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

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

- President Barack Obama

Read the article here.

*sigh* There is so much to say and I don’t even know where to start. So let’s start by jumping on the Obama bandwagon…

Is anyone else completely glued to CNN? (Or your 24 hour news channel of choice.) The US election has me totally captivated and not that it matters because I’m Canadian and don’t get a vote, I will say that I’m an Obama supporter and I it kills me some of the stuff people are choosing to believe about the man. He’s a socialist? No. Canada’s a fairly socialist country and I don’t see anything in his plans that are even close to what we have here. A Muslim? Well, he’s not, but so what if he was? The last I checked, you folks down south had that whole “freedom of religion” thing going for you, so why should that even matter? There’s nothing that says the President of the United States has to be a Christian. I wonder what people would say if he were Jewish? He’s a Marxist? Honestly, I’m not even really sure what that is and I’m betting the majority of Americans don’t know either. Regardless, from what I’ve been told by people smarter than me, he’s not.

Something interesting happened when I went to vote in Canada’s big election last month and I was kind of shocked by it. When Blake and I were standing in line for me to take my turn at the “voting cardboard” (voting machines? pffffft. We vote with a pencil and a paper ballot behind a piece of cardboard akin to what one would use for a science fair project!) there was this guy in front of us who was probably voting for the first time. I’d peg him at between 18 and 20. He overheard Blake tell one of the ladies at the polling station that he was American and thus, not voting and then he overheard me pointing out another lady who was counting a pad of unmarked ballots, showing him how ours are really simple (make “X” here, with 3 or 4 choices), compared to Blake’s crazy-assed absentee ballot for the American general election.

The kid in front of us thought this was funny and he said something like, “For you Americans it should be easier, all you have to choose from is an old guy and a black guy,” but the way he said “old” and “black”, it was like both of those things were negatives.

Now this was a month ago and it’s still stuck in my mind. I was floored by the fact that someone so young would have that kind of attitude, but then again, I probably shouldn’t be surprised living in a Conservative riding, in a town of farmers with a population of 1700. Still, it kinda broke my heart a little to hear this Canadian kid spew such an “ist” view. Until that moment, I just kind of assumed that Canadians, being as liberal as we generally are, were all, well, more open-minded and good natured than that.

Seeing that, or rather hearing it, made me imagine just how bad the attitudes must be in certain places in the US right now.

People may disagree with me on my choice of candidate – or rather Blake’s, since he’s the one who voted for him- and that’s fine, but I truly wish good things for the American people, I love them, and I really believe that Barack Obama is going to provide the US with all the good things they deserve. I’m actually a little bit jealous that we don’t have such charismatic, progressive politicians with good ideas for real change in my own country. I believe that Obama’s going to do good by my friends to the south and I’m going to be genuinely happy for our neighours should he win the presidency.

Y’all have had a really rough 8 years under President Bush and I have hope that Barack Obama will be able to relieve some of the stresses that’s put upon your country. More than that, I think he’s going to progress the US in a good direction, an innovative direction, that will repair the country’s reputation globally and make the US a country to emulate.

Like I said, I’m jealous. I wish our leaders in Ottawa would drink Obama’s Kool-Aid.

I’m probably not the only one, but I keep having nightmares about Barack Obama being assassinated at one of his outdoor rallies or during his presidential acceptable speech. Every time I see him on TV, especially when he’s outside, I’m always looking behind him for the guy who’s got the gun or I’m expecting “pink mist” at any moment. Morbid, I know, but you have to admit that it’s a possibility.

Aaaaaaaaaaand that’s enough about politics that don’t even really affect me.

This afternoon I got my acceptance package from Touched By Fire and I had a slight freak out because “Mania in the Key of Psychosis” (pictured left) needs to be made hangable and with it being so big and heavy, I wasn’t sure that was possible. Blake assured me that it was, however, and brought home a hanging kit made specifically for large, heavy pieces.

The other thing making me freak out is that they want me to mail my art to them, at my expense, and I have NO fucking money whatsoever. I have $200 coming in from a commission, but I need that to buy something to WEAR to the event, which is going to end up doing double-duty by being my outfit for Steph the Geek’s wedding a couple of days later. My lowest estimate to ship “Mania in the Key of Psychosis” is at least $70, plus the cost to ship “Hope” and “Dream” as well would be another $20 – and those two are sold, so I wouldn’t even recoup my shipping costs by selling them. Luckily Blake has offered to drive them down to the office of The Mood Disorders Association in Toronto for me next week, because we figure a tank of gas and half a day’s driving will cost less than shipping everything.

In my Touched By Fire acceptance package, there was an invitation to a pre-event gathering the night of the gala event, that starts at 6:30pm and then the show opens (by invitation only) at 7:30pm-11pm. When I read the invitations to these two things, I immediately had to take an Ativan. I am terrified of this thing. I looked at the slide show from last year’s event and there were all of these strange people there, most were middle-aged (not that there’s anything wrong with that) and they were all eating hors d’oeuvres and sipping win or champaigne and the whole thing just didn’t look like my scene AT ALL. Not that I really HAVE a scene, but if I did, it wouldn’t be that.

And then there’s the fact that it’s a juried show and I’m terrified of winning. Well, that’s not completely true, I think it would be cool to win, but the idea of all these people looking at me and like, maybe having my picture taken for the newspaper, that shit’s totally scary to me and if anything makes me not go, that’ll be it.

Oddly enough, I did my tarot tonight and for “Hopes and Fears” I got the Six of Wands, which says: “The Six of Wands augurs public acclaim or acknowledgment of some kind. This might take the form of a promotion, a qualification, or the recognition of some piece of creative work.

How fucking fitting, huh?

The other thing in the package that made me sweat a little bit is that they want you to write a blurb on each piece. The instructions say: “Touched By Fire is a testament to the creativity, passion and resilience of artists with mood disorders. What can you tell us about this art and hot it was influenced or impacted by your experience with a mood disorder? This statement will accompany your work on display.” EEEEEEEK! I am the WORDIEST motherfucker in the whole entire world, I don’t know if I can write a simple blurb on any of them, let alone “Mania in the Key of Psychosis”. This is my project for the weekend though, I have to get it done before Blake drops the pieces off at their offices.

For anyone in the Toronto area wondering if they can go to the show and see my paintings in person, it’s open to the public Friday, November 14th and Saturday, November 15th, I’m assuming all day. It’s at The Gladstone Hotel in Toronto at 1214 Queen Street West.

As for an outfit to go to the event (and also Steph’s wedding), Blake and I are going to hit the Goodwill and Salvation Army to see if we can’t find some discarded babydoll dresses from the 90’s, to create something like they have on the Free People website, an amazing online shop full of ridiculously expensive clothes that I’d kill to actually own. Hopefully we can find something that’ll work.

In other news…on Saturday we welcomed a new pet to our family! His name is Lucky, he’s a 2-year-old husky/golden retriever mix and I already love him so very much.

After some initial uncontrollable humping due to the hormones from his neutering, he and Hoover Dog are getting along great. Unfortunately this is not the case with Pixel Cat who has been missing for the past 48 hours. :o( Blake took her to the vet on Wednesday for her yearly vaccinations and when he tried to get her out of the car when they got home, she bolted and we’ve seen very little of her ever since. Once last night, at around 11pm, we saw her under the carport and then tonight around the same time, we heard her scamper across the roof, so we know she’s a live and well, she’s just boycotting our house likely because we had the audacity to bring another dog into the family and took her to the vet for needles all in the same week. She’s very unhappy with us. We figure she’ll have to come in eventually. It’s getting very cold outside and she’s gotta eat sometime.

Lucky is going to be my “emotional support animal” as I undergo immersion therapy for my agoraphobia. he’s going to need a little bit of training before I can go out with him, but we’ll get there. He walks well on a leash, likes to stick close to you and is good in the car, which were the qualities we were looking for. He’s happy, he’s healthy, he’s a total sweetheart and I can’t even imagine what kind of idiots would just give him away. His surrender papers were a fucking joke, he was surrendered due to “destructive behaviour” from separation anxiety, but we can’t even get him to play with a chew toy or eat a dog biscuit and the most he’s done is barked when left alone, so I think they just didn’t want to look after him anymore. They also claimed he was a rescue, which is bullshit. No rescue in the world would adopt out a 2-year-old INTACT dog.

Well, it’s getting late and I have to get to bed soon. I’m going to go outside and call the cat for a bit, maybe she’ll come inside for the night, and then I’m going to bed. I had so much more to say but I’m exhausted and on a ridiculous amount of drugs (due to endometriosis) at the moment and I’m afraid that if I kept writing, I would stop making sense.

Something I *did* want to mention however, is that a friend of mine has set up an RSS feed for this site on Live Journal, so that every time I write a blog post here, it automatically shows up on your friends list over there. If interested, here’s the link. I do ask, however, that if you’re going to comment on anything I’ve written, you do so here and not on the syndication feed, because I’m not reading comments on that and won’t see them!

Also, if you’d like to follow me on regular old Live Journal, which gets updated much more often than this site, you can do so here.

And finally, all day I’m a Twittering fool, so if you’re interested in the minutiae of my day, you can follow me there too! I’m everywhere, baby!

And with that, I’m going to bed.

PS. I dyed my hair tonight and it turned out brassy. :o(

PPS. I’ve been playing a lot of Spore lately. If you want to add me to your buddy list, you can do so by searching for “Sunnybananas”!