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!

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.

My Live Journal is updated just about daily and covers more personal things than this blog.

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You can see me naked and archived here. [NSFW, duh.]

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As an aside, I’ve decided not to renew my PO box this year because they raised the price ($120!) and I just didn’t have the extra money to spend on it. If you need to send me something, just e-mail me and if I decide you’re not a freak, I’ll just give you the house address.

I’ll make a “real” post later, but now I have to go eat dinner!

I didn’t. Well, not until just now.

Budd Dwyer was a politician from Pennsylvania in the 80′s who was involved in a bribery scandal in which he denied any involvement. The day before his sentencing, he called a press conference to once again vocalize his innocence…and then he shot himself in the head, on live, mid-day television.

Here’s the video. (Which isn’t even a little bite safe for work, kids or people with weak stomachs.)

Here’s the Wikipedia entry. (You may want to read this before watching the video.)

That is some fucked up shit.

(And yes I know this video is old to some, but keep in mind I’ve only been off dial up for a year, so I’ve got some catching up to do.)