Well said, my friend.

(HugNation was raided by 4chan today, which is the context of the above video. For the full archive, click here.)

Brooke wanted me to post an extra special update in my Live Journal. So I did. :o)

Here’s the link.

Blake’s got the plague, as do the children, so everyone’s home sick today (but me). Blake had to go to work to “change the tapes”, whatever that means, so he came home around 11:30am and one of the first things he said to me when he walked in the door was, “So it appears as though she defriended me too.” And then we laughed.

So, I guess this means that there probably won’t be a call or an e-mail to Blake about the situation as obviously we’re both cut off from her life for god only knows how long this time. Because do keep in mind, this isn’t the first time she’s done this. Oh no, she’s a seasoned pro at having too much truth thrown at her and then holding her breath ’til she turns blue in response. So I guess now we just have to wait it out and in the meantime, enjoy the silence.

Interestingly enough, Charlie hasn’t defriended us, which leads Blake and I to believe that he probably doesn’t know anything about what’s going on.

What I’m very curious about though, is whether or not Brooke is petty enough to not send the children Xmas gifts over this. Blake says that’s beyond his scope of imagination and I flat out don’t know, so I guess we’re both just going to wait and see.

Speaking of Xmas, since people have asked me already, Wes & Madison’s Amazon wishlist is here. Something that’s funny to me about Brooke and Xmas is that she complains that Canadian Amazon is only books (which it’s not, it’s video games and CDs too) and every time she says it, it floors me because PARDON ME FOR RAISING TWO CHILDREN WHO LOVE READING. My kids aren’t really into toys except Webkins, they’re just clutter really and they’d much prefer a video game, CD or books.

As you’ll see from the wishlist, the majority of Madison’s wants are books on sewing, knitting and crocheting. I’m not sure if I mentioned this before or not, but Judy taught Madison to sew at the end of the summer and Madison soon began making stuffed animals for her brother (Googles, to be precise, which is kind of like a platypus – Wes’ totem animal). Then my mom gave Madison some sewing stuff and then finally Blake scored her an old sewing machine at a charity auction at work and she’s been making stuffed animals and purses for her friends and just a few days ago she made herself a shirt.

Her workmanship is a little rough around the edges, things aren’t hemmed at all let alone correctly so everything frays, but she loves it and spends all her money at the fabric store in town and when she runs out of new fabric, she just pulls stuff out of our Goodwill garbage bag and upcycles it into something new.

Depending on which books get bought for her for Xmas, I’m going to get her some yarn, knitting needles (um someone’s gonna have to tell me what size/kind to get because I have no fucking clue) and crochet hooks, which I also know nothing about. If we can afford it, I was thinking we might also get her a gift certificate to Fabricland in Barrie or something.

Wes on the other hand, since learning how to read (he’s already way past what they’ll be learning in grade 1 this year, according to his teacher) he’s been all about books just like his sister was. Other than that, his big thing is video games, he’s like a video game savant, so that’s why there are many of both on the wishlist.

Anyway, it’s time to go make my eggs because Blake’s done cooking garbage in my frying pan, so I’m going to go do that. Chances are I’ll be making another post today because I’ve been very posty lately. ;o)

Moments ago, around midnight, Blake’s mother defriended me on Facebook. But that’s okay, I mean as it turned out this “friendship” we had was pretty one-sided and as I tried to imply in last night’s post that’s not really a friendship at all, is it? Oh well, I’m not going to write another gigantic post trying to figure out what this action means as far as I’m concerned. I’m sure Blake will receive an e-mail or phone call about it eventually, unless she’s decided not to be friends with him too which is entirely possible. He was just going to bed when the defriending happened and he told me to check his Facebook account but I’m not entering his password correctly or something and can’t get in so oh well, I guess he’ll just check for himself  tomorrow.

I could go on any number of tangents from here but it’s hard to pick just one. I guess I’ll go with Blake and I’ll warn you  right now, this could get messy.

I always go to bed long after Blake does but sometimes when I’m sitting here by myself and everyone’s sleeping, I think about how lucky I am to be able to crawl into bed and sleep beside him every night. I mean, he’s my man, he’s my partner in crime, I get to be with him for the rest of our lives and constantly I think about it and think how awesome that is. It’s so lame, I know, but sometimes I sit here and fantasize about having a party for our 10th wedding anniversary so we can share our love with everyone we love and who love us back. We never really did the wedding thing and while I don’t regret that, when I think about how much we love each other and when people tell us that our marriage is one that they look up to, I just want to have a party to celebrate love. Our 10th anniversary is probably not very realistic financially for what I fantasize about but I can wait until our 20th.

People talk about marriage like it’s this huge sacrifice where ultimately you’re both going to end up miserable until you finally divorce and I just don’t get that. The way people at Blake’s work talk about their significant others just baffles both of us, how people we know talk about their marriages sometimes, I mean, we just don’t understand. I think these people maybe got married for the wrong reasons or something, I dunno. We know people who had a wedding just to have a wedding. We know people who married for financial security. We know people who married because of an accidental pregnancy and we know people who were in love when they got married but with the way things played out afterward, I’m not sure some of these people really understood what a marriage was. Blake and I? We definitely entered into this whole marriage deal with our eyes wide open and 7 years later we’re more in love than we were the day we said “I do”. It’s us against the world and guess what? We’re making it. Slowly but surely we are. And one day we’re going to have everything we want together, everything we’ve talked about, of that I’m certain because – and this is probably really cliche but fuck you I’m saying it anyway – together we can do anything and we can survive anything.

I’m unsure of a lot of things in this world, I have a lot of fears, but one thing I absolutely know for sure is that my kids are going to grow up to be amazing people and that Blake and I are never going to stop loving each other, fiercely, for as long as we live. We are the foundation, the seed, of a new family tree. We’re just waiting to put our roots in the ground which will come one day, we’re sure as hell trying.

Okay that’s enough lameness out of me. I’m not really a romantical type person and everything I just wrote kinda makes me want to throw up a little bit but I can’t help it though, I just love the shit out of him. I hope you understand.

And with that, I guess I’m out.

Ooooooh my god I’m all over the place right now. See, Blake and I have these marathon conversations about life and creativity and expression that are both brain numbing and inspiring at the same time. I love when we talk like this, but unfortunately it’s almost always late at night and by the time we’re done, we’re both exhausted. He’s gone to bed but my brain’s going a mile a minute.

Here’s the thing: I feel like I’ve kind of been in a rut for maybe the past year. Being on proper meds and getting my bipolar disorder under control (more or less) has caused me to change some of my habits. For example, I’m not longer hypergraphic. Prior to getting my meds in order, I would go through a paper notebook usually once a month and I would literally spend like, 4 hours a day just writing writing writing. But now I don’t do that anymore. I still keep a paper journal but I only write in it maybe twice a month and each entry only ends up being a 2 page, bare bones account of what’s happening in my life at the moment rather than a sweeping saga like they were before. Likewise, my blog entries have become a lot more sanitized than they’ve ever been before and Blake & I agreed tonight that that’s somewhat of a problem because I write to process things and if I’m not writing, I’m not processing things, I’m keeping it all inside and that’s A) Not good for me, and B) Not me. At all.

The problem is that for some reason I began self-censoring myself, and rather harshly, and I don’t really know why I started doing that and now it’s gotten to the point where I’m completely frustrated by it. Blogging is like, the fucking wild wild West and there aren’t really any established rules on what you can and cannot write about or more importantly WHO you can and cannot write about. All of that is really left up to the writer and over the past year or so I’ve had trouble reconciling what’s right and what’s wrong as far as what I can write about that’s happening in my life.

Certain people – well, really only one – have asked me specifically not to write about them, not to even mention them, and I’ve honoured that…but there’s a “but” coming. The person who specifically asked me not to write about them no longer deserves that kind of respect and as it turns out, never really did in the first place. With the exception of that one person, my policy has always been that if you are a part of my life, I’m going to write about you at some point, plain & simple, because to do otherwise is self-censorship and that makes me a sad panda, it really does. The other policy I’ve always had with this whole blogging thing is that if you don’t want to be portrayed as a douche, don’t do douchey things. I mean, I think that too is also a pretty simple concept, don’t you agree?

So self-censorship…obviously there has to be some but I think I drew my line in such a way that it left me very little wiggle room and I just don’t write the way I used to and I hate that. I like being an open book, I like being a ridiculously honest person, I like that part of me and this week I realized that I’ve lost a lot of that and dammit, I want it back. My moods are stable, my meds are working, my light therapy is working, I’m making progress in so many areas as far as immersion therapy, it’s time to reclaim certain aspects of myself I put on hold for so long.

For example, a large part of the reason I left Camwhores 2 years ago was because I wasn’t stable and I didn’t really trust myself to have an outlet to instantly broadcast anything I wanted to. Near the end there, I was sad one day and I posted a picture of myself crying – for the first time in my (at the time) 7 year camming history. That was when I realized that I needed to reign myself in and get better before I could go on. I hope that makes sense.

During that time, as most of you know if you’ve been reading along, I stopped writing about certain things. For a few months there my entire Live Journal was just Loud Twitter updates because that’s all I could handle at the time. I stopped seeing the world in the unique way I normally would.

But I’m okay now, or close to it. I’m stronger. I trust myself and my own judgment and it’s time to jump on the floor and bang on the ceiling  with a broom (as my shrink puts it) and maybe shake some things up. Wake up my little readership and get them writing again themselves as so many seem to have abandoned their blogs and Live Journal for Facebook and Twitter. Have opinions. Talk to me.

I want to write about the things that are actually happening in my life again. Y’know the expression “dance like no one’s watching”? Well I’m going to write like no one’s reading. Until tonight I had so much fear and I don’t even know where it came from. I had fear about writing about Wayne & Judy in case Judy’s daughter Ashley was reading and her interpretation in telling them about it would be negative. I had fear about writing about my mother for fear of her getting pissed off at me. I had fear about writing about Blake’s mother because I know she reads and she’s the one who asked me (through Blake) specifically never to even mention her online. But in talking to Blake tonight, we sort of found the problem. When I first started writing publicly about my life, the internet was still relatively small and no one I really knew, except for Blake and some of the Scratching Post kids, was reading the things I wrote. And then my mom got online. And then Blake’s mom started reading. And now Blake’s co-workers are reading. And with all of these people reading, I kind of froze, almost like stage fright, and now I’m in this stupid rut of mine.

But Blake and I talked about it and he said to me that who is he to tell me what I can and can’t write about? And who is anyone else to tell me the same? People have to trust my judgment and if they don’t like what’s being written about them they either have to, as I said, stop doing douchey things, or start doing things to portray themselves in a better light. All I do is write what I see and feel, I simply write the truth. If I want to tell you that last night Wayne & Judy drank 28 beer and Wayne was so drunk he pissed all over the floor and toilet seat, well dammit, I’m going to because that’s what happened. If Wayne doesn’t want me writing about something like that, then don’t fucking do it. (Although honestly, I doubt Wayne would care and the incident was actually really funny. Plus they don’t even have internet and wouldn’t read a post even this long so I don’t think they’d see it or care if they did.)

So, starting today, right now, I’m going to once again be more open and honest about the happenings of my life and that includes everyone in it. People who are truly my friends and really know me will totally understand and be totally on board with this, others…well they may not be but that’s just too damn bad. I’m done censoring myself out of respect for people who don’t deserve that respect. What am I talking about? Well, keep reading, here’s where things start getting  juicy.

But where to even start? I guess the biggest thing happening in our lives right now, or at least the biggest conflict is Blake’s mother, Brooke. Right now Blake and Brooke are battling via e-mail over comments she made about me when Blake was in Michigan last month. See, when I first met Brooke – 8 years ago now – I thought she was pretty cool but that facade quickly dissipated and I found myself in a monster-in-law type of situation. I don’t even know where it all began, really, this has been an issue that long, but maybe I should start with after Blake & I got married because I don’t feel like telling the tale of our actual wedding which neither of our mothers were invited to.

After Blake and I got married and I was pregnant with Wes, Brooke would call the house constantly and if I picked up the phone it would either be something inane like what size of clothes Madison wore because she was out shopping at the time and saw something Madison might look cute in – despite the fact that we’d told her Madison’s size at least 5 times prior to that and strangely these cute things for Madison never seemed to appear. In other words, these calls were just calls to call. To this day I don’t even know what their purpose was. Other times when I’d pick up the phone, she’d give me all kinds of bad and unwanted advice and would basically tell me that I wasn’t doing enough as a wife and mother, so I stopped answering the phone.

But here’s the thing: I’ve never really been a phone person, that’s just not how I communicate, so it was a special effort to answer the phone for her in the first place so to be put down just about every time I did, didn’t really encourage me to keep taking the calls. See what I’m saying?

So once I stopped taking the calls – and again, keep in mind that I don’t take calls from pretty much anyone – that’s when she’d start calling Blake on his cell and complain that I never answered the phone. Well gee lady, I wonder why. Blake explained to her that I’m not just a phone person – for YEARS – but the complaints didn’t stop until about two years ago. Without going into huge detail (maybe I will one day, just not tonight), about two years ago Blake and Brooke had basically an e-mail war that lasted almost a year. I can’t even remember how it got resolved off the top of my head, but it did and ever since, I’ve done my best to continue being nothing but nice to this woman. I answer her e-mails, we send each other Growing Gifts and things like that on Facebook with little notes attached and while it all seems like minor communication on the surface, it’s actually huge for me and here I thought after 6 years of her flat out disliking me and flat out saying that I wasn’t good enough for her son and that Blake wasn’t living up to his full potential because of me etc. that she was finally starting to get to know me and maybe even liking me. In fact, I think it was her last visit last fall where she gave me a gift of these neat tin ladies with great quotes on them that I have hanging in my office. I thought that after all these years, we were finally starting to make progress and maybe even bond a little bit.

But then Blake’s cousin’s wife died and he had to go to Michigan for the funeral last month and on one of the nights he was there, his mom got two drinks into her and just let loose saying all kinds of negative things about me. Want a list? Here it is:

• *Everyone* has mental illness, the people she knows who are mentally ill are worse off than me and they can do things I can’t, like work. (“my whole family was mentally ill and half were institutionalized and we could all work. . .”)

• She’s scared I’m taking advantage of Blake. That I “make” him do everything. (When in reality I don’t “make” him do anything and while he does do more than I do, I don’t exactly sit at home and eat bon bons either. I mean, who did she think was looking after the kids, the house and the dogs while Blake was in Michigan?)

• She claims she doesn’t read my site or anything but she’s pissed because I apparently made a blog post where I said that because I stay home and I’m an artist I’m better than people who work. (“she said that you were basically saying how much better you are than people who get up with their kids every day and how much better you are than people who have jobs. She basically said you were saying you’re an artist and anyone who works or takes care of kids all day is a sell out and not as good as you”. This one baffles me BECAUSE THAT SOUNDS SOOOO MUCH LIKE SOMETHING I’D SAY, so I asked Blake to get more info but there was none to be had.)

• Blake said she said, “I may have neglected to tell Joyce the part about you not wanting the present because you wanted the kids treated as equals” or something like that. This is a long dead issue but Joyce is Blake’s mom’s best friend and she wanted to buy a savings bond for Blake’s “first born child” and we freaked because we want our kids treated as equals and Wes was NOT Blake’s first child. Blake’s mom hounded us forEVER about getting Wes an American SSN so they could buy bonds for him, but Joyce supposedly had no intentions of getting any for Madison, so we cut her out of our lives and said thanks but no thanks. According to Blake: “Joyce never knew we had an issue with anything, so we were just ungrateful fucks.”

• She wants to get our kids AMERICAN FUCKING PASSPORTS for Xmas. When I asked why, Blake said “she thinks that being Canadian will hold them back in life, but if they have official US docs they will magically be better off”.

For the last two years I have been nothing but nice to this woman. I’ve met her half way as much as I’m capable of. I reply to every non-fwd e-mail she sends me. I write on her Facebook wall. I send her Growing Gifts. I used to play Scrabble with her on Facebook until Blake told me she uses a program to cheat. I do way more for her than she does for me as far as meeting someone halfway and this is the shit we get? It’s obvious that she still has a deep dislike for me, the same dislike she’s had since day one, meaning that all of the stuff we’ve been doing together that I thought was progress was all meaningless and phony on her end. Here I was being genuine and trying my best to be what I thought she wanted me to be but the whole time she was reading my site and feeling negative about all the things I do. She was a troll, by my definition, she just doesn’t leave comments (to my knowledge).

Worse, she seems to think she has to “enlighten” Blake on what a horrible person I am because he’s apparently too stupid or naive to see it and that’s completely insulting to him.

Again – and I cannot stress this enough – until this very moment I have been nothing but kind and humble towards Blake’s mother. When she cornered me in her kitchen a few years ago (the last time we went to Michigan) to literally tell me that Blake is such & such a way and that I’m holding him back from his true potential, I took it in stride and never fought back or stood up for myself or anything. I just took it. (I’m not good with confrontation.) She pulled a similar move in my own kitchen a few years ago as well and it was the same thing, I just said something neutral and walked out of the room. I have never been hostile or negative or anything like that towards this woman EVER and as I said, within the past two years here I was being honest and thoughtful and trying to build a relationship and the second she gets Blake alone, she tears me down.

I think Blake was more upset about the things she said than I was. I was hurt by them, yes, because I honestly thought we were building a relationship here and her actions were genuine and when I found out they were just an act, it stung because I was making an honest effort…and it apparently got me nowhere. When Blake got home, he said that he’d let the dust settle from the funeral and when things had calmed down, he’d e-mail his mom and settle this shit once and for all. I don’t know how many e-mails have flown back and forth at this point, but the first e-mail went out last weekend and they’re still battling it out so who knows when this is going to be over or if it’s ever going to be over. I mean godammit, Blake and I have been together for 8 fucking years, we have a solid relationship and a happy marriage that works, I’m here to stay. At some point she’s going to have to accept that and accept me or we’re going to have no choice but to live our life without her – and that’s pretty much what Blake’s been saying in the e-mails from what I understand.

What he’s leaving out though, is that she also needs to accept Blake for who he is. Blake has a job he loves in a field he loves and he even acknowledges the fact that he wouldn’t be where he is right now – and be happy – without me. Blake’s mom, according to Blake, expects him to have made his first million by now and have a trophy wife who will host Superbowl parties, attend dinner meetings and have a power career of her own. While we’re happy and accept each other for who we are, we have Blake’s mom who sees both of us as nothing but a disappointment.

And did you know that when I was in the hospital in 2006 because I was having a psychotic episode Brooke’s advice to Blake was to pack up the kids, drive down to her house in Michigan and fucking LEAVE ME? I mean what reality does this woman even live in?

She says she doesn’t even know me because she’s only met me about a dozen times, but at the same time, she’s been reading my site since Blake and I got together and I’ve most definitely met her more than a dozen times and while she claims she hasn’t gotten to know me well enough to love me, she’s certainly displayed that she’s gotten to know me well enough to dislike me and feel negatively towards me.

Blake’s been saying this the whole time we’ve been married: that there is nothing I can do to please his mother because I’m simply not the woman he was supposed to marry. Right now he’s told me to stop even trying to make an effort with her because the two years I  did try obviously got me nowhere so what’s the point? He says his mother needs to examine her feelings toward me and resolve them on her own before we can move forward and until she does that, I’ll never get anywhere with her.

I don’t know how long this is going to take. I don’t know how long this e-mail war is going to last. All I know is that I’m staying the fuck out of it and leaving it between them because there’s no place for me in this discussion even though it’s pretty much about me. I don’t know what the right thing to do is anymore – I thought I was doing it! I’d rather do nothing than misstep and at this point in time I simply give up.

The other aspect of this is that Brooke and her husband Charlie want to come up and visit but until this situation is resolved somehow that simply can’t happen. How can I have someone in my home who feels so hostile toward me? Why should I have to put up with being put down in my own comfort zone? The fact is, I don’t have to and I’m not going to and Blake completely agrees.

To expand upon that topic, according to Blake, Brooke and Charlie don’t like coming up here because they get bored. Well if you’re so bored and your grandchildren aren’t entertaining enough, then don’t fucking come up! In a recent phone conversation with his mom, which sort of turned into a fight – while he was at WORK – she said that Charlie would like to do home improvement projects with us and got all offended when Blake said that if we needed to work on the house at all, we’d probably enlist the help of Phil (my dad) because he’s only an hour & a half away and he does this shit for a living, every single day and has a truck if we need lumber or drywall and a million other reasons. Well Brooke took great offense to this for some reason and started a fight about it, saying how Charlie (her husband, if that wasn’t clear) put in someone’s window in something like, an hour or whatever and Blake was just like “where the fuck is this even coming from?” I mean the fact of the matter is, we don’t really DO home improvement projects and we’re certainly not going to call on Charlie to drive 5 hours up here to like, paint our living room ceiling or tile our shower. We’re not going to start a home improvement project when we have company coming (them) and we don’t have the money to just start a home improvement project when they want to come up just so Charlie will be entertained. It just doesn’t make any sense.

But where did this all come from? Well I talked to Blake shortly after his mom had called and he told me about it and I told him exactly where it was coming from: that day or the day before I’d made a post about us moving on Live Journal and how we’d need to fix up our house a bit to sell it and that Wayne had offered to help. THAT is where it all came from, I’m fairly certain. But the thing Blake and I both wonder is: does Charlie even know she’s saying all of this stuff on his behalf? We kind of doubt it. Charlie, as far as I’ve ever been able to tell and Blake agrees, is a pretty laid back, go with the flow, sit & chat kinda guy. It was certainly news to both of us that he suddenly wanted to help us drywall our bathroom because he’s bored out of his skull when he comes up otherwise.

The other issue with them coming up, according to these phone calls Blake gets from his mother while he’s at work, is that it’s too expensive. See, they can’t stay at our house because 1) Our house is very small and our futon isn’t very comfortable, 2) Charlie’s apparently allergic to our dogs and 3) I don’t really want to be alone in the house with them when Blake & the kids go to school and work because his mom corners me, talks down to me and puts me down, so that means they have to stay at a hotel or do what they did last time they came up (for a week) and get a time share somewhere. And this is apparently where the boredom sets in. While the kids are at school and Blake’s at work, they’re left to their own devices and they get bored. I don’t really know what I can do about that. If it were me, I’d do some Googling to see what was around and find something to do, but by the sounds of it, that thought’s never crossed Brooke’s mind. She’d rather complain that they’re bored.

So if it’s boring and too expensive, then I say don’t fucking come up! Plain & simple. If it’s such a chore, such a bother for you to come up to spend money only to not have a good time, then why bother? I mean I don’t have a solution to either problem and neither does Blake. I’m sorry my house isn’t bigger? I’m sorry Charlie’s allergic to my dogs? I’m sorry our kids aren’t entertaining enough for you? I mean what are we supposed to say to that?

What comes to mind is what my mother used to say to me when I was a kid and complained of boredom. She said, rather nastily I might add, “I’m not your entertainer!” and dammit I’m not. If you can’t keep yourself occupied, that isn’t my problem. Complaining about it to us isn’t going to solve your issue, you have to be proactive and go see what’s out there or I dunno, stay home!

I don’t know how to move forward from here. Everything is so convoluted at this point that I worry there’s no turning back. The harder Blake pushes the subject, I think the more his mother is going to resent me, but at the same time, I think he has no other choice than to bring this all up to the surface and address it rather than smile while staring daggers, know what I mean?

And of course Brooke is going to read this post and probably flip out but at this point I don’t even care. Blake doesn’t either. He told me tonight to write whatever I felt I needed to write and I think that’s what I’ve done here, as far as his mother is concerned. Until this whole thing blows over or runs its course or does whatever it’s going to do, I’m just gonna lay low, observe and, for the most part, keep my damn mouth shut on the subject. I wish I had a crystal ball so I knew how this was going to play out, but I don’t and I hate not knowing what to expect, I hate not knowing what to do. Is this post going to make anything better? Definitely not, but I’m sick and tired of pretending this aspect of my life doesn’t exist when it’s been a problem for the entire 8 years Blake and I have been together. It’s a constant drain on both of us and a huge source of anxiety for me. Every time I even think of Blake getting another e-mail from his mom, I have to pop an Ativan because my stomach knots up.

But enough about THAT drama I’ve said what I need to say right now and that’s just what is going on and yeah, Brooke will be making an appearance in my writings again at some point, but that’s enough for now. In the meantime, wanna know what else is going on in my life? Well my friend Jesse has pretty much abandoned me. I’ve sent him e-mails, I’ve written on his Facebook wall several times, I’ve sent him messages on Yahoo, I’ve tried to add him to Last.fm but he won’t add me back….I haven’t seen him since like, the winter and I don’t even know why this is happening. Blake’s talked to him and Jesse claims he’s not mad at Blake or myself, he’s just been “busy” and “doesn’t get online very often anymore”.

Blake went over to Jesse’s house on Saturday to retrieve the CDs he’d borrowed from us because I’m so convinced he’s distancing himself from us on purpose I wanted to get them back before he moved or something and he was apparently all sunshine and lollipops. He said he’d get online and e-mail me, but so far that hasn’t happened and I don’t expect it will.

I don’t like thinking bad things about my friends, but the only reason I can think of for Jesse blowing us off like this is the fact that I don’t smoke pot anymore, so I can’t be his stoner buddy and there’s no smoking in our house anymore so we can’t sit around smoking and talking like we used to. He used to come over at least twice a week, I’d talk to him usually every day on Yahoo, what happened?

The last time I talked to him was on Yahoo at the end of June because I asked him to come to the Hypercube event with us and he said he’d ask for that day off and we haven’t spoken since despite my attempts. Something’s going on there and I don’t know what and while it used to bother me, I’m at the point where I guess Jesse’s been moved into the “acquaintance” category and out of the “friend” category for the time being and that’s why I wanted all my CDs back. It was a “closure” kinda deal for me. Now Jesse can fuck off and do his own thing and I’m not even going to worry about it anymore. If I see him in the grocery store, I’ll talk to him, but I’m not gonna chase him down anymore or make myself crazy wondering what I did wrong. I’m just going to take him at his word that I didn’t do anything wrong and leave it at that.

In other news, Alex and I had our first fight last week. Here’s what happened: Blip.fm posted on Twitter excessively drives me nuts and Ronny is the worst offender on my list. But I love him so I just put up with it and grumble to myself when he’s on a Blip marathon and scroll past them or ignore Twitter until he’s gone to bed. But one day last week, I checked my Facebook live feed and there, from Ronny were a bunch of Blips. Now here’s the other thing about Ronny and I, for some reason Ronny tends to bring out the snark in me, so I commented on one of the Blips on Facebook and said something like “Are you seriously going to make me put up with these here too?” thinking he was posting tweets to Facebook and not realizing it was a Blip application that I could block. I thought in order to not see them, I would have to block Ronny altogether and I didn’t want to have to do that.

So anyway, I got busy talking to Blake or doing something, I can’t remember, and when I opened up TweetDeck, here were these bitchy, passive-aggressive Blips from Alex that were most definitely directed at me. So me, always one to make matters better because I’m talented like that, I posted a Blip of my own…of the Bloodhound Gang’s “I Hope You Die” and mimicked one of Alex’s passive-aggressive Blips in my message to which Alex replied “……..” and then “You’re a real bitch sometimes,” or something to that effect. I replied with “At least I’m honest,” and then a few second later I said something about how I’d rather be a bitch upfront than a passive-aggressive one and that’s when Alex announced that she was too “tired and cranky for this bull” and that was the last I heard from her on Twitter.

So after that I checked my e-mail and there were Facebook notifications where Ronny and Alex had commented on my original Facebook Blip comment saying that it was an app and I could block it and that no one was “forcing” me to do anything. I commented back, even though both of them had gone to bed, that I hadn’t realized it was an app, that I thought I’d have to block Ronny altogether and I apologized for the misunderstanding. Then, later that night I got thinking about it and while yes, Alex was a bitch too, I started it, so I decided to be the first to apologize so we could forget this ever happened. So, I texted Alex with “I’m sorry. I love you.” at like, 1am so she’d get it in the morning and when I woke up the next day, there was a text on my phone from Alex saying the same thing. Everything’s cool now and I think we just caught each other on bad days, but it was just a weird situation because Alex and I had never fought before and I’m glad we have the kind of relationship where we can just apologize to each other and let bygones be bygones. I was proud of us that day. So many women love to let drama like that play out for as long as possible and make it snowball and I really dig that neither she nor I are that type of woman. Or maybe we are a little bit, but at least we both value our friendship enough to just step back and be cool about things. I love Alex.

Saturday night, which those who follow me on Twitter already know, Blake & I went over to Wayne & Judy’s to play euchre and drink a little bit…or in their case, drink a lot. Apparently they started drinking at around 6pm, we showed up at 9pm. Blake & I don’t really drink that much or that often, so he had a 6-pack of beer and I had two 4-packs of Mike’s Hard lemonade. Wayne’s one of these guys who thinks men are superior to women so he always wants it to be men against women and…Judy & I beat them 5 games-0. Wayne knows the game now and at least 3 times renegged and once he decided to go alone on a hand that had NO trump whatsoever. He said “Blake, ya gotta trust me, this hand is ours,” and Blake was like “Wayne, if you don’t have the best hand ever and win this, I’m gonna punch you,”…and then it turned out he had NO trump while Blake had a hand that was almost entirely trump. Since Blake couldn’t really punch Wayne, I did. Later that night, as Wayne got more and more drunk, he wobbled upstairs and when he came down he started bitching at Judy that they need to change the plate cover on the light switch in the bathroom because when he’s drunk he can never find the switch to turn it on. (Their light switch cover is bumpy and has frogs on it and it makes the switch a bit recessed.) And then he tells us that as he was peeing in the dark, all of a sudden he started peeing on the seat. So we were all like, “why didn’t you have the seat up?” and he slurred “oh I never do that, I don’t have to” and I was like, “well if you’re pissing on the seat then apparently you do!” None of us were sure if he was serious or not about peeing on the seat, so all 4 of us went up there to investigate and lo & behold there was piss all over the seat and a huge puddle all over the floor. I don’t think he actually got ANY in the bowl. From that point on, especially because they have a cracked, squishy toilet seat, I went over to my house to pee. But it didn’t really matter because by that point Wayne was so drunk he was practically passing out at the kitchen table, so shortly after the bathroom incident, Blake and I left to go back to our house and while I tried to drink the rest of my Mike’s Hard and actually get drunk like everyone else, I just wasn’t into it so I dumped mine. We tried to play a game of Monopoly but I was just too tired and not really feeling well so we packed it up and I went to bed instead.

Sunday I was hung over which I think is totally unfair since I didn’t even get drunk the night before. Because I felt like crap, I basically just slept most of the day and rested up for the Mad Men finale (which was excellent).

And then of course, after Mad Men was over, Blake and I started our marathon conversation on blogging, creativity and life in general which brings us back full circle. The fact of the matter is, I’m not painting right now because I’m discouraged but that doesn’t mean I can’t be creative in other ways. I’ve got a short story bordering on a novella sitting here that I could be working on. I don’t know if anything will ever come of it, but it’s here waiting for me to write it. I have a million stories from my past left to tell and a new audience to tell some of the ones I’ve told before to. There’s no reason for me to remain in this rut and to become stagnant, waiting around for something to happen.

Another thing my mom used to say about boredom was that only boring people get bored, and the thing is, I’m not boring, I have this wicked imagination to keep me entertained so I might as well use it.

And I think that’s all I have to say.

PS. This entry is 6300 words long.

PPS. This entry was supposed to be posted at about 3:30am but our ISP had an internet outage so that’s why it’s being posted this morning.

And to think, some people act like cunts over a 1.5 inch square shitty inkjet printout of their art appearing in a free art journaling tutorial…

So…I think I’m too ugly now to do the Camwhores thing. I’m not fishing for compliments here or anything, I just did a dry run with full makeup and I blow-dried my hair so it would have more volume and the results are… :o/

The lighting in here is SO bad but I have nowhere else to cam and I don’t know how to make it any better. It’s those goddamn spiral-y lightbulbs that I use in here making my face look pinker than it actually is. It’s my friggin’ hair that needs a cut SO BAD but I have no money, I won’t go, I can’t go, by myself and Blake can’t exactly take a day off just so I can get my hair cut. (Weekends are out, it’s bad enough having to go let alone going with both kids.) My hair is beautifully damaged enough to do these awesome faux dreads but I can’t do them by myself and I doubt they’d translate on cam anyway.

Oh and I’m a big fat tub of lard.

I dunno if I can do this. Jury’s still out.

On a more positive note, the Whip It soundtrack is unbelievably good.

Edit: Hey, does anyone know if the Logitech 9000 works with a Mac?

Yesterday I had a Pepsi for the first time in probably 15 years and it immediately made me remember my grampa.

When I was a kid, my mom would let me play hooky from school so I could go up to Alliston with my grampa, which was about an hour and a half away and also happened to be where I was born. This was where his carpet store was and a few times a week he’d drive up there in his big blue van to make sure things were running smoothly and to do “measure ups”, which meant that he was going to someone’s house to measure their rooms for new carpet.

On the way up to Alliston, my grampa would give me a Pepsi from a mini-fridge that plugged into the van’s cigarette lighter and being a Coke fanatic, this was the only time ever that I’d drink Pepsi.

When we got to Alliston, my grampa would leave me with Flo and Bonnie, his two employees, and he’d give me some money to go to the Stedman’s store down the street and buy clothes or toys. I would do that of course, but I’d never spend all of the money. Instead, I would go to the pet store behind my grampa’s store and more often than not I would buy a small animal that my mother would kill me for bringing home. My grampa would always come back from his measure ups and pretend to get mad at me for buying the animal and he’d tell me to take it back and I’d cry and get my own way and then we’d go two stores down to have Chinese food for lunch where I’d get an extra fortune cookie because Bing, the owner, liked my smile.

When we went to Alliston, I’d bring books and toys with me and I’d hide behind the rolls of carpet , which were stacked vertically against wood scaffolding and read or play my Game Boy, drinking my grampa’s Pepsi from a styrofoam cup the whole time.

After work, we’d go to a restaurant, the name of which is completely escaping me but it was the same one every time, with Flo (who was actually my grampa’s girlfriend, although I probably wasn’t supposed to know that considering he was still married to my grama) and I would order LIVER. Yes, a child who likes liver, who grew into an adult who likes liver.

When we were done with dinner, we’d drive Flo home and then head home ourselves, drinking Pepsi along the way. One time my grampa pulled over because one flukey night we could see the Northern Lights just outside of Alliston, something I’d never seen before nor since.

Since the store didn’t close until 9pm and it was an hour and a half home AFTER dinner, I would get home late enough that my mom was too tired to give me or my grampa shit about the new pet I’d acquired so I’d just get my pajamas on and go to bed.

And that’s all I have to say about my adventures in Alliston. For now, anyway. It’s just so weird how a taste or a smell can trigger such strong memories, especially when you haven’t experienced them in a long time.

In other news…on Monday I spent the whole day with my neighbour, Wayne, because it was his day off and he wanted me to rip CDs onto his computer.

A few weeks ago, Wayne was drunk and somehow we got started on the topic of religion, which in my experience is usually a bad idea. Wayne is technically a Catholic, although I guess you’d call him non-practicing as I’ve known the guy for 4 years and I’ve never seen him go to church, he definitely doesn’t eat fish on Fridays and while he believes in God, I seem to know more about Catholicism than he does.

Wayne’s known for quite some time that I don’t believe in God, so that day he asked me what I did believe in, what did I think happened after we died and stuff like that and that’s how we got on the topic of karma, a word he’d heard before but a concept of which he’d never really considered. So I explained to him the various thoughts on karma and my own personal ones and ever since, we’ve both been obsessed with it. Me with getting him to understand the concept and him with saying that I’m “funny” because I now constantly remind him to think about karma.

I lent him season one of My Name Is Earl, which he liked (I would have lent him the rest but I don’t have them) and ever since he’s kinda been turned on to the whole idea of karma, while still not totally grasping it. he says things like “Judy and I sacrifice so much and karma doesn’t reward us,” and I’ll say “but what have you done for someone other than yourselves?” and he’ll say “well we sacrifice so Courtney can have the things she has” (Courtney’s their daughter) and I say something like, “well you don’t get a reward for parenting, for doing something you’re supposed to be doing anyway,” and he’ll sit and think about it for a bit and then change the subject.

Well, the other day I thought of a good way to explain it to him so I think he’d understand. So on Monday I said to him that I was going to explain karma and I asked him what he does when he sees a stray dog in his driveway. He replied with “I try and chase it off,” to which I replied with “and what would Blake or I do? Or even Madison?” and he said, “well, you’d probably try and trap it” and I finished his sentence with “and we’d all go through great lengths to find its owner and, failing that, we’d call animal control, do you see the difference?” And he DID. He explained back to me that doing a good deed would give you good karma and I said yes, that’s exactly it, but remember, it has to be something completely unselfish and outside yourself. And he said to me “but if you call animal control, you’re kind of doing a bad deed because then the owners will have to pay money to get their dog back”, to which I replied, “that’s not my problem, the bottom line is that I saved that dog’s life, it didn’t get hit on the road, it didn’t die of dehydration or starvation and it didn’t get attacked by coyotes. The owners having to pay to get their dog back, that’s their own karma”.

After that Wayne was quiet for a little while, which is weird for Wayne, and I could tell that he was finally starting to “get it”.

And it’s not like I’m trying to preach or convert anyone or anything, he brought the whole thing up weeks ago, it’s just that Wayne & Judy, as much as I love them, they don’t do a whole lot for other people and they don’t really think outside of themselves or their own family (we’re included in that), but now I’ve got them, or at least Wayne, beyond their normal limits and honestly, I’m kind of proud of the fact that I did that.

With my belief system, which is karma-based, all of the bad things that are constantly happening to them – which I won’t go into because it’s not my place but let’s just say some REALLY bad shit – is a result of living a selfish existence. And maybe “selfish” isn’t even the right word, I don’t know what to call it. But like, they’ll utilize the food bank, but they’ve never contributed to it. A woman at Wayne’s work raised funds so Wayne could adopt a dog for Courtney for her birthday and we’re talking $300 here, and they took that, but they’d never in a million years do the same kind of thing for anyone else. I’m not saying they’re bad people at all, quite the opposite actually, they’re nothing but good to us, me in particular, and I really do love them dearly, it’s just that they don’t seem to see beyond the borders of their own existence and I truly believe that if they did, their luck would change and their lives would be better.

God, do I sound like an Evangelical or what? Please let me stress again that Wayne’s constantly been asking me about karma since it came up a few weeks ago, I’m seriously not pushing an agenda here, it’s just that he’s interested and I think opening him up to it would be of great benefit, so I patiently answer all of his questions and explain things the best I can.

Anyway, as time goes by and as I think of more examples, he seems to be getting it and I think that’s a good thing. I even told him, you can believe in God and karma at the same time, just think of it as God giving out karma, think of it as living by the Golden Rule.

So that’s Mondays with Wayne, constant talk of karma while I’m over there doing nice things for him.

Tomorrow night Blake’s going to be updating my badly outdated WordPress install, which I’m very excited about. It’s possible that when he does that, it might fix some of the annoying things I hate about WordPress, like the fact that I can’t wrap text around images. (It works when I’m typing the entry but when I publish it the formatting goes to shit.)

This update has made me think about my site a little more, specifically about its layout and some of the things that bug me. For example, I belong to a number of Ning groups and I’d like to place their badges either in the sidebars or even on my Exits page, but for some reason when I paste in the code, they don’t show up properly and I’m not sure if that’s a WordPress issue or if it’s the theme I’m using. When I designed this site originally, I wanted a fairly bare-bones layout because most of what I do is text anyway, but as I post more and more pictures and do more and more art, I want it to be more reflective of what the site’s all about and who I am. I don’t know if I have the graphics skills required for the kind of site I have in my head, but I think Blake and I should sit down and try to work something new out in the very near future.

And thinking about layout has led me to thinking about the site itself. The thing is, most blog sites, which really I guess mine is, have titles. Yes, people use their names as their site’s title and domain, but most arty blog sites have titles, for example, The Hermitage or Ruling At Life or Broken Toyland. I’ve been SunnyCrittenden.com for a very long time now and suddenly I’m thinking that it’s time for a title. SunnyCrittenden.com will still point to this site, but I’m thinking it’s time for my name to take a backseat to something bigger – I just don’t know what that is yet.

A long time ago I wanted my site to be called “A Pocket Full of Posies”, but the domain was taken. :o/

I dunno, it’s just something I’ve been thinking about tonight.

Okay I think it’s time to retire to my Sims Bunker while I still can. I’ve got a couple of days off from Buttercup, so to speak, before we all head into the craziness of October, so I’d better take advantage of it.

Goodnight!

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.