Totally Inappropriate Salted Humour Day: Introducing The bahLOONatic, A Toy Totally In Need Of A Recall PLUS A Dick Joke

Posted on August 31, 2007 by Gabriel...

“Billy’s Balloon”; ‘Don Hertzfeldt’

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“The theory of learned helplessness was then extended to human behavior, providing a model for explaining depression, a state characterized by a lack of affect and feeling. Depressed people became that way because they learned to be helpless. Depressed people learned that whatever they did, is futile. During the course of their lives, depressed people apparently learned that they have no control.”
“Learned Helplessness“, Duen Hsi Yen (1998)
[print this out and nail it to your wall]

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“Although we experience the world in bits and pieces, the sequence in which we experience them flows together and we feel the world around us in a continuous panorama. When we try to communicate about it, we have to break it down into bits and pieces. Perhaps a large part of our trouble starts there.”
“Communications: The Transfer of Meaning”, Don Fabun (1968)

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Our Depressions are not always caused by… depressing stuff. Most of our depressions are caused by the Disease. They may feel hopeless, they may feel unrecoverable they may even feel real, but they’re not — there are no reasons necessary for us to be depressed. You have to tell yourself they will not last forever, it will stop, you will get better. You can take away a lot of their power by simply repeating “this isn’t real, this level of depression is totally unwarranted for the situation”… or just “fuck off”.

To prevent them from happening or, at the very least, to decrease their intensity you must use your moments of lucidity to seek and find help. That means finding a professional. If you live in a region where it’s difficult or impossible to just walk into a psychiatrists office and get an appointment — which is pretty much every region — there are always local governmental or non-governmental mental health offices where you can get started in the system.

Even in recovery and receiving treatment, we will continue to have depressions forced on us by the disease. I’m three years into my recovery and I had one just a few months ago, but three years ago I was having ten of them before breakfast. Even this late into a recovery the rare depressive episode can act as a trigger to a “why bother” moment where discarding the pills, or dropping out of treatment, or even considering suicide will seem like options out of a misguided belief the treatments aren’t working if you’re still getting depressed.

Thinking, believing nothing will get better and nothing good will ever happen to you is not new, and it’s not surprising to feel that way. When we look backwards and see nothing but failure and look forward and see nothing but… well, nothing, those depressing visualizations are part of the learned behaviour forced on us by the disease. You’ve been sitting around for twenty years visualizing your death, the death of your friends, your pets, your God, your plants, the poor and devastated people in Rwanda/Somalia/Iraq/Northern China/Finland… well, fuck, try thinking about things you’ve succeeded in. That brunette with the killer smile and little tits you totally banged five freaking times in one day, the diploma, getting to the store last night just before it closed.

Listen, no one really sits around dreaming about their future but because we sit around planning our death for so long we assume dreaming about their futures is something people without the disease do, then we get depressed because when we start our recovery Dreams Of The Future aren’t granted to us by the Get Well Fairy. We have to move one day at a time, this is a long process and we have to concentrate on each step. Just because the journey’s slow doesn’t mean it’s not happening or not worth taking.

And now, a dick joke: my dick is so big, it was overthrown by a military coup. It’s now known as the Democratic Republic of My Dick. I love that one. This one’s pretty good as well: My dick is so big, it has its own dick. And even my dick’s dick is bigger than your dick.

*Some or all of this may have been stolen from a response I left on Experimental Chimps blog sometime around 2am, August 31, 2007. But, in my defence, I was totally hammered on 2% milk and imitation crab meat.

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...thanks.

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

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

Posted on August 29, 2007 by Gabriel...


From my mother’s garden, let me know if you want a large format version for your wall.

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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 Fourth Five: My Ultimate Twenty Five Movies
This is the sixth in a series of list posts, and the fourth list of my favourite movies. I’ve also posted a partial list of embarassing moments in my life and the first of two posts on the nearly sixty places I’ve lived. These lists are meant to show the value in writing memories down in our recovery from manic depression. Two years ago, after nearly a year in treatment, I started keeping a journal again. Soon after I began to use it to sort out the memories swirling around in my mind. Living untreated for eighteen years left me confused and vulnerable to the effects of manic depression. Writing down my embarassing moments, for example, took the power out of those memories. It was one less thing the disease could use against me. I have two lists which require one more post each — movies and homes, then I’ll post the last list soon after. 

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Run Lola Run (1998) (Franka Potente, Moritz Bleibtreu) Really hot punk chick running. What more can you ask in a movie. RLR won the 1999 Audience Award from the Sundance Film Festival and could be the only German movie worth watching not set in a submarine. It could also be one of the most upbeat considering the main character only dies once and her boyfriend only dies three times. I could be a little off on the numbers. The first time I watched RLR it was without the benefit of English subtitles. Which, until the first sequence ends, I thought was a total waste of time… again, except for the seriously smoking hot punk chick. But then the movie resets and starts over… then there’s animation, and the camera work is excellent, and even without understanding what’s being said you can understand what’s going on. Basically the main character, Lola, has twenty minutes to raise a wack of cash before her boyfriend robs a grocery store which, in the first version of events, gets him killed. She then gets a few opportunities — seemingly through her will alone — to fix what her boyfriend has broken, and each time the entire movie is slightly different. It really is a brilliant little movie.

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Three Days of The Condor (1975) (Robert Redford, Faye Dunaway) The level of paranoia and mistrust in the American government by Americans during the 1970’s cannot be overstated, it’s reflected very clearly in movies like Three Days. But we watch movies made during the period as entertainment, we forget that movies reflect other times the way movies like Babel and Syriana do today. The biggest difference between then and now, however, is Three Days was a near-masterpiece and Babel and Syriana sucked dog crap off the bottom of a dung beetle’s boot. The main character in Three Days is a reader for the CIA. All he does is read books, then makes a report on them which are then fed into a computer to look for codes. He finds one certain parts of the American government don’t want known. The resulting moment of carnage sees the entire staff in his office slaughtered. But he’s not there. The chase starts when he returns. It would be interesting if people started watched these kind of movies looking for historical lessons which could be taught today. Because, one, the events keep being replayed, and; two the movies like Three Days Of The Condor are vastly superior to the crap made today. It’s also fun to see a period where True Believers still considered the “Media” (aka: The Press) to be above politics. This movie also does a pretty good job in explaining the government’s side as well…

Higgins [FBI Chief]: “It’s simple economics. Today it’s oil, right? In ten or fifteen years, food. Plutonium. Maybe even sooner. Now, what do you think the people are gonna want us to do then?”
Joe Turner [Condor]: “Ask them.”
Higgins: “Not now – then! Ask ’em when they’re running out. Ask ’em when there’s no heat in their homes and they’re cold. Ask ’em when their engines stop. Ask ’em when people who have never known hunger start going hungry. You wanna know something? They won’t want us to ask ’em. They’ll just want us to get it for ’em!”

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City Of Ghosts (2002) (Matt Dillon, James Cahn) A man goes on a quest to find his father. Dillon, who has always been a better actor than the parts he gets, wrote and directed this movie as well as playing the lead. At its core it’s about a father-son thing. They’re essentially conmen, and when an insurance con gets way out of control Dillon leaves New York and makes his way into Cambodia, where his father may or may not be involved in a casino scam. Stellan Skarsgård, Gérard Depardieu and Natascha McElhone filll out the cast… actually Natascha (who starred with Skarsgård in “Ronin”) is the only mistake in the film. The movie is about the two men — Cahn and Dillon, so the Romantic sub-plot never has time to go anywhere, her character Just Is. She’s supposed to be The Redemption but there’s never really any depth given to her. Actually it’s Cambodia that is the real romantic lead. At the end of the movie Dillon stays more for the country and its slow-moving weirdness than Natascha. The soundtrack is spectacular. It’s mostly traditional Cambodian music — which is very moving — but there’s a 1994 track by Beck called “Blackhole” that is just mesmerizing. Personally I’d buy the Soundtrack version, the one on his “Mellow Gold” CD has a hidden track attached to it that’s basically just three minutes of unrelenting feedback.

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Touching The Void (2003) (Joe Simpson, Simon Yates) This is an amazing movie, basically a re-enactment documentary, based on the book by Joe Simpson of the same name. Simpson and Yates are accomplished mountaineers who — in 1985 — were trying to become the first people to scale the west face of Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes. Which they managed to do. Which was great. But then they got lost on the way back down and there was an accident that left Simpson at the bottom of a crevasse with a leg so insanely shattered the bone in his upper leg actually splintered around his femur. Yates, believing Simpson was dead, continued safely down the mountain. Simpson, believing himself still alive, managed to crawl — on his belly — down the mountain in what must be one of the most incredible survival stories ever told… and it’s all freaking true. Yates actually became a pariah in the mountain climbing community for leaving Simpson on the mountain, but Simpson has always said there was nothing to forgive because Yates — who also came close to dying several times that night — did nothing wrong. Yates and Simpson appear in the dramatic-documentary as interview subjects, but also as stunt doubles for the actors.

Simon Yates: “Rather than just sit here, feeling sorry for myself or whatever, I’ll get on with it and I’ll die on the way down.”

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The Third Man (1949) b/w (Orson Welles, Joseph Cotton) An Oscar winning thriller set against the German post war landscape. Welles plays a good man corrupted by the potential of a country with little or no government. He’s the star of the movie, but shows up very late and only for brief periods. Cotton plays an American pulp-fiction writer, Holly Martins, who has come to Vienna to visit his wartime friend, Harry Lime — played by Welles. But he’s told Lime died in an accident. Wanting to find out how and why his friend died Martins starts to unravel several mysteries. This was a movie made back when Orson Welles hadn’t been crushed by Hollywood. He’s only in the movie for short periods, but he’s like Marlon Brando in Apoclypse Now with Cotton as Martin Sheen. You think the movie is about one thing, about one person, then you realize that person is just a bit player in something so much larger.

Harry Lime: “Don’t be so gloomy. After all it’s not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love – they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. So long Holly.”

Harry Lime: “Nobody thinks in terms of human beings. Governments don’t. Why should we? They talk about the people and the proletariat, I talk about the suckers and the mugs – it’s the same thing. They have their five-year plans, so have I.”
Martins: “You used to believe in God.”
Harry Lime: “Oh, I still do believe in God, old man. I believe in God and Mercy and all that. But the dead are happier dead. They don’t miss much here, poor devils.”

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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, Canada, crazy people with no pants, Health, Living With Depression, Living With Manic Depression, Manic Depression, Photographers, Photography, Photos, Salted Lists | 5 Comments

Totally Inappropriate Salted Humour Day: Knock Knock

Posted on August 25, 2007 by Gabriel...

“Knock Knock”; ‘Pete And Brian‘

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I ain’t got nothing on my plate
Please let me sleep in late
No catfish biting at my bait
Please let me sleep in late

Feel like I’m standing at St. Peter’s gates
Please let me sleep in late
Don’t know the time, I don’t know the date
Please let me sleep in late

Gonna lay right down here in my cozy bed
Well I might be dreaming, you know
I might be dead

Don’t have to worry ’bout gaining weight
Please let me sleep in late
I ain’t time for love and hate
Please let me sleep in late

For when the sun begins to rise
I don’t want to see it through my tired eyes.

Don’t have to worry ’bout gaining weight
Please let me sleep in late
I ain’t got nothing on my plate
Please let me sleep in late
Don’t know the time, or the date
Please let me sleep in late
“Sleep In Late”, ‘Hit And Run’; Big Sugar (2003)

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Depression does not have to be depressing… well, okay, yes it does. Depression is always depressing. That’s why they call it depression. I’m not sure why I didn’t see that before I started. I don’t usually post on weekends — and technically wouldn’t be posting today (Saturday) but WordPress (normally as reliable an Internet service there ever was) had a meltdown last night — however, just before that happened I had the idea of posting something funny or interesting on Friday evenings just to keep myself and “others” amused until the week started again.

Sigh… the first version of this, which I lost due to the WP Meltdown, was a lot funnier. The second version wasn’t too bad… the third version was a hate fuelled rant that’s probably better off being chewed up like it was. The fourth was just 854 random letters, numbers and symbols… the fifth was mostly the same as the fourth, only in “all caps”. Six was the letter “D” 4021 times with two spaces between each “D”. Seven I did with my eyes closed, so I’m not sure about seven. Eight and nine were actually quite philosophical but contrary and cancelled each other out. Ten was a business plan for a blog hosting site based entirely on the idea that when there was an outage of some kind the people using the service received an email saying the service is down, then another when the service is back up… and you’re reading number twelve.

If you had been able to read number eleven it was a pretty good argument in favour of humour as a tool in our recovery from manic depression… it was also a pretty decent recipe for meatloaf.

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...thanks.

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

Handing Out Flowers To Anyone Who Wants Them For No Particular Reason Other Than To Make Your Life Totally Bitchin’ Cool

Posted on August 22, 2007 by Gabriel...


A purple spikey flower thing. August 21, 2007 — photo by Me.

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Your Body’s a small world with many meanings.
Love. If. Yes. But. Death.
Surely I will love you a little while,
perhaps as long as I have breath.

December is thirteen months long.
July’s one afternoon; therefore.
lover’s must outwit wool,
learn how to puncture fur.

To my love’s bed, to keep her warm,
I’ll carry wrapped and heated stones.
That which is comfort to the flesh
is sometimes torture to the bones.
“Canadian Love Poem”, Alden Nowlan

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Over the past three years I’ve been… trying to take responsibilty over my life, because for eighteen years I hadn’t. At all. But I’ll get into that soon, not now. Right now I’ve decided to do something relatively easy, and simple to make sure this winter has some colour to it which, in turn, might help in my recovery… and I thought it might be easy to share as well.

There are a whole lotta fantastic gardens in my little village. A few days ago, as I was out playing with my camera, I started to take photos of some of the more interesting flowers. After about the fourth one I got the idea to make large format prints of them for my walls.

Then I thought of making them available to anyone who wants them. I don’t think the DPI will be great enough to make posters, but they should be good enough to print at 11×17. At 8×10 or 5×7 they should look spectacular.

So if you click on the thumbnail you’ll see a larger format copy. Chose the ones you want — there are 25 altogether, and each is numbered in that little thought balloon thing. Then leave me a note or send me an email, and I’ll email you the large format — they’re basically 1.8Megs each. Pick as many as you want.

Then all you have to do is bring it to the local photo-place and have it blown up. The mounting, if it’s just foamcore, would cost very little. I’m not a botonist, so I can’t say which are indiginous to Canada, but I’ve found them all really interesting and very bright. Which, over a cold, grey winter, is the point.

And don’t worry… you’ll see my little copyright thing on the medium format shots, it won’t be on the large format ones. My personal favourites are number seventeen and the purple spikey thing at the top.

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Click on the thumbnail to see a medium format view, then make your selection and I’ll send you the large format version (without the copyright thing) so you can make prints for the wall. Do it kids, do it now… stick it to The Man.

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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, crazy people with no pants, Lithium, Living With Manic Depression, Manic Depression, Ottawa, Photographers, Photography, Photos, Punk | 18 Comments

Five Questions From Thordora A Few Answers From Me And Very Little Mention Of Cheese

Posted on August 20, 2007 by Gabriel...


My right hand in my work glove, August 19, 2007 — Me.

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Thordora’s Interview Rules:
1. Leave me a comment saying “Interview Me.”
2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. You will update your blog with a post containing your the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

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Thordora Is Asking Five Questions:
Thordora runs a very friendly personal blog at “Spin Me I Pulsate”, or vomitcomet, which is named after the late night bus service in Toronto. She was recently asked five questions by another blogger, with the caveat she publish the answers and she was to ask anyone who responded “Interview Me” another five questions. I was very, very drunk and asked to be interviewed. So now, if you want to be interviewed (five questions only), just write “Interview Me” somewhere in your response. The Rules above will apply.

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Thordora: I’m not very attached to things, to stuff. I don’t know if it’s a bipolar thing, an experiencing traumatic life events thing, or just me. Are you attached to any things? Is yes-what? If no, why do you think you’ve avoided the pack rat issue?

Me: I’ve become a pack rat in this apartment. After two years it’s the longest I’ve ever lived in one spot so I’ve bought a couch, been given a dining room set, a cushy chair and bought some dishes… this is the first time I’ve owned a full set of dishes. When I was moving so often it was very difficult to keep stuff, or buy a lot of things. But there were a few things that made every move with me, and that I’m very attached to:

a) Since 1982 I’ve had the same copies of “Lord Of The Rings” and “The Hobbit”
b) My set of “James Herriot” novels I’ve had pretty much as long
c) Four shoeboxes filled with notes and Valentines Day cards from girlfriends, birthday cards from my mom, a few small gifts girlfriends have given me and a bunch of Christmas stocking stuffers — mostly little toys. And a poster my brother drew of a dude pointing a gun at the viewer and demanding “hey, drink the fucking coffee.” I had it on my cupboard in my first apartment.

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Thordora: If you could change ONE thing about the Canadian medical system regarding how it treats the mentally ill, what would you change?

Me: Well, I’ve written about 8000 words on Salted about my disdain for one specific part of the system — be it American, British, Aussie or Canadian, and it’s the moment after diagnosis. The most broken part of the system is that it relies entirely on us to figure out what to do to treat the disease. How long after you were diagnosed did you have to wait to find out diet was essential, or that sleep is critical to manage the disease? Once we’re diagnosed we’re expected to be experts on manic depression. It’s actually left up to us to educate our relatives as though we had written the DSM-IV. When we’re finally diagnosed, after years of suffering and self-harm, we should be greeted with dieticians and experts explaining to our relatives that our behaviour has been fucked up because of a disease, not some amorphous disorder.

I don’t like quoting myself… no, really. This is from a post I wrote back in January: “A ‘Perfect World‘ Would Start With An Intervention”.

“Why are our doctors, not bringing dietitians into our appointment if diet is so important to our recovery? Why are we not being handed massive amounts of Vitamin D along with our Lithium? Why, if sleep is so all fucking important to our recovery, are we not being handed a sleep aid along with our Lithium and Vitamin D? Why does it take so fucking long for people to tell us that, “yes, in fact, your bizarre sleeping patterns are, in fact, quite abnormal and, yes, in fact, there are ways to manage your sleep with medications, in fact”?”

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Thordora: Your happiest moment. Tell me about it.

Me: No. But I’ll tell you about something that was close — actually, this would actually be an excellent list. In none of my journals will you ever read “I was so happy today”. Those types of moments have never been something I’ve collected. If by “happiest” you mean “most content” then my happiest moments have all been with someone else, and I don’t talk about those moments with anyone. The happiest I’ve been recently, like having completed a task, was finally finding “the Euros” in GTA: San Andreas. It’s a car and there’s only one in the entire game, and it’s hidden extremely well… it’s in Los Venturas, at the pyramid casino under the Sphinx. Okay… I have two moments, both involving awards. In 1986 I was at a Camp in the Eastern Townships of Quebec. Going there always meant a lot to me. That year I was given a special award in recognition of my sportsmanship by the counselors. Then in 1997 I won the Ontario Community Newspaper Associations Award for Best Humour Column in the Premier Category. They call out the names last to first, so I was expecting my name first. But it was some totally random other dude. And I thought “hey, second place.” Then another random dude’s name was called. The award was given to me based on eight columns my journalism teacher had submitted. I was the first College student to win in that Premiere category… and only the second or third to win in any Premiere category. My teacher was always my biggest booster, but not always my biggest fan. My humour is an acquired taste. I have the photo of us with the award on my desk. He died a few years later from stomach cancer.

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Thordora: You’re left with one song to hear and sing for the rest of your life. What is it? Why? (and please, no Mitsou.)

Me: Laura Veirs, “Icebound Stream” is currently my favourite, but “Hymn To Freedom” by Oscar Peterson has been my favourite the longest, but there’s no “why” to either other than the greatness and coolness of the songs. So if you’re looking for the song with the most meaning it’d probably be “Mother” by Pink Floyd. Late one night, after a party, I was putting my girlfriend to bed (we were still in separate beds) and this was playing on my stereo. She thanked me for not pressuring her into having sex, and I — kneeling on the floor beside the bed — couldn’t get over the size of her breasts. So I sang “Mother” to her… which was ironic in so many ways. Foreshadowing really. We were in love and still in high school, and we were… manipulated sounds right, into breaking up by… you guessed it, mom. Mom was only 15 when she met my father. He was in his early twenties. She went through hell. MM was 16 when we fell in love, I was 18. Holy passive aggressiveness. MM has three kids and a good husband and might as well live a million miles away… okay.

Actually there is a version of “Farewell to Nova Scotia”, only with Come Marching With Comrade style lyrics… whenever I hear the tune I always think about my childhood. But the lyrics to the real song are very different than the ones I sang as a kid.

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Thordora: The most important question of all-will Ottawa win the cup this season?!?!?!?!

Me: Nope. Anaheim will do it again, even without Neidermayer they’ve got the most dominant defence in the League. Watching them play any other team is like watching men play against boys. Ottawa will, however, be first in the Eastern Conference but it’ll be a lot harder getting to the Stanley Cup Finals this year now that the New York Rangers have a team again. I think it’s be very likely to be an Ottawa v. Anaheim Stanley Cup Finals again.

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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, Classic, crazy people with no pants, Living With Depression, Living With Manic Depression, Manic Depression | 18 Comments

The Third Of Five Lists: The First 24 Of The 52 Places I Can Remember Calling Home Because All 52 At Once Would Leave Nothing For My Next Post

Posted on August 14, 2007 by Gabriel...

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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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“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 for the past two weeks.

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The Third Of Five Lists: The First 52 Places I Remember Living
Close to eighteen months into my recovery I started writing a new journal. After a while I started making lists to sort out my memories, including one of all the places I’ve lived. Without a doubt this list has been the most work of them all. I’ve lived in at least 52 houses, apartments and rooming houses so trying to put dates on each is almost impossible. But getting them out on paper has enabled me to place important, and trivial, events into some order which otherwise were left confused and missing from my memory. Making lists, in my opinion, can be very helpful to someone with manic depression or clinical depression — which distort reality — as a means of putting perspective into our lives. As proof I’m offering mine.

This is the first of three parts of The First 52 Places I Remember Living… mostly up until I move to The Big City on my own.

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01) Pointe Claire (1970): It’s a suburb of Montreal, I was born here. Back in 2000, I actually worked with — and had a crush on — a woman who was born in the same hospital a few ours after me. It might have been a year and a few hours… I don’t actually remember 01 to 04.

02) Montreal (spring, summer 1970): My parents had a small apartment in a building populated mostly by “bikers” who kind of looked after me. My father was a teacher who managed to get himself fired just after I was born for reasons which, to this day, are just too fucking retarded to believe. Soon after we moved to his parents home in Gu3lph.

03) Gu3lph (summer, fall 1970) Paisley Street: From what I’ve been told this was not a comfortable living arrangement. My parents were looking after a Youth Hostel while living with my grandparents. Mom had a very hard time recovering from her pregnancy. The doctor told her another one could be fatal.

04) Gu3lph (fall 1970): My parents got their own place. It was a small apartment frequented by two of my uncles and their high school buddies where high level discussions on “What Must Be Done” were had. This is where the seeds for “the Coll3ctive” (fear the seeds) started. My father and grandfather decided to open a bookstore down the street.

05) Gu3lph (spring 1971) Eramosa: This one’s a little confusing to me… from what I understand my parents first apartment was on Eramosa as well, but this was a large two-storey brick home about halfway up the hill from downtown. This was the first, real “Coll3ctive House”. I believe my brother was born while living here. It took mom two years to recover.

06) Vancouver (1974?): My mom, brother and myself were sent to live with a Coll3ctive member in Vancouver with the intention of starting a branch office. Another woman came with us. I can remember the smell of the ocean and the chipmunks we fed in Bamff, National Park. There were some difficulties with the Coll3ctive so we were only there for six months before we hurriedly came back.

07) Toronto (1975?): The Coll3ctive was doing some contract printing work for the Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada, so my brother, myself, my mother and another woman were moved to Toronto. As far as I can put together it was in “Little Portugal”. I do remember it was above a corner store and filled to the brim with roaches, although mom did a great job of hiding them from us.

08) Gu3lph (1975) Oliver: After a truly bizarre falling out between The Coll3ctive and the MLPC we were back in Gu3lph where they had moved into a second house. This is where one of the neighbourhood kids taught me how to ride a two-wheeler… he had a tricked out bike with a pretty large chop and a banana seat.

09) Gu3lph (1976) Ontario 01: I almost always get “Oliver” and “Ontario” streets mixed up. The Coll3ctive had taken in a huge family of children. I think there were eight boys. We were all in the same bedroom. I slept next to the window in a bed with another kid, but there were (I think) two triple bunk beds.

10) Gu3lph (spring 1975-76) Ontario 02: At some point it was decided that it was too dangerous for the kids to be living in The Coll3ctive house, so my brother and I were moved down the street to live with my aunt. This time period — 1975-77 — is my most difficult to remember, I was just being moved around too much.

11) Gu3lph (1977-78) Ontario 01: Crisis relatively over my brother and I ended up living with the Coll3ctive again. I can remember the smell of printing ink, fireworks in the backyard and the big, round wooden table in the dining room. We were allowed 30 minutes of television per week, so we watched “Emergency”. A drama about paramedics and firemen.

12) Little City Close By (August 1978-79) McGill: My mother left my father abruptly and took my brother and I about 600 miles north to an apartment above a garage in a pulp and paper mill-town. We had our first pets here. A couple of hamsters. They ate their way out of their cage. One came back, the other got into the carrots and gorged himself to death. I also remember having two kittens, but they must have been given away.

13) My Village (1980-81) High St.: The landlord had a crush on mom. We had the top floor of a very large two storey building. Landlord lived downstairs where he had a business as well. Mom’s boyfriend, a rug maker, gave me the Lord Of The Rings and The Hobbit. They called me out from my bedroom and they were all laid out on the couch. He said it was a present and I was so excited… I still remember the weird look he got when I asked which one. I still have them.

14) Tiny Village Nearby (1982-83): The years get a little fuzzy for a while, but the order is right. This was where we got Darwin The Cat, and Logan The Dog. They stayed with us for about the next nineteen years. This was our first home in Super Real Authentic Really Rural Country. It was roughly twelve miles to the nearest grocery store. The landlords family were our neighbours, which was cool cause their three kids were girls. Mom dated a lawyer for a few years… I had/still have issues with him over the breakup.

15) Country Road (1984): Even deeper into The Bush. Some friends of moms were in Europe for a year so we house-sat. We were outside our school district but mom threatened a beat down on the school board to they relented. But my brother and I had to walk a couple of miles back into the district to catch the bus. Most of the time the driver had pity on us and came to meet us halfway. Our nearest neighbour was… well, far. This was where I got my own dog, a black Labrador named “Wizard”. A rabid fox came into the yard once when my brother was by himself, playing. Little Brother took off for the door and Logan and Wizard tore that little crazed fucking thing to pieces. There were fox bits twenty feet up a tree. After a six month semi-quarantine where they lived with chickens, and killed most of them — bad planning — they were both fine. Mom used to have dinner parties here for the local artists she had hooked up with… this region attracts a lot of them. [Note: This might actually be #17… we had to give up Wizard when we moved, and I think it was to #18]

16) Tiny Village Close To Quebec (1985): Nice place, water tasted like sulfur. We were renting from one of moms friends again. My brother and I got new bikes here, that part of the country is flat, flat and flat. I hated biking around there. We started picking up more animals at this point… three more cats, Agog, Klunker (whose back end was very rabbit like) and Scrapper, who was very angry and very small. Darwin was the leader. This is where I discovered “Tea For The Tillerman” and ‘Talking Heads’.

17) Teeny Tiny Village (1985-86): Moms boyfriend took us in. He was, mostly, a dickhead. When we were moving out (he didn’t want kids), after we had moved the last pieces into the car, he was being a bit of a dickhead to mom, so I went into the cutlery drawer and walked in with all the forks and asked mom if they were ours.

18) My Village (1986-88) Union: Back to town after a tour of the most rural parts of Canada. This is where I started dating seriously.

19) Ear Falls (1988): It took three days by bus to get there. I brought my mini-blaster, a sleeping bag and a backpack of clothes. I was barely eighteen living in a shack in the woods with thirteen men who had each done serious jail time, the next youngest of whom was 34. The camp I worked at was actually 45 miles north of Ear Falls. I was there for almost eight months. From beginning to end, every day was fucking crazy. Thankfully all of them adopted me, and never once tried to rape me. This was where, in my mind, I started exhibiting the symptoms of full blown manic depression… and smoking, and binge drinking.

20) My Village (fall 1988) Union: When I came back mom and my little brother were just finishing their move into moms new boyfriends place (Village 03) — extremely nice guy, two kids, great father. But I was not happy about that at all. I stayed in the old place for a few weeks until I ran out of food. Then I carried the fridge and a few large tables to the new place. He and mom got married fifteen years ago.

21) My Village (1989) Home: The most kick ass party ever thrown in our village was held here. I was dropping out of school, stoned most of the time, and binge drinking every weekend. People here, now — fuck, just a few weeks ago, still talk about The Party. I’ll write about it sometime… and the Ear Falls stuff.

22) Little City Close By (summer 1989): First time on my own. It was a rooming house owned by a couple of moms friends. Fucking crazy summer. I was running a day camp for kids aged 8-13, it was a project run by the city. I was also out all night drinking, smoking weed with friends… there were two Chinese Restaurants in town, and both families had sons my age. They fed me all summer. Awesome. This was when I tore my knee up… which was not awesome.

23) My Village (1989-90) Jay: I actually moved back Home for a few weeks, but that was not working. This was my first real apartment. Two bedrooms, I shared with a friend. I was stoned for a month straight… two of my friends were a couple of the largest dealers in this region — and that’s saying something. At one point I had a garbage bag of Vancouver’s Best Weed in my kitchen. We had these magic markers and when you walked in there was a closet for you to sign. My little brother (the former artist) drew a life sized Spiderman. Dave drew a huge cityscape being attacked by a giant blob and called it “Hostess Munchie Gone Bad.” Great place. Lots of “Risk”, cards and guitar playing. And sex. Lots and lots of sex.

24) Ottawa (1990) Sweetland: Girl difficulties and a need for a large change landed me in a rooming house in Sandy Hill, a student ghetto next to the University of Ottawa. I was living with two university students, they were my first female roommates. Fuck… see? Each one of these leads to something else. Each place I can remember living in leads to more memories after I’ve written about them. When they’re locked in my head I can’t focus long enough on each one individually, so they’re practically meaningless. I want to write 1000 words just on this apartment alone… fuck. I just wrote those two sentences and suddenly I’m reliving relationships and jobs and just the weird lunatic shit that happens. I’ve found these lists, as part of my recovery, to be invaluable.

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...thanks.

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Posted in Artists With Depression, Bipolar, crazy people with no pants, Depression, General Tao's Chicken, Health, Lithium, Living With Depression, Living With Manic Depression, Manic Depression, Ottawa, Poverty, Punk, Salted Lists, Salted Truths, Toronto | 68 Comments