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.

I should be making art instead of writing about it, but I haven’t made a post in a while and my work surface is going to be covered by dinner by the time I’m done writing this, so that’s my excuse.

I’ve decided not to do The Square Foot Show in Toronto as planned and I’ll tell you why.

1. I can’t make the deadline with what I had planned (series of 3 paintings).
2. I’m having surgery August 4th which makes making the deadline even more difficult, as well as attending the event. (They say you’re good after 4 or 5 days post-op, but I’ve had this surgery 4 other times and that has not been my experience.)
3. All of the works at the show are being sold for $200 and the gallery takes a 50% commission. The simple fact of the matter is, I don’t make $100 paintings. I’ve talked to a lot of people about the show and a lot of them were all “you’ll get so much exposure! everyone does this show!” and that’s cool & all, but I put way too much work into each painting to part with them for that much, plus the materials I use are no longer even produced and are thus extremely precious to me and from what I’ve seen as far as pictures from past events, your name isn’t even displayed with each painting, let alone your URL, so this “exposure” people keep talking about…where does it come from? From attending the artist event and networking? From winning one of the cash prizes? Blah, I’ll pass.

The show seemed like a good idea when I first heard about it and I even sent in my RSVP along with the $15 admittance fee, but the more I thought about it and started actually working on my pieces, the less appealing it became. I do plan on doing Touched By Fire again this fall, if they accept me. I have no idea what I’m going to submit though. Deadline’s September 18th, I think.

I’m still working on the paintings that were intended for The Square Foot Show though, and they’re coming along nicely. I should be able to get them finished before my surgery. They are “Sparkle”, “Shimmer” and “Shine”. “Sparkle” is a green fairy, “Shimmer” is a turquoise mermaid and “Shine” is a champagne gold angel.

These are the backgrounds for Shimmer and Sparkle:

This is the background for Shine:

This is Sparkle, so far:

This is Shine, so far (she’s actually got a dress now and textured wings and is drying under books on my coffee table):

So that’s why I haven’t really been making a whole lotta posts lately. That and the fact that I’ve kinda been trying to regroup after the whole Hypercube fiasco. To most people it just seemed like a regular contest but actually it was 4 months of hardcore social networking and strategizing and all sorts of other bullshit and as it turns out, there really is a need to decompress after something like that. I’ve spent the last month planning these paintings, working on my immersion therapy (sort of…just going to the post office, but I’ve been lazy lately), hanging out with my friends and neighbours, preparing for surgery and finishing the 2nd Orphan’s Tales book that I think I started reading in March. I’ve also been watching a lot of movies on The Movie Network and keeping really stupid hours, as I tend to do in the summer.

After these paintings are done and after I’m back on my feet after surgery, I have two more paintings to finish that were put off because of that stupid contest and one more planned after that. Artistically, I plan on being a busy girl for the next few months and as a result, I expect I’m going to be making less update than I usually do.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not disappearing, just trying to focus on tangible things these days than the intangible. I need to recharge and I kinda don’t feel like blogging about the minutiae of my life for the time being. (Twitter doesn’t count!)

At the same time, there has been a regime change over at Camwhores.com – Stile’s out, Kevin’s in -  and that promises to make things interesting. If the rumours of change are true, I may just obtain a webcam again. We’ll see how things go.

But as I said, for right now, all I want to do is make art, read trashy books, watch crappy movies , play with my kids and my dogs, recover from surgery and hang out with my friends.

OH…and work on the top sekrit projekt that I’m not at liberty to discuss but launches in the fall and will probably be really awesome.

And with that, my dinner’s ready. I’ll update again as soon as these paintings are done.

RT @TDotOpenLetter: Dear #Hypercube, by not rewarding the top vote-getters you have pissed off the loudest voices. Social media goes both ways. Tread carefully.

So tonight’s the night Blake and I find out whether or not (probably not) we’ve won ourselves a brand new Nissan Cube or two.

The Hypercube event is being held at a nightclub in Toronto and while they will be webcasting between all of the events (Montreal, Toronto & Vancouver), I’m apparently not supposed to give out the URL in case they get overloaded. So um, I’m not going to *cough*.

BUT! I will probably be tweeting like crazy, so if you feel so inclined, you can follow along on Twitter where I’ll also maybe be posting pics depending on how lighting goes. (The camera on my phone is absolute shit.) You should probably follow Blake too, while you’re at it, as I’m sure he’ll he doing the same and hell, you might as well follow Alex as well since she’s coming with us and is just as much a Twitter addict as the Crittendens.

Well, I’ve gotta go start getting ready so I guess I’ll shut up now. Wish us luck!

PS. This is the colour we’d be getting if we happen to win. If anyone feels like looking up the specs, the winners get the SL with the tech package, apparently. The official site is 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.

Dear hypercubist,

We want to send a big, fat thank-you to all you crazy cubers out there. This experience went beyond our expectations – and we set the bar pretty high to begin with. And now the big decisions have been made. That’s right, judging is complete! High fives all round!

Here’s the catch: We can’t tell you who the winners are just yet. Sorry, but an email isn’t nearly awesome enough to drop that kind of bomb. Which is why we’re throwing THREE MASSIVE EVENTS. ACROSS THE COUNTRY. AT THE SAME TIME!

We’re announcing the winners and giving away the 50 cubes at simultaneous events in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal. It’s a chance for all our cubers to meet each other, see live music, art and lots more. The date is set for June 23rd, so mark that down in your calendars and start figuring out how you’re getting there – we suggest car pooling with other cubies. Road trip!

Now, that’s not to say you HAVE to be there to win, you’re just not gonna want to miss this. And neither will your friends, so by all means, bring ‘em. And if you really, truly, honestly can’t make it, don’t sweat it, if you won you still get your cube®. That’s it for now. See you at the party.

-the hypercube

Sooooooo I guess Blake & I will be attending the Toronto event on June 23rd to see if either of us won or not! Either way, thank god the judging’s over, now I can’t stop worrying so much about what or what not to post and just have life go (more or less) back to normal. This thing has been dragging on since the end of FEBRUARY, that’s 4 months! I’m more than ready to be put out of my misery.

Luckily, The Sims 3 comes out on Tuesday and that’s going to distract me from even thinking about it until the 23rd. I hope.

PS. Here’s a New York Times write up on the Cube that I particularly liked. Thanks to Phil for the heads up!