My Life...

in Haiku

I would like to eat
Banana Nut Cheerios
For-evah-evah


Let's ditch the punk show
you beat the secret levels
I'll get the ice cream


Can't feel my fingers
broke another guitar string
this is so much fun


Dartmouth porno shop
forty minutes on the bus
will work for dildos


bourgeois restaurant
can't get your shit together
beware kitchen staff 

Why wood burning is awesome: it's as if I'm drawing with dark brown ink that smells like a camp fire. What could be better?

Last night Mistake Makers and Stagnant Stars played Rockin' 4 Dollars down at Reflections Cabaret. While hanging out in bars has worked it's way down to the bottom of the list of things I like to do, we had a great time. We played some pool, laughed at the shitty (but brave) bands, and played what we all considered to be an awesome set. We didn't win any money (or a deep fryer...) but we're stoked to go back and try again next week.

Today has been more Scrabble and art making and snuggling and coffee drinking. I made a pudding cake that tasted more like the box it was in than cake, but I guess you have to make do when everything you eat comes from a food bank. I've applied for a zillion jobs, but haven't heard anything back. I feel just like I did last year. Where's my windfall, world?

My friend Mogli, in addition to being one of my all time favorite musical artists, is an extremely talented tattoo artist. She works out of her bedroom in her punk rock apartment (directly above mine), and does mostly her own designs.
Steve built some punx bunx for Mogli and her room mate Beyon, so today he got a massive tatty on his upper arm in return.

My life in point-form:

+ Slept in every day this week with my favourite gentleman

+ Got paid today

+ Got paid back most of a chunk of money that's owed to me

- the above funds combined with my GST cheque only puts me at $5 above rent

+ It's 5 degrees right now

- all the snow is melting on the commons, which is how I discovered one of my rubber boots has a leak

+ I just ate my favorite sandwich (avocado, hummus, red onion, havarti, greens)

- couldn't really afford those groceries

+ I've not only been making art every day, but I've been making art that I'm proud of every day!

+ I successfully booked a show for the Mistake Makers tour by myself, in a town where I don't know
anyone. I've never done that before!

+ I'm bartering with a friend for some tailoring (I'm doing the tailoring, and getting a zine for it)

+ just smooched a little bit (best interlude)

- my cat pooped on my floor today. I don't know what the fuck has gotten into these animals

+ I built a new bike

- it might be too small for me

+ I'm exactly where I want to be

I am so burnt out on cats.

My room and the living room both smell like shit way more often than I am comfortable.

Ruckus is always trying to devour whatever cardboard box she can find in my room (I guess the ideal time for this is around 4am), Ronnie Boy is constantly sneaking around my room (eating Ruckus' food, using her little box), and Honey Wheat is a fucking furry demon torpedo. She's 5 months old but hasn't gotten any bigger, seemingly sleeps for only an hour a day, pulls stuff out of the garbage and recycling, torments the other cats until they chase her, attacks inanimate objects, and bites and scratches people.

I love cats, and the ones that live here especially, but these days they've been extremely hard to deal with. I was so stoked when Ruckus finally left her kitten stage and started sleeping all day, but now it's like she's reverted.

I'm losing my mind.

In my life

Sonny Bones is brewing ginger beer, I made a yummy curry, Honey Wheat destroys Mogli's head, and Steve Believe has band practice with every band ever made.
Not pictured is the Super Secret recording project Steve and I are working on, the Black Metal potluck where the curry was eaten, and the 400 games of Scrabble I've played in the last week.

Things to not talk to my mother about:

- Anarchy
- Non-monogamy
- Money

I'm burnin', I'm burnin', I'm burnin' for you

I don't know if you can tell or not, but this image is burnt into the wood. Don't know what the banner's going to say yet, probably something to do with the Little Office since this is an acrylic painting kit (that just happens to be made of sweet, sweet, burnable wood.)

The Response

Hi Rosie,
Thanks for your email. I was not part of putting together this month's Tide, as I was in Ontario, but am forwarding your response to those who were. We will be discussing this issue at our next meeting.
I hope the Media Co-op will regain your support again in the future.
take care,
Hillary


Totally shrugged off all responsibility, and didn't even apologize. Not stoked.

On a completely unrelated topic, wood-burning is a fucking weird art form!

AAAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH

So I consider myself to be pretty political, and there are many things I'm very passionate about, and one of those things is feminism. It's impossible for me to ignore the many ways in which women are oppressed every day, all over the world. I realize that I am an extremely privileged person on many levels, but even I've been discriminated against as a female-bodied person.
One of the ways I've been trying to do my part to stave off sexism and gender-based oppression (among other things) is to use non-oppressive language. I don't use gendered insults, I don't use slurs. If I say something that someone else finds offensive or hurtful, then I never say that word again. It's a tiny thing that everyone can do to make others comfortable in a world that just continuously shits on so many oppressed groups.
I guess maybe I'm sheltered, maybe I'm spoiled, and certainly I'm a very lucky person to live and be friends with so many folks with similar goals and ideals. I don't have to hear hateful speech on a daily basis, and on the off chance someone says something questionable, they are usually very receptive to being confronted on it.
So imagine my reaction when I was at the Good Food Emporium earlier today, and I picked up a copy of the Halifax Media Co-op's The Tide, an independently produced single-page publication of local news, and read the following paragraph:

Nature Will Tend To Win

The East Coast was bitch-slapped by nature, with four major wind, rain, and snow storms in as many weeks. A researcher with New Brunswick's Environment Department said the storms may be examples of climate change, and that we might want to pay more attention to how we develop because "nature will tend to win."

BITCH-SLAPPED! THE EAST COAST WAS BITCH-SLAPPED! What the fuck? What the FUCK?

Since I really don't feel like going over why this makes me so angry, here's a copy of the e-mail I sent to Media co-op editor Hillary Lindsay (and then forwarded to the entire Feminist League for Agitation Propaganda).

Dear Hillary,

Today I picked up a copy of the January 2011 edition of The Tide. While I started off curious and intrigued to read what's local and newsworthy, I have to say that I was completely shocked and disgusted when I came to the "News in Brief" section.

The fact that there is a publication that is understood to be left and radical, but will comfortably print the term BITCH-SLAPPED, is absolutely repulsive. Being independent does not give you the authority to be blatantly sexist and so shockingly offensive.

The word "bitch" is, on it's own, incredibly problematic and terribly hurtful towards women. When used towards women, it often implies that any sort of self-determination, strength, or assertiveness is a despicable quality. When used towards men, it's identifying weakness, submissiveness, and other "lowly" qualities as being inherently female. It hurts women by making them feel it's bad to be strong, and it hurts men by making them feel like they have to live up to some absurd standard of masculinity. Let us not forget that the term itself originally refers to a female dog, thus comparing women to animals.

When used in conjunction with "slap", a whole whack of negative imagery is conjured up. Whether one is referring to slapping a "bitch", or being slapped by a "bitch" doesn't matter. What matters is that someone actually used hateful, sexist speech when describing bad fucking weather! Aligning winter storms with abusing women is absolutely unacceptable. 

What really throws me off is that this offence is printed directly beside a blurb on calling out Q104 for using homophobic speech. A little integrity, please?

I really expected more from you and the Media Co-op, and I sincerely hope that things of this nature aren't so clearly overlooked in the future.

Rosie McDonald

Now I'm going to go play scrabble and try to forget about how pissed off I am.

The Little Office

A few nights ago Steve apologized for being "a little off". I misheard this, and thought he was apologizing for being a little office, and while I was pretty confused by that statement I figured it would be a great name for the art/work/studio space that we set up in the weird back section of my room. It looks like a disaster in the photo, but that's only because we've been super busy in the last few days. From the left you can see my laptop (open to this page! woah, meta!), my old camera, and some paints. There's a new desk lamp, some spray paint, some transparencies, a big box of pens and markers, a pile of fabric that is transitioning from being a shirt to a skirt (see below), my sewing machine and Kelly's typewriter.

In less than a week, Steve's completed three paintings and has already started a fourth. He's a machine. I knew he was a good artist from the few paintings he'd posted over on the 90's babies blog, and I really like the pen & ink drawings that he does, but being around while he draws and paints all the time has really opened my eyes to how talented he is. Also, he's been using up all the canvases I've been saving up and stashing in my crowded room, so it's win-win. He's making rad art, and my art supplies are finally getting used.

I've been playing around with my sewing machine a lot lately, which has been really nice. I've always really loved fashion (weird, I know. I wear the same clothes every day, and am not at all fashionable) and for a while I toyed with the idea of going to NSCAD for fashion or textiles or something, but it's pretty obvious that post-secondary isn't for me. I took a night course there called "Garment Alteration and Re-design" which, incidentally, is exactly what I do, so I thought it would be an amazing course but it was total bullshit. I'm not wasting my time and money on some lady telling me that I can make existing garments exciting by using random coloured thread to make abstract designs, and I sure as fuck am not about to use fabric paint on anything I make. So now I just hunch over my sewing machine, making up patterns as I go. So far it's been working rather well, actually! I've been making wrap skirts out of used men's dress shirts. Instead of tying at the waist, I used the existing buttons and holes from the shirts to make an adjustable, fastening waist-band. It's kind of hard to explain, so I'm going to try and get someone to model one and then I'll post some pictures.

In the mean time, here are some of the things we've been working on:

More to come!

I do my best to avoid going to sleep. (I feel like I've mentioned that on here before...)
One of the reasons is because I feel really uncomfortable when I'm lying in bed, waiting to fall asleep. I always feel like that's time I could spend doing something else, something more productive. I also used to cut down on my time sleeping so that I wouldn't dream. I've spent so much time with such an unhealthy mind that even though I never really have nightmares, I'm scared of the kind of shit my subconscious could show me while I'm sleeping and totally out of control.
I was in a great mood this morning at 3:30 when I finally folded up the sewing I was working on and decided to hit the hay, but for some reason my mind still decided to sleep hard and dream dreams that disturbed me so much I couldn't get out of bed until 9 minutes before my shift at work started. The dream itself wasn't even that bad, if I described it to you then it would just sound silly, but I still had a crippling emotional reaction to it.
I need to make peace with bed time. I wish I could choose to take naps and enjoy them, I wish I could look forward to getting a full night's sleep. If there's someone with me when I go to sleep then it's not so bad, I find myself distracted and comforted.
Ah, it's weird. Maybe I should take some supplements or something? Chop my caffeine intake?

Oh wow, something I just thought of:
It's really something to be able to hang out with one of your friends, and then go home and listen to music they've made. My music is on shuffle right now, and in the last 5 minutes I've heard two different Brad Religion projects.
Neat! My friends are so fucking cool!

Living the Dream

Steve hit the nail right on the head today. He and I have been so busy and so productive since he got back to Halifax that neither of us has had time to be sad or crazy or self-destructive. Other than one or two difficult moment with my family, things have been swell!
Last night I tuckered myself out by playing Super Mario World with Steve until about 2am. Woke up this morning with my arms around an amazing guy, then booked it home to quickly prepare for a women's circle I was leading at my old high school on medicinal herbs and plants. (I love that school, I love those girls, I am so excited to help take over the Women's Circle curriculum!)
Steve and I then spent the afternoon running around Bayer's Lake, shopping and anti-shopping. I picked up a bunch of clothes at Value Village that I can alter and sell (trying my hardest to not need a second job), we got some treats at Bulk Barn and wandered blissfully around Chapters for quite a while.
When we got back to the city I played more video games while he recorded some songs with the Rumble Strips, then I came home and got right to sewing. It was like fate, I found a folding card table on the walk home! It was a little awkward to carry, but it has a handle and is already covered in paint stains from the previous owner's projects. One of the legs is a little fucked up, but it fits nicely into the Little Office (what I'm now calling the back chunk of my room, which Steve helped me organize into an art/working/sewing space.
Picking up my friend Molly at the airport would have been the perfect end to a perfect day, but after milling around the airport for over an hour her partner and I figured that maybe something about her flight was different than we'd thought...
Now it's the wee hours of the morning, but I'm not that tired so I'm going to finish up this skirt I started earlier. Then sleep, then work, then band practice, then probably some more craftiness. Too busy to be crazy, too productive to be sad! I hope I can keep this pace until March!

Oh good, we made it.

The show was excellent, there were lots of familiar faces and a few new ones. My dad came and hung out and made friends with a weird dude (who later came up to me and assured me my dad was a solid guy), which makes me super happy. My dad is such a huge fan of all my friends. He was telling me that he was trying to explain the whole DIY folk punk scene to the people he works with (he works on Parliament hill for the federal NDP) and was apparently getting frustrated by how no one believed him that people like us exist. I'm sure that by this time next year we'll have my dad fully converted and he'll be throwing bricks and riding trains and playing a banjo.

Today I have heartburn and a sore throat (I can't help myself, when folks sing along to our band I sing along too. Forget about having actual parts that I'm supposed to sing, I just destroy my voice shouting along for the whole set), but I'm feeling good. It's nice to hang out with Steve again and actually get out of my house and be with friends.

On the agenda for today is reorganizing my room to make half of it into an office/studio/workspace where I can set up my sewing machine and a drawing table and a computer desk and shit. Exciting first project of the year! Once it's all together I'll sort through the photos I took of the show and maybe post some here or on the DIY Halifax page.

I love you guys. If we can make it through 2010 we can make it through anything.

<3