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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.

This post is probably going to be long, random and all of the damn place. There’s just so much on my mind these days and I don’t even really know where to begin. I guess I’ll just start with today…

Today I met my new caseworker for the first time and…well, she knows about this site, my Live Journal and my online activities and she told me to tell you all how nice and lovely she is. So there. I told you. It was actually kind of funny telling her that I’ve been doing the website/blogging thing for over a decade and she said, “blogging…is that like Facebook?” Do you know how often I hear that? It’s so weird to me. I mean I may never leave my house, but I probably interact with over 100 people a day, all of whom are computer savvy and like me, are basically immersed in the internet, but then when I go meatside and talk to people in my little town of 1700 or the town where the mental health clinic is, they’re just completely clueless as to the goings on of the internet and it kills me every time because I never expect it. Blake has to remind me constantly that most of the world doesn’t spend 18 hours a day, 7 days a week on the internet. I am not normal.

Anyway, it was funny.

So after I gave her the basic rundown on who I am, what I do and where I am as far as agoraphobia and immersion therapy, she threw out 50 million suggestions for “the next step”, which I shot down for every reason under the sun, but mostly because if there’s no REASON to do something, I’m simply not going to do it. For example, the next logical step in my immersion therapy is to keep going down the trail by my house from one park to the next like I did a couple of weeks ago and keep doing it until it’s no big deal, but the thing is, I already exhausted that option. My purpose in going down the trail from one park to the next was to prove I could do it obviously, but more importantly, it was an opportunity to take pictures, it was an adventure I could write about and share with the world. Without that purpose, I wouldn’t have done it and now, since I’ve already done it and I took pictures of everything there is to take pictures of down the trail, there’s no point in doing it again. I’m not the kind of person who just “goes for a walk”. I don’t “exercise” or “get fresh air”. It took me a while to make this new caseworker (who needs a codename, but I’m too tired to think of one) understand that about me, that if there isn’t a purpose, a reason, a reward, it wouldn’t happen. The fact that I don’t want to be agoraphobic anymore isn’t enough motivation. I have no desire to have “Eye of the Tiger” on autoplay in my brain and accomplish shit for the sake of accomplishing it. After I went on the trail to Bishop Park and came home, I thought to myself “so what?” So fucking what? I did something my 10-year-old can do. OOOOOH I’m so impressed with myself. Like come on, I’m just not that way. I’m not one to celebrate what I see as non-victories. These stupid little steps that I resent having to take.

I’ll be honest here: I am SO fucking mad at myself for letting things get this bad. Years and years ago I knew I was falling down a well and there was a point – when we moved here, I think – that I could go either way. I could continue down this path where I cocooned inside this house and stopped driving, stopped living in the real world, or I could be normal. Well, it’s obvious which one I chose and I chose it out of fear, fear of this new area where I didn’t know anyone, didn’t know the roads, didn’t know the store hours of anything. Fear of exploration, fear of adventure. Fear fear fear.

But the strangest thing is happening and it’s probably something that could only happen in a town as small as this one: I feel like the whole town is on my side. All of my neighbours know I never leave the house. The people who work at the pharmacy know I never come in and know what meds I’m on, so it’s quite clear what my problem is. Everyone at the grocery store and the post office never see me, but they see Blake all the time. They all wonder, I know they do. Except the thing is, and I have to remind myself to keep this in mind as I go through this process, is that when I eventually do show up at the library or the grocery store or the pharmacy, they’re going to be surprised, in a good way, and they’re probably going to be extra nice to me because they know. They just know. If I I’m walking down the street and pass my neighbour, he’s going to be surprised to see me and say something supportive. In fact, one of my neighbours has already told me that he’s proud of me for walking to the park. He saw me walking past his house through his kitchen window and thought “holy shit, she’s doing it” – but in a good way.

My fears with leaving the house are that people are going to be mean to me, or rude or there’s going to be a conflict or something bad is going to happen. But as my friend John Halcyon Styn says, “More people want to hug you than hurt you” and “Love more fear less, float more steer less” and I’m trying like hell to remember his wise words on this little journey of mine. No one’s out to get me, no one’s out to be mean to me, if people got to know me, they’d probably really like me and people are only going to get to know me if I put myself out there. And I have to embrace and be okay with the fact that I’m a strange little girl with strange ideas. I couldn’t be normal if I tried.

Like for example? I’ll get to that in a sec, lemme continue my story here first.

I’ve been going to the end of my driveway and back to get the newspaper since the beginning of March and now it’s SO not a big deal that I find myself doing strange things to make it more exciting. For example, this weekend at about 4am I went out to get the paper not wearing any pants simply because I could. And I yelled out to the world “HELLO WORLD! I AM OUT HERE GETTING THE PAPER! WOOOOOOO!” and then I came back in. Or I’ll go out to get the paper and do a little dance at the end of the driveway or twirl as I’m walking back towards the house. Little stupid, weird things that I do just to keep myself interested in doing it.

And let me tell you, I HATE the newspaper. It’s so boring! The comics SUCK (except for Get Fuzzy, which I can read on the internet for free). Half of the columns in there say at the end to visit the paper’s website and “have your say” so really, what’s the point of even reading this stuff on paper to begin with? So, I stopped reading them a long time ago and now they just pile up until Blake puts them in the recycling bin.

I feel bad because the subscription was a gift from my friend Raya and I had these GRAND plans for the newspaper and the bench at the park as far as my immersion therapy went, but I think it’s time to cancel the newspaper because at this point it’s just a ridiculous exercise and a waste of trees. I’m way beyond the driveway, I have to take bigger steps. And as I said, the newspaper sucks. The plans I had for it – reading the sections I like on the bench in the park, thus immersing myself in an uncomfortable situation for X amount of time – could easily, and probably more effectively, be achieved with books, which I have a ton of. Also? The library that’s just down the street about 6 blocks away is on my list of places to immerse myself in…eventually.

Anyway, this caseworker worker woman kept throwing out all of these ideas of places to go and I shot them all down and finally she said, “well where DO you want to go?” and I thought about it for a minute and said “the post office”, but then I got overwhelmed by the idea and told her that my fear is that if I CAN go to the post office, it’ll become my JOB to go to the post office and I’m not looking for any kind of responsibility in any of this. Not at this point anyway. I don’t want a “job”. I don’t want something that I HAVE to do on a consistent basis. I don’t even know what post office box is ours and going in the day time is way too big a step for me right now. There are people on the street, there are people in the post office, I don’t know which box is ours and I couldn’t deal with buying stamps.

The caseworker proposed that I go with Blake and buy stamps, but go to the post office to MAIL SOMETHING in the middle of the night or in the early morning when I can’t sleep. That way there’s no people around, I can take Lucky with me and bring him into the post office where the PO boxes are and no one’s gonna give me shit for that and I get to send mail, which is something I like to do, so it’s sort of like a reward.

So that’s the next step in my immersion therapy. On the way home from the mental health clinic we stopped off at the post office and Blake bought me a roll of Canada stamps and a roll of US stamps and I’m just going to make it my project to use them and mail my own stuff. I’m going to start off going at night or in the early morning and eventually work my way up to doing it in the day time. The end goal in all of this  – and there are quite a few steps in between – is to be able to mail my own paintings and to get Lucky used to being tied up and left alone for a few minutes while I do so. (He has severe separation anxiety, as I’ve mentioned before.)

But in the course of coming up with this plan, she suggested that I go for walks in the middle of the night and I said, “well what’s the point of that? I can’t take pictures at night!” and she said “well why can’t you?” to which I replied (duh) “it’s too dark!” But being the strange little girl that I am, with strange ideas…in the middle of the night when very few people are around, there’s no reason in the world why I couldn’t take the camera mounted on the tripod with me to the post office and take pictures in the dark. The tripod’s light and collapsible and even if I ran into someone, they probably wouldn’t even know what it was. And it’s one thing to show the world my little town during the day when it kinda resembles Mayberry, but it’s a completely different animal at night. I dunno, I can’t even really picture the shots in my head yet but it’s something for me to think about once I’m more comfortable with walking to the post office in the dark.

So that’s the plan. I can’t say when my first voyage out is going to be, it’s certainly not going to be tonight and I can pretty much guarantee it’s not going to be tomorrow night either, but I think sometime before Monday, I’m going to go to the post office. Monday is when I see the caseworker next, as well as my shrink, and the caseworker wants me to write down places I want to go so she can help me think of steps to get there. Honestly, I can’t think of anywhere I want to go in this town, but I’ll work on thinking of places anyway.

Some places are out of my reach though because there are blocks in the way. For example, I’d really like to go get my hair cut now that it’s long enough TO cut (for those not in the know, I shaved my head 2 years ago on my 28th birthday live on webcam in front of about 10,000 people) and there’s a salon in town, but that requires money that I don’t have so that one’s a ways off.

This evening we went to Wal*Mart to do groceries and while Blake did groceries, I went to the office/school supplies section and spent the last of my painting money on some stuff to aid in my whole “mailing stuff” deal. I bought a 24-pack of fine Sharpies in just about every colour they make, 2 black Sharpie pens, sparkly gel pens and Uni-Ball Fusion pens in blue and pink that have flowers on them, which I looooove. The ink is clear in the ink chamber, but comes out coloured. It’s cool and I was giddy when I saw them because I hadn’t seen them in years. I thought they’d stopped making them.

Anyway, this post is REALLY long and REALLY rambly and my back is killing me, so I think it’s time to either go write a letter to someone or paint, I haven’t decided yet. But before I go…

There are 11 days left in the Hypercube contest and right now I’m sitting at #9 while Blake’s at #14 – out of 500. Please please please help keep up there (or better!) by signing up and voting for our audition pages EVERY DAY. And don’t forget, the votes reset at midnight EST so make sure you get your votes in before then! A huge huge huge thanks to everyone who’s supported us through this the past couple of months, we love you immensely and can’t even begin to express our gratitude. <3

And of course, a HUGE thank you to those who have plugged us or sent in fansigns, you’re all too awesome.

On that note, here’s some folks who think I’m what Nissan’s looking for:

Annie Spandex thinks my life won’t be complete without a Cube.

Mikerson from Georgia seems to think I need a Cube also!

If you too think I need a Cube and would like to send me a fansign saying so, please send them to Sunny@SunnyCrittenden.com and I thank you in advance! Fansigns of yourself, your kids, your cats – whatever! Be creative! As long as the sign is hand-drawn, we’re good to go!

And with that, I’m outta here. <3 <3 <3

Probably way more than I should. :|

Yesterday a box from Amazon came and inside was Sims 2 Pets and Yoshi’s Island for the Nintendo DS (Thanks Ray <3), which meant yesterday was a total write off as far as doing anything even remotely productive. I’m a little bit ashamed to admit this, but basically I did nothing from 2pm-4am but play Sims 2 Pets because despite it being a really stripped down version of the PC game, it’s strangely addictive. I haven’t touched Yoshi’s Island yet, but I’m assuming it’s as awesome as The New Super Mario Bros. is, which, until yesterday, was the only DS game I had.

Part of the reason I spent yesterday playing video games is because Blake was setting up my spiffy new (refurbished :p) external hard drive on my iBook which I’m ridiculously giddy over. My iBook only has a 20 gig hard drive, half of which is permanently full of music and Word files, which was making it difficult to edit videos. My video camera uses mini DV tapes that are an hour long and to transfer ONE of those onto my hard drive, it’s approximately 16 gigs, which is a problem when you only have 13 gigs free at any given time. So what I would do is transfer as much as I could, then spend days editing each and every clip to burn on CD and free up room, but doing it this way meant that if I was editing videos, I couldn’t really do anything else. Forget opening up Photoshop. I mean, P-shop would run just fine with a full hard drive, but there was no room to save anything, so there was no point in trying. Now with the external HD, I can transfer all of my videos onto that and edit them from there AND I can save high quality versions of video, unplug the drive and burn them to DVD on Blake’s PC. Genius.

Now, if I could get my hands on a Wacom tablet, my technological life would be perfect. Actually that’s a lie, I still need a functioning printer, but in my hierarchy of needs, that’s just below a tablet. Basically (I’ve been saying “basically” a lot, my old media teacher would shoot me for that)…basically, I want the tablet for making ‘zines and comics and I’m convinced that there’s a way to hack apart webcam software to upload a picture directly from a tablet to the ftp of my choosing (here or Live Journal), which I really want to do because it would be like drawing or writing more or less in real time. I don’t think that’s been done before and I’d like to be the first. :) But even if I can’t figure out how to do that, I still think a tablet will help me out quite a bit with the ‘zine/comic production. I’m not totally sure if I’d sell these online, but currently I have a few local places really interested in selling them for me if I ever get them off the ground.

I’ve gotten a few e-mails this week from people who wanted to know what I wanted for my birthday, which is in a week & a half. I forgot that with this new site, I don’t have a wishlist link up, so here it is. I realize that sucker’s 6 pages long now and no one wants to sort through stuff and it’s SO STUPID that you can’t view an Amazon wishlist by priority, so as far as what I’d like the most, the art-related books are what I’m obsessed with at the moment. Our local library is soooooo tiny (one day I’ll be doing a video blog from there so you guys can see it), their art section isn’t even one full shelf and I’m in dire need of some inspiration. Other than those, the thing I want the most is on page 5 and is a documentary called In the Realms of the Unreal. I used to have a copy of it on my computer than I downloaded a long time ago, but I had to delete it to make space on my hard drive for other things. There’s also a book on my wishlist all about Henry Darger that I’d really like to read because I find him, his art and his story in general completely fascinating.

Since we’re on the topic of my birthday, I’ve scheduled a members-only show over at Camwhores for March 1st at 11pm EST. This show is largely tentative because with the problems I’ve had uploading, there’s a chance that streaming won’t work either, but I figure with a streaming show, Camwhores is connecting directly to my cam and there’s no ftp involved, so it should theoretically be fine. BUT I thought I’d give a warning in case technical difficulties prevent me from doing this show. Also, I currently have 5 free trials for Camwhores to give away if anyone wants them, just e-mail me (Sunny (at) SunnyCrittenden.com) and I’ll hook you up. :) Also feel free to give show suggestions since I have no idea what I’ll be doing for the show yet.

And with that, I’m out. But before I go, here’s a video of spiders on drugs:

I was up until 5am trying to make a video response to Ditsy’s latest vlog and “bullshit” doesn’t even cover the experience.

First, I tried making the video using my iSight and iMovie because you can record directly from your iSight using iMovie, but for some reason whenever I try to do this, about a minute in, the cam will try to autofocus, freezing the frame and only recording audio. This ALWAYS happens and I really don’t know why. I’m using an iBook, which isn’t the greatest equipment for such a project, but we’ve dumped enough extra RAM in this sucker, this really shouldn’t be happening.

But it is, so I switched to plan B, which was using EvoCam and the iSight to make the video, which worked out well but was lower quality than Plan A would have given me. So I finish and go to upload the video to YouTube, but of course the file’s too big so, using iMovie, I tried to compress it for the web, which wouldn’t work because it kept asking me for my .Mac account info (???) so I used the e-mail compression option, even though I knew it would kill the quality significantly.

So I do that, the file is now 65k compared to 176MB and I try uploading that to YouTube, but it kept failing because it said the .mov file was empty. WTF? It worked on my computer??? So then I just e-mailed the file to Ditsy, but it wouldn’t work for her either.

Now I dunno wtf to do. Making videos shouldn’t be this difficult!!!!! It really really shouldn’t. I have so much video equipment, a decent computer, supposedly the right software….wtf?!?!?!?!?!

And the biggest piss-off to me is that I’ve got this $500 video camera sitting here that I rarely use (bought for a project that’s been shelved indefinitely) because I can’t get the videos from the camera to my computer without a cable I can’t afford (i.LINK cable?) and even if I could, at most I only have 10GB free on my hard drive at a time and I don’t want it clogged up with videos that I don’t have the capabilities of burning to a DVD when I’m done. (Without a DVD burner in this machine, once the vid’s on my comp, it’s a huge pain in the ass with networking & shit to get if OFF my comp.)

Fucking grrrr. *kicks technology*

Also? Last month I shot video (with the actual video camera so the quality’s good) of me, Blake, Jesse & Blake playing this Honey Bee Tree boardgame thing and Wes is sooooo fucking cute and funny and I’ve been dying to edit it into little segments, but the goddamn thing (in 2 parts) is a .WMV file and apparently I don’t have the means to convert that into the .mov I need to edit it in iMovie. I tried some online conversion thing but it just crashed my browser a billion times (probably because the video’s like, 800 MB or something stupid like that) and now I’m not really sure what to do with it.

Technology hates me. :(

In other news, last night we had a slight Hoover Dog incident. In the winter Hoover’s nails get really long because all of the pavement is covered in snow and doesn’t file them down, so last night Blake decided it was time to give them a trim.

Hoover is 85-90lbs of pure, unadulterated PUSSY, so when it’s nail cutting (or bath) time, he howls & growls & barks & whines and carries on like you’re trying to kill him long before you actually even touch him with the clippers.

So Blake’s going to town on his nails and the dog’s freaking out like he always does, struggling (you pretty much have to tackle him and hold him down) and howling and being retarded and then Blake looks down and realizes that 3 out of 4 paws are resting in puddles of blood. BIG puddles of blood. HOLY SHIT that’s a lot of blood. Big dog, black nails, big quick inside the nail and 3 of them got knicked pretty good during the struggle. We didn’t have one of those stiptic (?) pencil things or the cornstarch that Wikipedia recommended, but we did have gauze and flour, so that’s what we did.

Except Hoover wasn’t having it and he basically bled all over my studio for about 3 hours. He bled a LOT, holy crap. Sooooo, Blake & I have decided that he’s never doing that again and next time, we’ll pay the groomers the $15 they charge to do it. I’m sure they have muzzles & stuff (they’ll need it).

Annnnd as if this day couldn’t get any better, Blake just called on his lunch to say that the car’s royally fucked up and is going to cost $500 to fix.

Fuck this “life” shit, I’m painting for the rest of the day.

Fun Fact: I have this theory that if one can live a karmically neutral life, at the end of it rather than reincarnating, your energy just dissipates into nothingness. Personally, that’s what I’m going for.

So this afternoon I had a shower, put real clothes on (as opposed to PJs) and even a little bit of makeup and then I sat here for like, 3 hours trying to make a video blog using iMovie and my iSight. Well…I’m just not a vlogger, I don’t think. Moving video of myself, to me, is just the absolute fucking creepiest thing and I can’t stand it. I haven’t given up on the idea of making at least one video blog for shits, giggles & sheer posterity (eventually), but using iMovie with the preview window & all, just isn’t the way to go about it, I’ve decided.

I’m not sure if anyone’s been paying attention, but I’m kinda in the process of seriously re-evaluating and reorganizing my life and this site and the internet in general is a really big part of that. I didn’t do a big New Year’s post because I don’t do the resolution thing as a rule, and new years don’t mean a whole lot to me because, like a lot of people, I’m still just a big kid and the “new year” starts in Sept., ends in June and summer is just this period of awesomeness that’s outside of the calendar year. I’ll know I’m a grown-up when suddenly January means something to me.

I can’t even really say that I’m working on any particular goals, outside of NOT going nuts and ending up in the hospital again this winter, but I’ve been thinking a lot about how life is going to change around me pretty hardcore in the next year and what opportunities & pitfalls that’s going to create.

Wes, my youngest, is turning 4 in a couple of weeks, which means that he’s going to be starting junior kindergarten in the fall. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have immense issues surrounding this fact, not because of the whole “my baby’s leaving me” thing but because of how it’s going to change the structure of my day and routine in general, as well as the pressure I’m feeling because when your youngest starts kindergarten, usually women go back to work or school or find a job or something and that’s basically what society expects people to do.

But that’s not what I want to do and half my problem is that I don’t really even KNOW what I want to do yet, beyond the shit I already do. :| All I know is that (among other things) I’ve got $32,000 worth of student loans that aren’t going to go away and I can’t stay on interest relief forever, so come September, some decisions are going to have to be made.

I guess I’m a grown-up afterall. When the fuck did that happen? :(

Despite all this personal upheaval and mental junk I’ve been sifting through, there are a lot of things I’m looking forward to once days become mine again and a lot of things I’m attempting to work towards in the meantime, but at this point are mostly tentative. Right now I’m trying to get Sunnyland set up as a legitimate business. What kind of business, I’m not entirely sure yet, but hopefully one that makes more than the $15/month the bank’s charging me for a business account. I know I definitely want to make ‘zines again, I know I want to do something with Lulu.com eventually (have a few projects in mind), I want to set up my studio more as an actual studio where I can paint and cam and write and create and actually be somewhat productive, as opposed to it just being “the smoking lounge” with the leaky roof where we watch TV when people come over.

With the roof being fixed in the spring, this is all possible. When the teacup wall is complete, I can move the smoking lounge outside where it belongs. When Wes starts school, I can explore and do a lot of things I just can’t do now.

One of the things I’m really interested in is the town I live in because in some ways, it is so ass-backwards I can’t even believe it exists, let alone the fact that I live here. For months I’ve been trying to figure out a safe way to explore and add that dimension to things online, but I keep getting caught on both logistics, ethics and overal safety. I mean…is it really a good idea to blog about the town I live in? Especially when it’s teeny tiny, gossipy as all hell and the internet’s full of creepy stalker types? I’m not sure, but it’s something I’ve been giving a lot of thought to recently. The world I live in, the one in my head, the one inside my computer (which are mostly one in the same), it’s all very contrast to the environment in which I live and there’s a part of me that gets a really big kick out of that…but it could be ruined pretty easily if I exploit it creatively, so I’m trying to think and plan carefully.

I dunno, my mind’s just a jumble of plans and ideas these days, which is both worrisome and reassuring, but at least I feel as though I’m on a path to somewhere.

Basically? Just bear with me while I get my shit together, I’m workin’ on it.

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. :)