion that he’s a total douchebag.

A few weeks ago I made a post here on my site with 3 of his videos from YouTube where he talks about new ways to brand things and using social networking and what he was saying was totally cool, I’d never heard anyone put it quite like that and be so passionate about new media. So I started following him on Twitter. Well, not even a week later he did this interview thing, via Twitter which I later found out was with Ad Lounge, except at the time he was giving one-sided answers and not using Twitter’s reply function so I had no idea who the fuck he was talking to. So I replied to one of his tweets and asked who he was talking to and explained the reply function of Twitter. No response. He kept giving these one-sided answers.

I immediately stopped following him. He’s not innovative, he’s not all about new media and social networking. He’s just another advertising phony throwing out buzzwords with enough inflection that people believe what he’s saying, but he can’t put his money where his mouth is. Fuck that guy. (Now I’m really not gonna win a car. LOL Luckily he hires intelligent people , like Angie Kramer and Bennett Klein, who aren’t douchebags and who actually know how to use the media he’s trying to sell.)

Anyway, after I saw his lame, botched Twitter interview where he regurgitated the same shit he spewed forth on the YouTube videos I saw (and then they posted it on the Cap C site like he did something totally innovative LOL), I realized he was nothing more than a talking head and I deleted the post I’d made praising him. There are no more ad heroes, my hatred for the ad industry has only grown and as someone who went to college for “creative advertising”, I am once again thanking Christ I saw the light and never pursued that career path.

You want non-conformist, Tony Chapman? Come & fucking get it.

Anyway…

They’re so cute. Shortly after this screencap, they made sweet, sweet woo hoo…

And then they got engaged!

Not having anything to do with the Sims 3, I’ve been heavily considering dying my hair bright pink again because it’s at this weird length with the layers the hairdresser put in last winter when it was only a few inches long after it started growing out from when I shaved my head and I don’t want to cut it because if I did and got rid of the layers completely, I wouldn’t be able to put it in a ponytail but also because hairdressers scare the hell out of me, especially when I’ve been dying my hair blonde on my own for the last year and hairdressers hate it when you do that and often say so. Sooooo I was thinking though, at this length and with all the crazy layers and with this neato “surf hair” texturizing goo I got, I could actually get a pretty decent look going that would probably be best suited for someone with pink hair than blonde. The blonde’s just annoying me because it’s monotone. I’ve just been dying it straight and as a result I’ve lost all the highlights I had put in a year ago and while monotone pink is okay, monotone blonde? Not so much. I feel like I have mannequin hair.

I dunno, we’ll see how it goes.

The only other bit of news I have is that sometime soon I plan on putting “Five O’Clock Abortion” up for sale and there won’t be any prints made of it, so if you were interested in that piece, keep an eye out for the post I’ll make when I put it on the “For Sale” page.

And with that, I’m gonna go spend some more quality time in my Sims bunker. Happy Monday!

Edit: Btw, this was x-posted to LJ, where my friend Bobby is telling me how Tony Chapman is basically  an ad god. Yeah Bobby, god of ad douches.