Maybe It’s Not Too Late To Start Again At Twelve Because Turning Thirty When I Was Ten Was Not As Good A Life Plan As You Might Think

Posted on October 5, 2007 by Gabriel...

“I took a fresh grip on my cardboard case, turned towards the exit from the square and set off, left-right, left-right, left-right, on the road for home.”
“Vet In A Spin”; James Herriot (1977), last sentence.

“All I’ve ever done is slit my throat from ear to ear and convinced myself I was smiling. I’ve learned, but I can’t quantify what that knowledge is… it has been incorporated into who I am, to define what I have learned from these events and these people I would have to define myself.”
something I wrote last year.

I was eleven-years old the first time my mother heard me laugh. Maybe ten. I was reading one of James Herriot’s books. She rushed into the living room and told me she had never heard me laugh — not “laugh so hard” or “laugh in that way” but “laugh… for real.” I can remember being surprised, it had never occurred to me that laughing out loud was something people did.

After she went back into the kitchen I turned the pages backwards and read the funny passage again and actually tried to laugh like I had just done. For the next while, whenever I read something remotely funny, I tried to laugh in the same way. It wasn’t just a matter of trying to get another positive reaction from my mother, I was also hearing this sound for the first time. Or, at the very least, I was hearing this sound for the first time as something important. It was something necessary, that Other People thought not only note worthy but noticed was missing from who I was.

I sat in my grandfather’s easy-chair and sporadically laughed out loud for another fifteen minutes or so… until my grandmother asked me to “quiet down” because she and my mother were trying to talk.

When I was a child people used to say things like “he’s such a serious child”, then it was “he’s such a serious boy” then “he’s such a serious young man”. I was always “ten turning thirty”. I was always alien, different. But I didn’t speak the language, I didn’t understand what they were saying. I thought, after hearing it so often, they meant there was something special about me. That I was an adult, at least more adult — more special — than the punks in my grade.

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Posted in Bipolar, Bipolar Disease, Bipolar Disorder, Bud, crazy people with no pants, Depression, Father, Health, Lithium, Living With Depression, Living With Manic Depression, Manic Depression, Memories, Punk | 5 Comments

Totally Inappropriate Salted Humour Day: Have The Money By Tomorrow And There Won’t Be Any Problems

Posted on September 27, 2007 by Gabriel...


‘Family Guy’
“here’s a suggestion, have the money by tomorrow and there won’t be any problems”

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If I bet on humanity
I’d never cash a ticket.
‘New Poems’; Charles Bukowski 

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…hand to my chin, I dream of
nothing while my lost childhood
leaps like a dolphin
in the frozen sea.
“like a dolphin”;
‘Sifting Through the Madness For The Word, The Line, The Way’,
Charles Bukowski (2004, Posthumous) 

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About Dean [name withheld to protect his mother].

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I’ve been getting calls recently from a law office representing a collections agency. So, of course, I haven’t been answering the phone. Not out of apprehension and certainly not fear, but boredom. Everyfreakingtime I talk to these people it’s the same thing, I tell them I’m on Permanent Disability they tell me how proud they are to have convinced mothers on welfare — or “Welfare Mothers” using their terminology — to pay five bucks a month towards paying off a debt, so I should do the same. Then I remind them of how proud their own mothers must be they work in a place which haranges and berates single moms getting $600/month from the government to donate a bag of milk a month when, by law, those moms are actually — just like me — protected from collections agencies. 

So last night, after a third call, I Googled the law firm and found all sorts of American-based discussion forums dating back to 2004. Ends up the Markham, Ontario (just north of Toronto) based law firm has been under investigation several  times by the Law Society of Upper Canada with regards to 900-number telephone scams centred around haranguing American elderly couples into paying fake telephone billing debts. Basically they call you threatening legal action over a fake bill, and they keep calling until you send them a cheque. In most cases they called friends and family, getting their numbers through the original elderly person by asking for references.

Then, after getting these people to pay, sometimes more than once, between US$800-1500 they would use a phone scam — I’m not sure if this is still possible, but it was all the rage with scammers a few years ago — where they’ll sell long distance service using your phone number as a dummy. Of course the charges end up on your phone bill.

So this morning I got into Reporter Mode. Early this morning, before the law office opened, I called their answering service and got the names of the Associates and Lawyers through the company directory and Googled them. Then I made notes and called the Law Society of Upper Canada, which told me it’d take a few days to put together the information I was looking for, then made a list of questions based on what I could find and attached my tape recorder to the phone.

After putting on my best Reporter Voice, I called and asked for the Mr. Dude who had called and left the semi-inhospitable messages alluding to a mysterious “investigation”. After giving him the case reference number he asked my name and I took a deep breath — really — and got ready to read the speech I had prepared about how people receiving government cheques shouldn’t be taken advantage of… I’m fairly certain I had just the right tone of indignation and disrespect ready for him.

And that’s when he asked if I knew a Dean [lastname here], a dude I’ve known since high school. Thank The Christ it Totally had nothing to do with me. My friend, Dean [mother’s lastname withheld], needed some help coming off a crack habit last year so I gave him a place to stay… also I needed a second player for PlayStation’s “Ghost Recon”. Totally fucking cool game. Dean’s one of the sweetest, largest and most irresponsible people I’ve ever met or heard of. He quit school in grade ten, I quit in grade twelve then again in thirteen. The two of us, along with a rotating group of about ten other dudes, were baked for more than three years.

Over the past eighteen years Dean has conned and connived and borrowed thousands and thousands of dollars from people, banks and credit agencies. But never from friends, although he does owe our friends, E & R, a second hand portable stereo and he still has my collection of Led Zeppelin cassettes I forgot in his car back in 1989. So I told the “lawyer’s assistant” I’ve never heard of Dean [withheld here] and that was that. Apparently while in rehab Dean [here withheld] put me down as a character reference on some loans and school stuff — I knew about some of them, he wants to be a drug counselor… it’s where all the fine ladies are — and the loans haven’t been repaid… or even acknowledged.

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Quick Dean ]insert heldwith[ Story…

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Back in the day one of our favourite things to do after spending two or three days drunk and stoned was to fire off guns at barns and “targets” — this was pre-Internet, there was also Risk marathons, Hearts and drag racing tractors on the highway. One night we were bored with shooting the sheds, and targets are lame, so we thought skeet shooting would be cool. But we had no clay and no spring action arm to pitch things with. So five of us — loaded up with a sawed-off double-barrelled .410 shotgun, a pump 10-guage and 12-guage shotgun, a semi-automatic WW2 .45 pistol that randomly wouldn’t stop shooting and a .357 lined up on the pitch-dark lawn and Dean [withname held], all six foot six inches, 260 pounds of him, stood in front of us with a half-full plastic jug… with water, so we could see if we hit it. Dean [heldinsert here] threw the jug up in the air and dove to the ground… the jug flew in the air and we started shooting. We did it three times before it occurred to us Dean [zeppelinwith insert] could get hurt. So we tried it a few times with him behind us, so the jug — still not shot — came over our heads. The second time it clipped Tim [everyone thinks you’re dead] in the head which instantly sent the .45 into random-mode and blew off his last three rounds all at once into the shed’s roof. The coolest thing was the muzzle-flash from the .410, essentially a bird gun. Two feet of flame. Awesome.

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…since november fourteenth, 2006.

“You burn things when there’s no going back. How much of
yourself have you had to burn away to be
the person you are today? Because baby, my body
is ash and my mind is still smoking.”

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Posted in Bipolar Disease, Bipolar Disorder, crazy people with no pants, Depression, Health, Humor, Humour, Inappropriate Humour Day, Lithium, Living With Depression, Living With Manic Depression, Manic Depression, Memories, Punk, YouTube | Tagged | 6 Comments

Are BiPolar Blogs Driving Those Of Us With The Disease Into Depressions OR Great Now Your Peanut Butter Cycle Is All Over My Chocolate Phase

Posted on September 21, 2007 by Gabriel...


“south be-ach!” ‘highonsugar25′
“don’t throw your empty chip bags on the beach! Seagulls are stupid.. they’ll choke!”

queenminx.wordpress (moved to qweenminx.wordpress?)
puddlejumper.wordpress (moved to puddlejumping.wordpress)
moineaureveur.wordpress
sisyphusledge.wordpress
luckymud.wordpress
notsaussure.wordpress (Last Post June 18)
mercurialscribe.wordpress (moved to mercurialscribe.com)
hellfried.wordpress
leblank.wordpress. (Last Post August 20)
catatoniatoday.com/ (Last Post July 20)
gabrielae.wordpress
tomdandy.wordpress (Last Post April 11: “The End.”)
This Bottle’s For All My Fallen Homies And The One’s In Lockdown… these are the blogs which have been deleted or abandoned by people who have left responses on this blog over the past six months.

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I can’t see the point in another day
When nobody listens to a word I say
You can call it lack of confidence
But to carry on living doesn’t make no sense…
I guess this is our last goodbye
And you don’t care, so I won’t cry
But you’ll be sorry when I’m dead
And all this guilt will be on your head
I guess you’d call it suicide
But I’m too full to swallow my pride
“Can’t Stand Losing You”; ‘Outlandos d’Amour’, The Police (1978)

Is it possible for people with manic depression… to synch our cycles together when surrounded by a community of people with the disease, therefore being regularly exposed to material and information about the debilitating effects of the disease written by people with manic depression?

Granted, it would be pretty fucking weird to be living in a community of people with manic depression, but maybe that’s what we’re starting to do with these blogs… manic depression is a rare disease, of the 20% of people in Canada who will suffer through a single clinical depression in their lives we’re the 2% who do it professionally. But despite the incredibly low number of incidence, most of my considerable blogging life is spent reading and responding to blogs about or by people with manic depression. It would be next to impossible to attain this level of interaction between people with manic depression out in the real world.

Consider that, except for Heroes and The Office, no one watches television anymore and we’re now taking that time — hours a day and days a month — and putting it into Web Surfing. And consider that, as human beings, we seek out the familiar and this applies to opinion as well. In my blogroll alone — on this site — there are thirty-seven blogs written by people with manic depression. My guess is, if you’re reading this and having been diagnosed with manic depression and having created a blog to discuss the disease or to write about your recovery, you’ve got a blogroll a mile long and they’re mostly about manic depression.

Now, while manic depression brings on depressions randomly, they’re not entirely random. There are, or can be, triggers. There’s also the fact that most people with manic depression, if not all, have crippling clinical depressions which are hidden by the disease and clinical depressions definitely have triggers. So seasonal light availability is a factor of course, so is weather, then there are always the reminders of past tragedies we encounter… fuck, stubbing your toe twice in a morning can be a trigger to feelings of worthlessness.

I can honestly say that blogging has introduced some triggers for my depressions, and even low-level manics as well. Small things like a down trend in visits, or a relatively long time between responses, or something larger like a post lost to a computer freezing or the vagaries of WordPress. Then there are the conversations I’ve had on other blogs, and on my blogs, where I not only thought I was helping someone through a crisis or an episode but I was told as much, only to return a few days later to find the blog has been deleted.

We spend months posting and reading and joking and helping then we’re hit with “The authors have deleted this blog. The content is no longer available.” and a long string of unanswered emails. There is this thing with people going through suicide fantasies where we want people to think, just for a second, that we’ve done it. That we’re swinging from a tree in our backyard, or we’ve tossed back three handfuls of Seroquel and half a bottle of Peach Schnapps. It gives us a sense of control we really don’t have. We don’t answer the phone for a few days, but listen to the messages. We tip toe around the apartment when someone knocks on the door, then watch them drive away.

Deleting your blog might seem a drastic way to gain some attention, but leaving your blog with a cryptic “That’s all folks” post fits with the ‘real world’ examples of ringing phones and unanswered doors. Are people really reading? Do people care enough to ask me to come back? But consider this… when we’re depressed enough to think suicidal thoughts and let the phone ring and the responses pile up, we’re making the people calling and posting and knocking depressed just like us.

And when the people doing all that physical activity are like us, with a disease which causes depressions and with all those hidden clinical depressions, are we creating a situation where we’re forcing our cycle onto them? And not just with the deleted or abandoned blogs, but with the constant stream of postings discussing in detail the effects our disease, or our clinical depressions, are having on our individual lives?

When a community of like minded individuals is created the opinions and beliefs of those people can actually become more extreme — a pack of knitters, for example, may become more and more involved with their knitting based on the feedback from their blogging community. There is also the reward system where, when I post something particularly tragic or heartbreaking, I get more feedback and longer, more involved responses — the warm and easy to attain blanket of compassion which is great for my short term needs, but shit on yours.

So I post “that’s it, I can’t fucking hang on anymore”, you respond “think of all the good shit” then I stay away for a few days… how does that make you feel? Because, for a time period based on how emotionally involved I am with you and your blog, I feel anxious and will generally fall into a funk. Then there are the two, maybe three times I’ve come close to deleting this blog out of depressions based entirely on other people deleting their blogs — fuck, there was once I logged in with the intention of suiciding all three of my blogs.

None of this is new, this is the way Cults are formed. A bunch of like-minded individuals come together based on philosophical beliefs or physical and emotional needs then, given time, the original ideals become more extreme as everyone evolves together. I’m not suggesting that Manic Depression Blogging Groups are leading to Heaven’s Gate scenario’s, but manic depression isn’t about suicide. Our cycles are debilitating but they’re not deadly — very few people with manic depression commit suicide… otherwise it’d be raining manic depressives from every bridge and rooftop.

But it does lead me to believe that we are having a very real effect on each others cycles. My depressing anecdotes drop your Normal Mood down two notches, or a few days of no one responding to your post leading to “why should I even bother” episode. This is a theory I’ve been working* on for awhile, and the fact I can’t find anything on Google about it leads me to believe maybe I’ve read too much Martin Amis and not enough Christopher Hitchens, or no one has given it much thought. Considering the still novelty factor of blogs and blogging groups, and the lack of manic depressive communities in the past to perform studies on, I’m leaning towards the latter… which would mean, if found to be true, this observation should solidify my standing as a Freaking Genius… or Master Of The Obvious. I’m good either way.

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*Hours of mayhem on Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Litres of Diet Pepsi and chunks of St. Albert’s Medium-Old CheddEr Cheese.

And just to be fair to the BiPOnes in da house, I’m confident I’ve gotten into low-level manic phases through conversations on my blogs and through other blogs… never from just reading a post, however.

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...thanks.

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Posted in Bipolar, Bipolar Disease, Bipolar Disorder, Canada, Classic, crazy people with no pants, Depression, Grand Theft Auto, Health, Lithium, Living With Depression, Living With Manic Depression, Manic Depression, Punk | 39 Comments

Totally Inappropriate Salted Humour Day: Here To Kick Some Ass And Drink Beer And We’re Almost Out Of Beer

Posted on September 16, 2007 by Gabriel...


‘MadTV’
“laws of physics clearly state than an object that was just pushed will push back”

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Narrator: Well, what do you want me to do? You just want me to hit you?
Tyler Durden: C’mon, do me this one favor.
Narrator: Why?
Tyler: Why? I don’t know why; I don’t know. Never been in a fight. You?
Narrator: No, but that’s a good thing.
Tyler: No, it is not. How much can you know about yourself, you’ve never been in a fight? I don’t wanna die without any scars. So come on; hit me before I lose my nerve.
Narrator: This is crazy.
Tyler: So go crazy. Let ‘er rip.
Narrator: I don’t know about this.
Tyler: I don’t either. Who gives a shit? No one’s watching. What do you care?
Narrator: Whoa, wait, this is crazy. You want me to hit you?
Tyler: That’s right.
Narrator: What, like in the face?
Tyler: Surprise me.
Narrator: This is so fucking stupid…
Narrator swings, connects against Tyler’s head
Tyler: Motherfucker! You hit me in the ear!
Narrator: Well, Jesus, I’m sorry.
Tyler: Ow, Christ… why the ear, man?
Narrator: Guess I fucked it up…
Tyler: No, that was perfect!
“Fight Club”; Chuck Palahniuk (1996)

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“make a big man nervous, he’ll rough you up and call the job done… a small man will kill you”
“things i learned in Prison”; Juggling Cats (August 4, 2007)

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Weed: A Great Substitute For A Mike-Style Father.

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It’s always the dudes who think a fight is scripted: 1. Say something witty; 2. Listen to the other dudes witticism; 3. Throw punch; 4. Take a break; 5. Evade punch from dude; 6. Role d8 to determine damage… who end up getting their ass kicked.

There was this great instructional video a few years ago of how fights are conducted in this reality… it wasn’t really an instructional video, it was something caught in the corner of a home movie of a high school pool party. The person with the camera was too far away to catch the sound, but from the body language it started like this:

Dude One: “What did you just say?”
Dude Two: “What?”
DO: “Just now, man. When you walked past, what’d you say?”
DT: “About what?”
DO: “You said, ‘Smells like someone’s tokin’ some reefer.'”
DT: “No, I meant somewhere I smell some pot, you know? It was just an observation.”
DO: “Oh, an observation, huh? Well who the hell are you, man? Isaac fucking Newton?”

At which point DO, or “Clint”, does a lean in and DT — lets call him “Mike” — quickly retreats with his friends. “Mike” then spends time using this ultimate humiliation, coupled with the encouragement from his friends and all of his fighting experience taken away from a White Wolf role-playing game to gird his loins. He then returns to where “Clint” and his friends are standing, and punches “Clint” in the face. As “Mike” tries to explain himself and waits for the dice to be rolled to decide the damage inflicted by his mighty blow, “Clint” has punched him four times in the face. “Mike”, a look of disbelief and confusion on his face, falls backwards and crushes a shrub. “Clint”, now with a knee on “Mike’s” chest, punches “Mike” another four times to the head before “Clint’s” friends pull him off. In ten seconds “Clint” has taught “Mike” a valuable lesson because “Clint” is nothing if not a giver. Then the videotape ended.

I’ve been in a few fights… but not many. Frankly, I haven’t even seen that many fights… comparatively. But I know it’s not about size, and it’s definitely not about boxing. It’s about committing to the certainty that getting hurt is a risk worth taking. I also know everything my grandfather taught me about fighting was either a practical joke or he was stoned and reliving a Marx Brothers movie. No shit, he told me to stand on the other Dude’s foot and, while he was trapped, to make sure I punched him with the knuckle of my middle finger slightly raised from my fist.

Most of the fights I’ve seen usually started and ended in the same breath, and were based on an alcoholic misunderstanding or boredom. I have seen a few serious beatings — there is a difference between a fight and a beating — but I’ve never taken part in one.

The fights I’ve been a participant in are not things I like to talk about. Although I have no problem saying my grandfather’s technique does not work, anywhere. I’ve never been seriously hurt… but the time I had a large steel belt buckle bashed against the side of my head was an experience.

This is what I know about fighting: getting punched in the face hurts less than not knowing what it feels like to be punched in the face and then having a “Clint” beat you into Stupid Land. There is a lot of Truth in the movie “Fight Club”, most of the stuff about being raised in a fatherless world, for example. But also about growing up and never knowing what it’s like to get hit by someone angry enough to do it… and ‘not knowing’ is really what breeds fear, and it also encourages people to become tormentors. It isn’t the “Clint’s” of the world who wreak the most havoc, it’s the “Mike’s” who never learn the lesson. Or learn from the lesson.

It’s not the size of the person you have to watch out for, it’s how likely it is they’re so afraid of being punched that they left the house with a paring knife in their jacket pocket. And I’m talking about one-on-one stuff, if you’ve got a dude swinging a bat at you, run as fast as you can. And try to never get involved in some kind of ‘The Outsiders’, ‘Platoon’ or ‘Boyz n the Hood’ shit unless you’re armed.

My own father never taught me shit about shit, but from what I’ve learned over the years I firmly believe he is as clueless a “Mike” as there ever was. On one of the occasions I interviewed him a few years ago he was pretty proud of having had “bodyguards” through the ages. The fact he perceived the need to have one is pretty telling in itself, but in the transcripts he seemed very proud of having “others” fight for him.

When I was a kid… well, eighteen, we played this game called “Punch For Punch” almost every weekend after getting baked on weed. Basically you punch me in the chest or shoulder as hard as you can, then I do it back to you, until someone has had enough. It wasn’t about flinching, it was about repetition… it was about six or eight fatherless sons teaching ourselves how to put our weight into a punch, and how to twist your arm a little to drive your knuckles into the other person’s body.

How fucked is it that eight stoners taught me more about how to stand up for myself than my father and grandfather ever did… just as an aside, “Clint” and “Mike” are characters in “Dazed And Confused”.

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Clint & Mike In “Dazed And Confused” (1993)

This movie is my life from 1988 to 1992… at least the parts about weed.
And not including Milla Jovanovich. Although Melanie came really close.

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…since november fourteenth, 2006.

“You burn things when there’s no going back. How much of
yourself have you had to burn away to be
the person you are today? Because baby, my body
is ash and my mind is still smoking.”

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Posted in Bipolar, Bipolar Disease, Bipolar Disorder, crazy people with no pants, Depression, Health, Humor, Humour, Inappropriate Humour Day, Lithium, Living With Depression, Living With Manic Depression, Manic Depression, Ottawa, Punk | 5 Comments

Totally Inappropriate Salted Humour Day: The Complete And Total Opposite Of What Is Good

Posted on September 8, 2007 by Gabriel...

“Blowjob Girl”; ‘derrick comedy‘
“no, no… that’s the opposite of what is good…”

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“For the record, boys [and girls], oral sex is sex, and while it’s low-risk for HIV, oral sex can leave you with a nasty case of gonorrhea, herpes, warts, and stank-face. Unlike the Feds, I’m not telling you this to scare you, nor do I believe you should wait to have sex until you’re married. (If I had to wait until I were legally married to have sex, I’d never get to have sex at all.) I’m only telling you to be careful out there, okay?”
“Head Help“, Dan Savage (December 28, 2000)
I just added this to make this look like a semi-respectable post. 

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“I’ve always known that it was common for girls to find the penis icky – it grows, it shrinks, it waves hello, it shoots things in your eye – but I haven’t heard about many guys who don’t like going down on a girl. What the fuck is this shit? I’m going to be honest. That’s a deal-breaker for me. But don’t take my opinion too seriously, because I’m kind of a huge bitch when there’s something important like an orgasm on the line.”
“It’s My Cooch, Not a Venus Fly Trap”;
The Over-Educated Nympho (June 24, 2007)

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Other Things That Are The Opposite Of What Is Good:

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1. Slow Torrent Downloads: God dammit I want my freaking illegally attained crap now, not seventeen hours from now, now. I’m paying for 10M/second service so what the fuck is with this 124kb/s download speed shit? Actually I just started doing it a couple of days ago, so I really don’t know shit about shit. I downloaded a three CD Grunge Retrospective… it took fifteen minutes and the entire time I was thinking “what the fuck is taking so long?” and “that’s it, my computer is going to melt from the eight thousand viruses jammed into my machine by the computer arm of the Chinese Military. Fucking Maoists.” I spent close to four years straight doing nothing but reporting on Internet copyright and privacy issues.Yesterday I downloaded 36 hours of music in less than 90 minutes. I’d feel a whole lot more dirty if I hadn’t just finished listening to “Bitches Brew” by Miles Freaking Davis.

2. Kissing Before Brushing: I don’t get people who don’t get this. Seriously, hands and feet only until you’ve brushed.

3. Blogs With PopUps: I know where the fucking box-stores are, and I’ve mastered Google. If I want to buy something I’ve got all the bases already covered. And Google Ads suck as well. If I need to send a money order I have no problem walking to the post office or bank, and what the fuck is with those flashing ads for emoticons?

4. Sweaty Oral Sex: honest to God, if someone’s eating out at a restaurant they don’t rub the Lemon Chicken under their armpit first. I’m just saying.

5. Getting Arrested In GTA: very little is the opposite of what is good more than spreading mayhem and destruction on GTA for an hour then getting busted in a totally lame way, like getting smacked off my motorcycle by an FBI vehicle and landing at the feet of a cop. At least give me a chance to get up and stab him in the throat.

6. Sex In Chlorinated Water: two words: “totally no lubrication”. I just downloaded the entire career of Elvis Presley. Elvis. Presley. Suspicious Minds. King Creole. Whoops… and there’s the Best Of The Flaming Lips.

7. Backseat Sex: great place to start, lousy place to do anything else. Except for the lack of head room limousines aren’t too bad, but Limo’s with chlorinated hot-tubs are completely the opposite of good. Wanna know what else is cool about Limo’s? Playing the latest from The White Stripes really, really loud. All I’m missing right now is the Limo. That’s right, now I’ve got Icky Thump. Wow… okay, now it’s just getting silly.

8. Phone Sex: seriously… really. It’s awkward and silly. What am I wearing? Three quarts of ketchup, the empty carcass of a teddy bear and there’s an 8×10 glossy photo of my mom at the beach hanging from my pubes. I like to see what I’m having sex with. Call me old fashioned. Being on the phone while having sex can be pretty cool though. Unless someone’s telling you your grandfather just died… that’s a boner killer.

9. Anything About Anna Nicole Smith: Jesus fucking Christ, what a total fucking trainwreck. Fuck Paris and her Celebutard BritLindNicKrew, they wanted what they got, but Anna… Jesus. And in thirteen years her kid gets to watch it all in syndication. And now I’ve got Lauryn Hill… I think maybe I’ll just send my next disability cheque straight to a random record producer. Whoops, there’s The Strokes “Is This It”… holy crap “Last Nite” rocks.

10. Dark Blog Themes: the dark themes for blogs are, for the most part, the most irritating thing I encounter while blogging. I can handle the spelling mistakes, badly formatted photographs, flashing .gifs and even the lunatic ravings of a total fucking nutbar. But a dark theme… they’re not an outward expression of the inner turmoil in your conflicted existence, they’re nearly impossible to read and they never look half as cool as the people who use them think they do. Ever wonder why magazines and newspapers don’t publish in six-point white sans-serif font on a black page? Because most of the people involved in designing newspapers and magazines aren’t insane. There… I finally said it. I’ve been holding that in for eight months… just because you’re depressed doesn’t mean you have to surround yourself with depressing things.

11. Russian Hockey Referees: it’s like the Russian Hockey Federation is still run by the CCCP and the only referees they send to international tournaments are automatons with the reasoning capacity of a concussed bunny (for the past couple of weeks Team Canada have been playing Team Nyet Nyet Soviet in an eight game junior hockey “Super Series”, we’re kicking their Commie asses six games to nada. Tonight’s game seven and so far the Red Refs seem more interested in blowing the collective penises of Team Gulag rather than refereeing the game… did you like the way I just wrapped that up? Start with the Oral Sex, finish with the Oral Sex.).

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…since november fourteenth, 2006.

“You burn things when there’s no going back. How much of
yourself have you had to burn away to be
the person you are today? Because baby, my body
is ash and my mind is still smoking.”

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Posted in 801 The Funny, crazy people with no pants, Entertainment, Grand Theft Auto, Humor, Humour, Inappropriate Humour Day, Living With Manic Depression, Manic Depression, Punk, YouTube | Tagged | 9 Comments

My Favourite Twenty-Five Movies Because Ten Would Be Stupid And Thirty Would Be Fucking Annoying Part Five Of Five

Posted on September 4, 2007 by Gabriel...


My younger brother and our grandfather; August 13, 2007. Photo by Me.

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“Last one out of Liberty City, burn it to the ground.”
“Last One Out Of Liberty City”, ‘Hello Rockview’; Less Than Jake (1998)

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“A list poem is one of the easiest kinds of poems to write because it doesn’t require either rhythm or rhyme. But that doesn’t mean you should write down anything helter skelter. Here’s a list of elements that makes a list poem a poem instead of just a list:
1) The writer is telling you something–pointing something out–saying, “Look at this” or, “Think about this.”
2) There’s a beginning and an end to it, like in a story.
3) Each item in the list is written the same way.”
“How to Write a “What Bugs Me” List Poem”, by Bruce Lansky (1996)

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“My advice, to anyone willing to listen, is to find a notebook that fits into your pants pocket. Use a pen with a cap so it doesn’t explode in your pocket, and start writing down whatever you can remember. Even if it’s a favourite colour. Then, later, write down why it’s your favourite colour…. and pretty soon you’ve got a list.”
Me.

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The Fifth Five: My Ultimate Twenty Five Movies
This is the fifth, and last, part of a list of my favourite movies. A year after I started treatment for manic depression in November, 2002, I started keeping a journal. A few months after starting I began to make lists of my memories. After nearly eighteen-years surviving untreated my memories had become jumbled and confused. Making lists about movies, embarrassing moments, meals, places I’ve lived among many others proved to be invaluable to my recovery. Each list took a little more power away from the disease and gave me more confidence in myself. After this post there is the second part to the “52 Places I’ve Lived” post and the last list I’m going to share.

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The First Five: Bladerunner (Directors Cut) (1992) (Daryl Hannah, Rutger Hauer); Tora, Tora, Tora (1970); All The Presidents Men (1974) (Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman); Our Lady of The Assassins (2002); Se7en (1995) (Morgan Freeman, Brad Pitt).

The Second Five: The Americanization of Emily (1964) b/w (James Garner, Julie Andrews); Giant (1956) (Rock Hudson, James Dean, Liz Taylor); The Prophecy (1995) (Christopher Walkin, Eric Stoltz); The Filth And The Fury (2002) (Sex Pistols — doc.); Network (1976) (Peter Finch, Faye Dunaway, Robert Duvall)

The Third Five: Pi (π) (1998) b/w (Sean Gullette, Mark Margolis); Apocalypse Now (Redux) (1979) (Martin Sheen, Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall); The Killing Fields (1984) (Sam Waterston, Haing S. Ngor, Spalding Gray); Cool Hand Luke (1967) (Paul Newman, George Kennedy); Lawrence of Arabia (1962) (Peter O’Toole, Omar Sharif).

The Fourth Five: Run Lola Run (1998) (Franka Potente, Moritz Bleibtreu); Three Days of The Condor (1975) (Robert Redford, Faye Dunaway); City Of Ghosts (2002) (Matt Dillon, James Cahn); Touching The Void (2003) (Joe Simpson, Simon Yates); The Third Man (1949) b/w (Orson Welles, Joseph Cotton).

The Almost Six: Spartan (2004) (Val Kilmer, Derek Luke); The Station Agent (2003) (Peter Dinklage, Bobby Cannavale); The Empire Strikes Back (1980) (Mark Hamil, Carrie Fisher); Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind (2002) (George Clooney, Sam Rockwell); Clerks (1994) b/w (Brian O’Halloran, Jeff Anderson); Mississippi Burning (1988) (Gene Hackman, Willem Dafoe).

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Once Were Warriors (1994) (Rena Owen, Temuera Morrison) Based on a 1990 bestselling novel by New Zealand author Alan Duff this movie is about as close filmmaking has gotten to portraying the kind of abuse and degradation indigenous people have been put through and have put each other through. When an entire people have no hope, no recourse, no defence against the crushing poverty left to them by their colonizers they almost always turn the abuse onto themselves and the people around them. Once Were Warriors deals specifically with New Zealand’s urbanized Māori people and the family abuse, rape, alcoholism, drug abuse and violence which has become almost inherent to their sub-culture. But the movie could have been set in Australia, India or Canada without changing a scene. It is very rare — very rare — to find a well made movie about poverty, this one is at the top of the list in terms of quality and honesty.

The two main characters are “Beth”, a traditional Māori who left home when she was a teenager to marry “Jake”, basically an alcoholic angry young man. They move to a city slum where, over eighteen years, they have five children. The movie is mostly about the relationship between the Māori who have succumbed to the crushing poverty, and those returning to their traditional beliefs and traditions. The acting is spectacular and raw, and very few punches are pulled. Literally. This is a fantastic film, and easily one of my favourites.

Quote One:
Jake Heke: “I’ll kill you first!”
Beth Heke: “Well go on, do it! You’re still a slave Jake. To your fists. To the drink. To yourself. Well go on – kill the bloody lot of us!”

Quote Two:
Beth Heke: “Our people once were warriors. But unlike you, Jake, they were people with mana, pride; people with spirit. If my spirit can survive living with you for eighteen years, then I can survive anything.”

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The Great Dictator (1940) (Charlie Chaplin, Paulette Goddard) Charlie Chaplin was a brilliant filmmaker. “The Great Dictator”, released two months before Japan attacked Pearl Harbour and the subsequent entry of America into the Second World War, is possibly the greatest piece of satirical filmmaking ever put on a screen. But it’s target wasn’t Germany’s NAZI politics, the target was the American public who wanted nothing to do with stopping the spread of those ideologies. This is Chaplin’s masterpiece. It’s also his first “Talkie”, and holy Christ does he talk. Weirdly enough, considering how closely related the philosophies of 1950’s Soviet Union were to 1940’s Germany, Chaplin was a fan of communism at the same time he was anti-NAZI. After making this movie, and a few other overtly political movies, Chaplin was labeled as a communist-lite in America. Chaplin was basically chased out of America during the McCarthy witch-hunt, basically because in 1947 Chaplin released a dark satire in the same vein of “The Great Dictator” called “Monsieur Verdoux”, only his target was capitalism. But, if you listen to the speeches in “Dictator” he wasn’t really a communist, he may never have made a film directly attacking the Soviet Union, and he may have wanted America to get into WW2 to fight alongside the Soviet Union and not necessarily to protect the people being put into the ovens — but “Dictator” was about showing political theories, a political theory, in practice. His support of the Soviet Union at the same time seems to me to be about protecting the world from NAZIism, not about promoting Soviet Communism. Besides, “The Great Dictator” trancends any single dictator. The movie could have been about Stalin, Pol Pot, Mugabe, Hussein, Idi Amin…

Garbitsch: “Corona veniat electus.” Victory shall come to the worthy. Today, democracy, liberty, and equality are words to fool the people. No nation can progress with such ideas. They stand in the way of action. Therefore, we frankly abolish them. In the future, each man will serve the interest of the State with absolute obedience. Let him who refuses beware! The rights of citizenship will be taken away from all Jews and other non-Aryans. They are inferior and therefore enemies of the state. It is the duty of all true Aryans to hate and despise them. Henceforth this nation is annexed to the Tomanian Empire, and the people of this nation will obey the laws bestowed upon us by our great leader, the Dictator of Tomania, the conqueror of Osterlich, the future Emperor of the World!”

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The Devil’s Rejects (2005) (Bill Moseley, Sheri Moon) I do believe Rob Zombie, the writer and director of Devil’s Rejects, could be in the top one percent coolest people on the planet. The… lets call it a “prequel” to this movie was “House Of 1000 Corpses” and, mostly, it sucked hard wood. So Rob, thinking of his characters as his children, put together some bucks and a script and — like any good father — came up with The Devil’s Rejects as a way to kill off the main characters from Corpses properly. Ebert & Roeper gave this movie two thumbs up, called it Oscar worthy, then told people not to go see it because — holy fuck — it was that disturbing. This is not “horror porn”. Movies like “Saw” and “Hostel” have no plot and exist only to create new and interesting methods of using a power drill. Those movies have their place, but “The Devil’s Rejects” has a plot, it has excellent acting and it has a back-story. The movie will actually make you feel… something approaching regret, even remorse, when The Firefly Family finally get beat down. Zombie, apparently a huge Marx Brothers fan, has named the family of psychopaths who do most of the killing, after characters from their movies. Zombie — who was also one of the most influential musicians of the 1990’s — has taken over the “Halloween” franchise from John Carpenter and used most of the cast from “The Devil’s Rejects” for the upcoming release. See? He’s so freaking cool he lets us see his wife’s ass and he’s loyal to his friends. The soundtrack was pretty righteous as well.

Captain J.T. Spaulding: What’s the matter, kid? Don’t ya like clowns?
Jamie: [shakes head crying]
Spaulding: “Why? Don’t we make ya laugh? Aren’t we fuckin’ funny? You best come up with an answer, cos I’m gonna come back here and check on you and your momma and if you ain’t got a reason why you hate clowns, I’m gonna kill your whole fucking family.

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The Thing (1982) (Kurt Russell, Wilford Brimley) More than any other movie I can remember from my childhood, this one fucked me up the most. John Carpenter isn’t the godfather of horror, he’s the God of Horror. His brand of horror may be on the sidelines for now, at least until Rob Zombie gets it back in the game, but from 1978 until 1983 Carpenter released Halloween (1978), The Fog (1980), The Thing (1982), and Christine (1983) plus there was the classic They Live (1988). I can remember being twelve and walking home in the middle of the night, in a fog, after watching The Fog at a friends place… that was fucking nuts. But “The Thing”, that was something else. When the severed head grew those spider legs and scuttled off… obviously I was a little young to be watching the movie, and obviously it didn’t fuck me up that badly as I’m still here, but I’ve never been frightened walking out of another movie since watching The Fog and The Thing. Startled while in a movie, yes. Walking out frightened, no.

MacReady: “I know I’m human. And if you were all these things, then you’d just attack me right now, so some of you are still human. This thing doesn’t want to show itself, it wants to hide inside an imitation. It’ll fight if it has to, but it’s vulnerable out in the open. If it takes us over, then it has no more enemies, nobody left to kill it. And then it’s won.”

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Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Wo hu cang long) (2000) (Yun-Fat Chow, Michelle Yeoh) The first movie since Star Wars to make me think I was watching something actually magical. I saw it the first night it played in Toronto. I had seen the preview and read a review but otherwise had no clue what I was about to see. The first few minutes really pissed me off, not because of the movie, but because people were laughing at the movie. No one in the theatre knew how to react to the special effects, and there was nervous laughter coming from everywhere. Until “Crouching” every movie from China actually came from Hong Kong and either had bad dubbing or Bruce Lee, and the ones which were really made in China all had smiling tweens and teens wearing red scarves gleefully denouncing the landlords. China has been going through an identity crisis since about the time of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. The country is moving, albeit slowly, away from Communism and is rediscovering its own history as it does so. The fact this movie is set in China and inside Chinese mythology and partially paid for by the Republic is remarkable — “Crouching” was filmed in China, but financed by American, Taiwanese, Hong Kong and Chinese companies, which is equally remarkable considering the relationship between Taiwan and China. When it won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film, the Oscar actually went to Taiwan. Of course “Crouching” was directed by Ang Lee, who was born in Taiwan and only one of the four stars — Ziyi Zhang — was borne inside the continental borders of China. “Crouching” was, and probably still is, the most beautiful film I’ve ever watched.

Quote One:
Jade Fox: “Your master underestimated women! He’d sleep with me, but he would never teach me. He deserved to die by a woman’s hand.”

Quote Two:
Li Mu Bai: “I’ve already wasted my whole life. I want to tell you with my last breath that I have always loved you. I would rather be a ghost, drifting by your side as a condemned soul, than enter heaven without you. Because of your love, I will never be a lonely spirit.”

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…since november fourteenth, 2006.

“You burn things when there’s no going back. How much of
yourself have you had to burn away to be
the person you are today? Because baby, my body
is ash and my mind is still smoking.”

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Posted in Bipolar, Bipolar Disease, Bipolar Disorder, crazy people with no pants, Depression, Entertainment, Health, Lithium, Living With Depression, Living With Manic Depression, Manic Depression, Mental Health, Salted Lists | 14 Comments