Fall is not a good time of year for me and it appears the annual melancholy has begun to set in earlier this time around. My brain doesn’t work, I can’t think properly, I’m frustrated, upset and agitated most of the time, feeling useless and depressed.

It doesn’t help that, yet again, we were turned down for debt reduction from those who hold my student loans, despite the fact that I have a well documented mental illness and on paper, after bills, we are left with around $400 per month to feed 4 people and 2 pets, as well as pay for gas for Blake to get to and from work and that’s with only paying the minimum on our $3000 credit card debt, debt that’s been incurred due to the pressures of these student loans that theoretically, I should be exempt from paying but they have been dicking us around for YEARS instead. (Losing our documents, claiming documents haven’t been received, forgetting to send out forms, claiming certain forms have been lost in the mail, telling us to fax certain things and then saying we weren’t supposed to fax them at all, but mail them, etc etc etc…then turning us down for debt reduction despite numerous letters from my healthcare providers and hard math that says flat out, we cannot afford this on one income.)

Anyway…I’m agitated for a million reasons, and this being my site, I reserve the right to list them here.

Our lawn hasn’t been mown since roughly the end of July because our lawn mower bit the dust. Our 3-year old-lawn mower that would probably still be running just fine if it hadn’t been doing double duty all this time, as our neighbour has borrowed it pretty much every weekend since moving in here 3 years ago. So, it’s a 3-year-old lawn mower with 6 years worth of wear & tear on it and it died. No good deed goes unpunished, right? It’s like that time we gave someone’s car a boost and the wind caught our hood and bent it backwards. We can’t afford to eat, let alone a new one and I worry constantly about how our house looks from the curb with all of these weeds and this overgrown lawn badly in need of a mow and I also worry about getting a citation from the town. Our original plan was to try and find a lawn company to mow it and fix it all up before the end of the month, but that would cost between $60-100 (we’re assuming, no one’s called to get an actual quote that I know of) and we just don’t have it, so I guess my only option is to sit here and fret and make myself sick about it until the snow covers it up and we’ll deal with it in the spring. If someone from the town comes to the door to cite us, I’ll probably snap and lose it on them.

Also, speaking of my neighbours and our house looking like shit…Blake’s mom brought us up Blake’s old futon, which was better than our current couch. The week that happened, we had Blake’s mom’s SUV at our disposal, as well as my mother’s van and could have taken our old couch to the dump, but no, my neighbour’s daughter, who was moving into a new place, wanted our old couch for people to sit on when they were smoking in her garage. I told Blake this was a bad idea, that we should say that she had until the end of the week to pick it up or else we’d be using one of our mothers’ vehicles to take it to the dump, because I had a feeling that this goddamn couch was going to sit under my carport making it look like trash indefinitely. And lo & behold, it’s been like, 3 weeks and it’s still sitting out there looking like shit and making me go out of my fucking mind because between the state of the lawn and this godawful stained, floral abomination sitting amongst the unkempt recycling, fall leaves and garbage cans all at the front of our house, we look like we belong in a run-down trailer park somewhere. It’s probably going to snow before this shit is taken care of and that’s completely unacceptable to me. The goddamn thing is pretty much right in front of our “front door”, you have to squeeze between it and the BBQ to get inside.

It’s easy to say “well go out there and do something about it yourself”, but I can’t even leave my own house to tend to my own garden because I’m afraid of people looking at and/or talking to me. I do not want the whole world watching me attempt to rearrange furniture under my carport and quite fucking frankly, I shouldn’t have to because this situation shouldn’t have fucking happened to begin with.

…

The brakes on the car went 2 weeks ago. That took $320 out of October’s $400 food, gas & Halloween costume budget. School trip permission slips came home for both kids, which totaled around $45 and it wasn’t easy to say “no” when our town’s annual Fall Fair happened.  We couldn’t afford Thanksgiving dinner, so we didn’t have one. Our friend Alex brought us some of her family’s leftovers though, so at least I did get a little taste of turkey but I still felt like shit that I couldn’t cook a turkey of our own and share it with them, which was the original plan.

Our house has been filled with visitors during the past several weeks and this has not been a good thing. My step-mom is already asking Blake & I what we’re doing for Xmas and Xmas is the last thing I even want to even think about right now because if I let my mind go there, I’ll probably end up in the hospital for a suicide attempt. I fucking hate Xmas on a good year and this has not been a good year and I’ve been at the end of my rope for quite some time. (For those who are inevitably going to ask, my wishlist is here, the kids’ incomplete wishlist is here.)

In November my friend Steph is having a wedding. I say she’s “having a wedding” as opposed to “getting married” because she’s already married, but they never had a wedding. Long story short, he’s from the US and she’s from Canada, so this is the “official” wedding in Canada for her family and friends. This shouldn’t be a big deal but it is.

First of all, I’m agoraphobic and have social anxiety. A wedding is really not my thing. However, I love Steph and I want to be at her wedding, so I’m doing everything in my power to go - although admittedly, there’s a very good chance that as the last minute I won’t be able to. That’s neither here nor there, though.

Steph invited our entire family to the wedding, which I was excited about because it’s being held at Casa Loma, which is an honest to god castle that I thought the kids would get a huge kick out of. I also know there are going to be other kids there. Well, we can’t afford to clothe our kids for a wedding, so Alex is going to be staying home with them instead. Furthermore, the sad truth is that over the spring & summer, I gained a lot of weight due to the medication I was on, called Risperidone, for biploar disorder and it got to the point where literally the only thing I had to wear was pajamas I’d worn when I was pregnant with Wes. Luckily I have a good, generous online friend who helped me figure out my current sizes and sent me a couple of pairs of jeans and some t-shirts so I could leave the house if I wanted to, so I’d at least have the option and that was great. Unfortunately, I have nothing appropriate for a wedding because all of my “fancy” clothes are a size 0 and I’m….temporarily not a size 0.

In August my shrink put me on a new drug called Ziprasidone (Geodon/Zeldox), which appears to be the “right” drug and as my body’s gotten used to it I’ve just now begun to lose some of the weight I gained on the heinous Risperidone, but there’s no way I’m going to be back to my old self by the middle of November for Steph’s wedding, so buying an outfit is unavoidable if I’m to attend. Not only does this cause financial distress, but also social distress as this now involves going to a mall, probably with kids, probably on a weekend and the reality is that that scenario makes me want to die. Plus there’s the cost of gas to GET to the wedding, which is a small sum, and of course the gift, which I’m embarrassed to be stressing about but I am.

There’s also the matter of my hair, which is also embarrassing to even be writing about but I’m going to anyway. Last year I dyed my hair flaming red as it was growing out from being shaved and that turned out to be a huge mistake because red, as some of you may know, is a total pain in the ass to maintain (especially when you’re blonde) and very hard to strip out (especially when you’re a porous blonde). Long story short, I ended up having to visit a hair salon twice, at $70 a pop, to have my hair turned into a shade found in nature and I vowed (for the millionth time) to never dye my hair by myself again because I screw it up 90% of the time.  Well, getting my hair done professionally before this wedding is a financial impossibility, so a journey to the drug store’s blonde-in-a-bottle aisle is unavoidable and I guess I’ll wear my hair in a ponytail or something because I can’t afford to even get it cut. (As an aside, if anyone can recommend a GOOD brand of drugstore hair dye, particularly in a cool blonde shade, that would be great. I used to use Feria, but it doesn’t seem to matter which brand I use, I end up with yellow hair.)

Blah blah blah. Flat out, we cannot afford to go to this wedding and I hope Steph understands if we can’t. I know Steph would rather have us there than receive a gift, that’s just the kind of person she is, but it’s not looking like I can go and hold my head up high at the same time, so there’s a very good chance we won’t go at all. Damned if I do, damned if I don’t and YES, if we don’t go, I’ll probably regret it for the rest of my life and feel like a total fuckwad. I’m cringing at the thought of Steph even reading this post, so Steph, if you ARE reading, don’t tell me.

I’m so so so frustrated that this site still looks like a piece of shit after deciding to revamp it many many months ago. It’s been “my job” to create a background image and a banner and between my computer dying and losing all my fonts as a result and just a complete lack of inspiration, it hasn’t happened. It drives me insane that this site is like, the first impression all of these new people are getting of me and it is SO not even remotely close to my standards, it’s embarrassing. It distresses me greatly. I wish I knew CSS, I wish I knew how to make WordPress do the things I want it to do, but I don’t and neither does Blake and he doesn’t have a ton of time (or - what’s the word - “motivation”) so progress has been slow and frustrating.

I’m trying so fucking hard to get my shit together and this site, my “web presence”, is a big part of that because it helps me understand who I am (and that’s been pretty “up on the air” for a while now) and it’s killing me for things to be in the state they’re in. Fortunately, a friend of mine just hooked me up with Photoshop for the PC so at least now there’s a point in trying to rebuild my font collection and get graphics for this site completed. He also hooked me up with an older version of Word, so there’s the possibility of new zines in the future too…(except for that pesky printer problem of mine that I can’t afford to deal with right now either).

And finally: art. This is eating me alive from the inside out and at this point, I’m completely paralyzed by fear and uncertainty and I’ve stopped creating altogether due to an utter lack of self-esteem.

I was doing good, I was taking my Suzi Blu art class and had a million ideas and completed some paintings, a few sketches for future paintings and felt, temporarily, like I was “me” again and back on track. But then business and money and justifying my time and all of this stupid shit got in the way and now I’m stuck again.

I’m extremely uncomfortable with selling my art. Don’t get me wrong, I like and need the money, and really, it’s just going to collect dust in this house anyway so it might as well be on other people’s walls, but it makes me feel sick to my stomach trying to attach monetary value to anything I do. The fact of the matter is, I think I’m shit and thus, everything I do is shit and when someone says “no, that’s not shit”, I believe them for a second but then I worry that if I believe them all the way and price accordingly, no one will agree with them and make me feel shittier than I did before.

That said, I’m putting “Ennui” and “Beloved” up for sale:

(More pics.)

(More pics.)

They are 12 x 12 on canvas and $150 US + $10.00 s/h/PayPal fees = $160 US total each. If anyone’s interested, e-mail me at Sunny@SunnyCrittenden.com for instructions on how to send payment. First come, first served. If you think I’m crazy for charging that much, well…so be it, but that’s how much “Hope” & “Dream” went for so that’s what I’m going by.

SOLD!! SOLD!! SOLD!! HOORAY!!!

Originally I wanted to wait and sell these two AFTER I’d gotten pics of them that were good enough to make prints out of, but I have no one to help me and I can’t figure out how to do it myself (plus I don’t have the means to front the money for prints anyway) and if I’m going to continue making art and I dunno, exist, the money needs to start coming in now.

And this brings me to Touched By Fire, the art show I submitted to last month. I’m on their online gallery, but I haven’t heard anything from them either way about the actual gala event. Since I’m on their online gallery and I recall reading something about how accepted works wouldn’t appear on their website, I’m assuming I was rejected and part of me is relieved that I won’t have to go (can’t afford the gas to get there anyway! + y’know, social phobia…) and the other part of me feels like shit that I was (probably) rejected for a remedial art show. BUT, I guess it’s only October 16th and the show isn’t for another month so maybe I’m jumping the gun in my assumptions.

Anyway it’s fall, I feel like shit, I hope I die in my sleep so this shit will end and that’s all I’ve got to say.

/wrist

Over the last little while I’ve been contacted by some people who have noticed that I’ve more or less dropped off the face of the Earth during the last year or two and they were wondering why. Questions like these come out of nowhere for me because I don’t know to whom I’m replying, where they know me from, what they know of me and my life etc. so I never know how to answer even the simplest things like “so, what have you been up to?” I simply don’t know where to start. This is very frustrating.

The fact of the matter is, because of growing up and certain life events and the fact that I’ve been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, I’m not sure who I am anymore and what I want. I don’t know if I want to have a site anymore and even if I do, I don’t know what to put on it or how much to share.

Furthermore, things have gotten a lot more complicated than they were a few years ago with this WordPress shit vs. making a website in Dreamweaver that was comprised of mostly tables and because of this, maintaining a site - what you’re reading right now - isn’t something I feel I can do myself. Of course I’m capable of it, if I wanted to learn, but I don’t want to and if I’m not doing it myself, then do I really want to do it at all? Currently Blake (my husband) and I are trying to find a happy medium. Really, as far as I can tell, WordPress is just a template system, so all we need to do is come up with a template that I can edit and update myself. We’re working on it. It’s probably going to take a while.

But then the other problem I’m trying to work out in my head, and have been for a while, is which content is for my site and which content is for Live Journal? And really, what IS the point of having both? Do I even really need both? Why not just point my domain to Live Journal? But the thing is, there are some things that don’t feel right in a Live Journal (or a personal blog, I guess), such as articles, product reviews or endorsements, 3rd party content (YouTube videos like the one above etc). Basically I have no idea what to write or where anymore and I’ve completely lost track of why so many people even follow what I write, create and do to begin with, so it’s hard for me to figure out how to keep everyone happy.

And speaking of keeping everyone happy, there’s another problem. Back when I started doing whatever it is I do, the Internet was still sort of an underground thing. Everyone and their mother (certainly not MY mother) wasn’t potentially reading every word I wrote and that allowed me a certain freedom to be as honest and open as I’m known for being and have sort of built a reputation on. Well, some people don’t like truth and honesty. Some people get upset when you write about them, even though it’s all truth and facts and honesty. Some people don’t like the whole world knowing what they did on a Sunday afternoon and some people feel as though I’m trying to hold up a mirror so they can see something they perceive as being there when I’m merely being honest, but with a writer’s eye. This makes it very difficult to write about one’s life and if I can’t do so honestly, then I can’t do it at all.

It just seems like on all levels of life, I’m stuck. I have no refuge. I used to “write it out” when I was feeling badly or trying to process something and that outlet’s mostly been taken away by people who don’t understand me or what I do. I absolutely resent them for it and I’ve racked my brain searching for happy mediums and work-arounds, but I keep coming up short.

Truthfully, though, I’m a little bit sick of writing about my life for an audience anyway. For friends I’ve met through this technological journey who are also writing about their own lives, say, via Live Journal? Sure. But thousands of strangers? I dunno anymore. Especially not when I’ve been increasingly bombarded with anonymous folks over the years who trigger my paranoia and contribute to my shaky mental health and waning self-esteem.

I had to disable anonymous commenting in Live Journal recently due to troll activity and comments have been disabled here (along with “pings”?) for a long time because I don’t know how to control the posting of spam. I don’t know how to make this two-way communication between the many of you and the one and only me work anymore.

While parts of me are still the same, and the core of me is still the same, the last few years have been pretty rough on me and I’ve done a lot of changing and growing as a result. Unfortunately some of you, it seems, wanted me to stay the same, so to those of you who fall into that category: I’m sorry I let you down and I’m sad to see you go. (Except that’s a lie because if you honestly expected me to stay a scantily clad 20-something year old on a webcam forever, you’re probably an asshole and good riddance.) For the rest of you, I hope you’ll stick around long enough for me to figure out whatever the fuck it is I’m doing because I have a feeling that whatever it is and once I get all of this shit figure out, it’s going to be interesting.
Things can only get better.

So while comments are disabled and will remain so for a while, feel free to e-mail me at Sunny@SunnyCrittenden.com or snail mail me at the address below. Give me suggestions, tell me how you found me, tell me why you’ve stuck around, tell me what you’d like to see more of (you lose points for saying “tits” *eyerolls*) or what you think I should stay away from. I’d really like to know what all of you strangers are getting out of this whole thing, it’s always been a mystery to me and finally having some perspective from the other side of the screen would probably help immensely in sorting out the mess that is my so-called internet life.

Sunny of the Great White North

PO Box 3042

Elmvale, ON

L0L 1P0

CANADA

Edit (08/12/08): Not to discourage the e-mails (they’ve been great so far!) comments have been re-enabled, so feel free to register and be heard! :o)

It took me so long to figure out this Wordpress shit that the stuff I just threw up there is badly out of date. I mean, look at my about me page, Digit is long dead for god’s sake.

I don’t know what 2008 holds for me. I’m hoping to find some direction, whether that’s going back to school (either to finish my advertising program since I’m already $32,000 in debt because of it or for a one year art program), focusing on re-starting my own business or just getting healthier by quitting smoking and vowing to walk the dogs more often.

Either way, I hope everyone out there has a great holiday season and hopefully I’ll make this place a little more awesome in the new year!

Y’know, I’ll admit it, I kinda like WordPress. I like that I can do everything from basically a big control panel and I don’t have to upload and check & recheck shit over & over again like I end up doing with code. I like that I can just type in this here little box, hit “publish” and go about my day, knowing that what I just did is going to look exactly as intended and it’s just gonna “work”.

What I don’t like - and I’m pretty sure this is me, not WordPress - is this themes bullshit. I just do not understand them whatsoever and combined with how I also don’t understand the categories vs. pages and the hierarchy in general, it makes it absolutely impossible for me to draw a feasible layout. I don’t understand what WordPress can do and the premade themes are all just awful and uninspiring (including the piece of shit I’m using now). I know what I want, I just basically want a WordPress-ized version of the old site, but the organization is what kills me every time I try to draw it. I just don’t understand what WordPress does and therefore I don’t understand what I can do with it.

This happens to me a lot though, so I think it’s a me thing more than a WordPress thing. For example, we have a Digital Rebel, which is just too much camera for me, if that makes sense. It’s got all of these functions that I just don’t understand, which is a lot like my issues with WP.

What I like about WP is that everything I write is contained and I don’t have to deal with files and ftping when all I want to do is fucking write. That’s what I like, so that’s why I’m toughing this out (well….that and the fact that my Dreamweaver’s still FUBAR).

Hope everyone has a lovely weekend. I leave you with….unicorns. :D

…but the thing is, I don’t have the time nor ambition to make another site right now, so this is what I’ve got. Not the prettiest page in the universe, but whatever. I’m waiting for Ditsy to figure out WordPress so she can teach me haha

I was going to make this a video blog, but it’s midnight and I should be going to bed soon. Plus, I’m not feeling very photogenic these days as my hair’s a funny length and looks extra stupid right now. I look not unlike Grover, as in the muppet.

Anyway, what’s new in Sunnyland?

Well, my real life friends Alex & Krissy seem to have been bitten by the YouTube bug and have started doing their own video blogs. Here’s Krissy’s first attempt, which is entitled “WoW Rant”:

Right now I’m on this medication which has a lovely side effect of increasing one’s appetite, so I’ve been eating like a cow and I’ve actually gained a few pounds as a result. Since I’ve been doing so much snacking, I decided to make meringue cookies this weekend, two batches, which didn’t last very long in this house. They’re really easy to make and I don’t think they have any fat and they’re sort of like…cookies made out of fluff, they rule. Anyway, here’s the recipe:

Meringue Cookies
4 large egg whites
1/4 tsp Cream of Tartar
1 tsp vanilla
3/4 cup of sugar

Beat egg whites and cream of tartar with an electric mixer at high speed until soft peaks form (3-5 mins). Gradually add in vanilla and sugar while beating. Drop by spoonful onto aluminum foil lined cookie sheets, bake at 225 F for 50-60 minutes. Makes 2 dozen.

Seriously, they’re amazing.

Other than that, I’ve just been focusing on staying sane until the snow melts. I’ve posted my last post in CammityJane for a while, so if you haven’t gotten caught up, now’s a good time. I’ve still got some things to work out in my head before I start working on that again.

Anyway, hope all is well with you folks. :)

I haven’t updated this in a little while and that’s mostly because I don’t really have anything to write out in the open like this these days. The other reason is that I really think I fucking hate WordPress (even though I really wanted to like it) and so in my head, I see no point in adding more things that I’m just going to delete later. Make sense?

My big beef with WordPress is that I don’t understand or like how they do hierarchies and I keep confusing myself in transferring content over from the old site, like what should I make a page and what should just be a post? And THEN what do I do with them after that? How do I link them all up? (Not physically what to click, just the order in which things should be laid out.)

My other issue with WordPress is that it has no personality (unlike LJ) and I’m having a really hard time trying to come up with a layout because I don’t understand how it all works and therefore I don’t even understand what’s possible. I looked at the themes available for download and they’re all ugly as sin or buggy in some way and I don’t know how to fix bugs, so I can’t maintain a buggy site. I just really hate this system of doing things, everything feels wrong about it.

At the same time, I don’t have the time or resources at the moment to make a new site, so I’m stuck with this motherfucker for a little while at least. *sigh*

I do like Gallery though, which Kevin also installed for me. I still have no idea how to make it all pretty-like, but adding stuff and organizing the albums seems easy enough. That can stay, this WordPress thing on the other hand…..grrrrr.

Man, this WordPress thing sure does tend to attract a lot of spambots. Deleting spam from certain posts has almost been a full-time job lately. Any ideas on what I can do to make them stop?

My plan for this week is to fill out the pages under “The People in my World”. I realize I should be working on a layout but honestly, I can’t even think of one right now and I don’t really mind being generic for right now, so nyah.

I’ve spent most of today editing pictures and video of our big trip to Muskoka over the weekend. Once things are finished being written and uploaded, I’ll be making a big post with everything over at my Live Journal. That post won’t be dial up friendly, just a heads up.

Thursday, as I may have mentioned a time or two this month, is my birthday and as the days between now and then melt away, I’m becoming increasingly nervous about my show at Camwhores Thursday night. The show depends on certain people being here and helping me out and I’m afraid that something will come up at the last minute and make what I have planned impossible, or at least not as good as it could have been. This always happens, I get nervous like this before a show every single time I do one and it always ends up fine. This is the first time I’ve booked a solid hour of time, though, and I worry that it’ll be an hour of wasted bandwidth.

Whatever, it’ll be fine. It just will godammit!

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for right now, BYE!

I can upload stuff on Blake’s computer, but not mine. This means it’s either my wireless (doubtful) or Dreamweaver (*sigh*) and not the server, soooooo I figured it wouldn’t be too painful to uninstall DW and try to reinstall it, pending I could find the disk and see if that fixed whatever this issue is.

I found every single disk I have for my Mac, except motherfucking Dreamweaver. I know who sent it, it was from Miss Keri Monster’s boyfriend and I STILL have the fucking envelope he sent it in along with the other programs and stuff they sent, but what the hell did I do with the actual Dreamweaver disk I was SO CERTAIN I could locate in like, 30 seconds?

*headdesk*

And I know, DW sucks, it’s a bullshit program, and I suck by association - I totally know this, but I’m extremely lazy, don’t enjoy code in the slightest (and think that people who do are weird, like my friend Steph) and I just want shit to look pretty and be easy. This is also why I use a Mac by the way, because I know I suck for that too. :D

That isn’t to say that I don’t know any code or that I don’t think with code in mind (and all webdesign that isn’t visual is all just “code” to me, which was why DW worked so well for me), I just can’t do it fluently, if that makes sense. Pausing mid-sentence to think/type “pointy thing eh href (don’t forget the space) equals (pause for air quotes) ehych tee tee pee dot-dot thingy slash slash uhn uhn whatever (air quotes) target equals (air quotes) underscoreblank (air quotes) other pointy thing…” and have the link not work and have to go back and FIX IT? That fucking sucks, I don’t have time for that shit! I need an “insert link” button and if that makes me a retard, so be it!

I’m rambling, I’ll stop.

Anyway, this could be a sign that it’s time to wean myself from DW. I’m not gonna go learn “code” or anything stupid like that (NO I WILL NOT! PHP & all that stuff can suck my ass!) but I’m thinking that if I can find a decent, idiot-proof, free, Mac-friendly ftp program, I might just uninstall it since that’s mostly what I’ve been using it for anyway and that seems to be the whole reason I can’t upload right now to begin with.

That was a really long sentence. I’m proud of that one. :)

It just sucks because right now I’ve got Gallery installed and can’t get that to work (you guessed it, nothing will upload), I can’t get my ftp to work (via DW) and I’ve got pics to post, a cam to update and shit to do!

AND I’M ON THE RAG.

So, technologically and biologically speaking, it’s just not been my week.

But I did get to spend this afternoon with Jesse, so it was still a pretty damn good day. :)

And so does WordPress.

So obviously, this is going to be the new site. I’ve had a lot of comments and e-mails of protest and confusion about the whole thing, so if there are any questions, ask ‘em here and I’ll do my best to keep everyone in the loop. (Honestly, a lot of times I forget that I’m not the only one looking at/reading this shit) Just do me a favour & mind the mess over the coming months, it’s probably gonna get a hell of a lot worse as I fuck things up completely trying to learn a whole new system I don’t even have the first clue about.

As an aside, there’s the Visual Quickstart Guide to Wordpress on my wishlist if anyone wants to help me out.

Someone asked me what’s going to happen to good ol’ LJ once this site is up & running the way I want it to be and I don’t really have an answer for that question yet. What I do know though, is that I feel gross mentioning movies or books or whatever in LJ and using my Amazon affiliates links to link to anything because it feels like I’m advertising to my friends and I think that’s wrong, so that was one reason to move away from LJ a bit. There’s also the drama involving cut tags and NSFW images, that really, I just don’t want to deal with anymore. Plus…some other stuff that’s a little more deep & neurotic that I might get into one day, but today’s just not that day. There are reasons, good reasons. :)

The “Sunnybananas” LJ will probably always exist, I mean I’ve got 5 years worth of my life archived there….I dunno. I just don’t know yet.

People have been asking me for like, a year now, what’s going to happen with Camwhores because it’s been pretty obvious that I’m not as into the site as I used to be - or at least, that’s the surface perception. The truth is that I got married, had another baby, bought our first house far far away from everything I’ve known my whole life and then…2006 was probably the worst year of my entire life. Our roof started caving in, I went crazy (like literally crazy, hospitalized, medicated & the whole works and I even did so in front of the whole fucking internet! I’m such a prostar.), I disowned damn near my entire family and then a few days before Xmas, I had to call the police on my mother which is this whole thing I promise I’ll get into publicly eventually, but not right now.

I just wanted to clear up that my activity over at Camwhores (or rather, lack thereof) has absolutely NOTHING to do with the site itself, the people who are there or any of that other crap. In fact, I’m a little bummed that I’ve been missing out on some of the changes over there and as I’ve been planning changes in my life and planning for the changes to come, Camwhores has played large in my mind. Truly, Kevin’s gonna have to drag me from that site kicking & screaming one day. This bitch ain’t goin’ nowhere. :D

Plus, some of the changes coming sound pretty goddamn interesting and I wanna be there for ‘em. :):):)

Some other questions I’ve received recently involve the cam book I’ve been “working on” for like…ever, called Digital Burlseque and the camgirls documentary myself and a bunch of other girls in the “scene” were filmed for.

So let’s start with the book…here’s what happened (well, the Reader’s Digest version, anyway):

Three or four years ago this guy named Brad King messages me on Yahoo (or MSN or AIM, I forget now) and basically I was all, “Cooooool, you’re a writer! With a real published book on Amazon & everything!” So we began talking and he tells me that I should write a book, I laugh and say “About what?” and he says “this webcam stuff”. Well, I didn’t take that seriously but then I got thinking and decided he might be right, so I started collecting and printing out articles on the subject and started throwing them in a box, knowing that eventually, this stuff wouldn’t even be on the internet anymore and if I was going to write a book on the subject, I should start squirreling away these things now.

About a year later, Brad tells me that he’s starting this small indie press that’s going to only cater to geek and internet culture, “it’s going to be to geeks what Sub-Pop was to grunge” were his exact words, and that Digital Burlesque would be the perfect book for such an endeavor, so get working on it! So I did. I conducted months and months of interviews both one on one and through forums, I wrote a proper outline as I was asked to do, I even got the first draft of the book about 3/4 finished, but then everything sort of went to shit.

First of all, I don’t know how to write a fucking book and writing books is hard, especially books that deal with dates and facts and doing things “first” and oh so many egos. I got absolutely zero support from Brad, my so-called editor and then I didn’t hear from him for months until he messages me to say that he’s taking a teaching position at some fancy schmancy new media & communications university. But of course, this means “big things” for Demon Press, right? He started telling me how this means that Demon Press could potentially become a univiersity press blah blah blah and this means good stuff blah blah. So great, I get excited again, resume working on the book and then I’m blown off for like, another year.

So while I waited for SOME KIND OF GODDAMN DIRECTION AND/OR COMMUNICATION or I dunno, HELP, I worked on another book, called Textibitionism, which I was going to just publish myself but I sent it to Brad and from what I understood of the conversation, he was going to publish it and I’d finish Digital Burlesque next.

The last message I got from Brad was 6 months ago saying that his students will be doing layout during second semester, which would be like…now. So I said, “great, lemme know if I need to do anything” and the response was “Write your damn book!” so I took it that he was talking about Digital Burlesque and not Textibitionism.

Well, sorry honey, but I can’t finish a book in 6 months and in the 4 years I’ve been “working on” it, Brad hasn’t even managed to edit what I’ve sent him, so well…fuck you! And hey, guess what? Newsflash, I’m not dropping everything because you’ve decided you’re gonna get your shit together. I mean, I’m sorry it just doesn’t work that way. I’ve been sitting here literally starving, often struggling, worrying, stressed out, going to the goddamn Food Bank on occassion to keep my kids fed and you’re gonna dick me around KNOWING ALL OF THIS? No, I’m sorry, the book, whenever finished (and it will be one day), is not yours anymore.

To add insult to injury, a couple of weeks ago I get a comment on my MySpace from Brad saying that as difficult as I am, happy new year anyway and that maybe “someday” I’ll communicate with him again. *eyerolls* Just…fuck off. I’m probably one of the easiest people on the whole goddamn internet to get ahold of and you wanna pin bad communication on me? Dude…

So that’s the saga of “the book”, more or less. I’m still working on it, in the sense that I live cam culture and speak with people within cam culture every single day, I print and collect everything I can and one day, the book will be done, but I don’t care if it’s finished one year from now or 30 and I don’t care how many books are published on the topic in the meantime. (Well, unless they’re inaccurate…. ;))

As for the documentary, honestly your guess is as good as mine at this point. Last I heard it was still in post-production and god only knows when it’s gonna be finished. Truthfully, I hope they cut me out of it completely (and they just might). I don’t regret doing it or anything like that, I just didn’t think this “my face on a big screen” thing all the way through when I agreed to do it…it’s just….creepy….

Anyway, screw all this “shop talk”, let’s get down to WoW. :D

This is Posey, she’s a lvl 60 bad-ass tree druid who’s really looking forward to Lifebloom because it sounds as bad-ass as I know she is. :D She hasn’t done MC, she hasn’t even seen Onyxia yet, she’s a long ways off from AQ20/40 and since 3 of the best people in her guild (who, unlike just about everyone else in the guild actually knew wtf they were doing) left today, she probably won’t be doing any of the above. Regardless, I’m gonna do my best to get her to 70 anyway because I really like being a tree.

Now, notice that I didn’t mention the server she’s on. There’s a reason for that. See, when I first started playing in June, I posted on LJ that I got an account and that I’d be playing on such & a such a server because some of my real life friends had made a guild there. Being a newb, I didn’t know this was a dumb thing, I was just writing about what’s going on in my life like I always do and it never ocurred to me that random people who read my crap on the internet every day would follow me to a WoW server, but some did and it’s caused some minor issues that I’d like to keep from blowing up into major ones in the future.

My guild leader last week made it clear that she doesn’t want “people in that industry” (meaning the internet porn industry because y’know, that’s all I do and you’re ALL nothing but a bunch of degenerate pedophile perverts who are ALL going to hell in a handbasket :D) in her guild, so fuck it, this week I think I’m gonna start a new one. On Tuesday when the expansion begins, Blake & I are going to choose a brand-spankin’ new server (as I’m sure Blizzard will be adding a few) to start the lvl 1 blood elf toon that’s been in my head since we found out that, indeed, BEs would be the new race. And we’re gonna play these toons, farm some gold - hopefully with some of you - and then when we’ve got enough people in our posse to sign a charter, this new guild will begin.

And yes, it has a name and yes, a tabard’s already been designed, but those are gonna be a surprise. :D The only rule (so far) though, is that all toons in this guild have to be blood elves, with two notable exceptions:

1. Druids, since they have to be tauren.
2. Transferred 60’s. (If anyone wants to go that route…)

Oh, and if you’re a ninja-looting douchebag, under 18 years of age or an egomaniac, don’t even bother.

Obviously I’ll post more details in regards to all of this next week, but if you’re a WoW player and aren’t sure yet what to do with all this new content, there’s an option. :)

I haven’t really thought about ranks, guild rules and what kind of guild this is going to end up being, but I figure that can be played by ear for the most part and a lot of that is dependent on the group we get anyway so we’ll worry about that later. All I know is that I’m pretty flexible & just wanna have FUN godammit!

Questions? Input? E-mail me (Sunny @ SunnyCrittenden.com) or leave a comment.

And with that, I gotta go work on some other stuff…