I hate trying to find people through Agents. Meh. Lucky me has various ins with the Industry though, so it’s going to be okay.

I think the hardest is trying to find someone to play Miranda, the neurotic, giddy, totally hot nerd who works for the Invertebrate Zoo. I actually wrote the part specifically with Parker Posey in mind, I think it’s every filmmakers wet dream to work with Parker Posey. She’s just totally amazing.

Sometimes I heckle myself for PR purposes. At my Emily Carr grad Screening I was known to yell out “This isn’t Josie and the Pussycats!”

“Bunnyhug” isn’t Josie and the Pussycats either, but at least it’s fucking hilarious in a sad kind of a way. I mean, I can’t really help telling jokes.

I told someone a really good joke several times and now she wants to kill me! No, I’m kidding, but I think she would like to see me in prison for describing how fucked up MONTREAL MADE ME1 The psych ward there I mean. Boy did that shit fuck me up.

I’m actually fine now.

My best friend Margaret Flood hates the word “actually.” She went off on me once about it.

“It’s an insult, like ‘Actually, that was a really good dinner’ or ‘Actually, you’re cute.’ It’s like they are surprised about it.”

And so, ACTUALLY Barb Powell is an amazing psychic, because she told me all this would happen. She didn’t much like who I was involved with in January.

Actually, she works with the cops, so she got a free ride!

And ACTUALLY, I’m going to be fine.

Because this was her big advertisement!!!!

http://www.sacred-connections.us/

I think possibly as a trans performance artist, well, going to the ward is kind of societies way of making sure that performance remains just that, a performance, and something that can be taken as an art work rather than what could possibly be a dangerous intervention into the damaged soul of the world. HK 119 is a performance artist based out of Finland who I have talked about in a previous blog. Malfunction is probably how I seemed during this whole last spring, but really, I think I was more like Buy Me crossed with America Is Waiting.

It might sound strange to know that I want to be enlightened . . . and be a capitalist artist. But if you’ve been making short videos for as long as I have and still are flat broke, then I think you might understand why I decided to use my own manic episode as the biggest publicity stunt ever. Today I was sitting with a nurse, psychiatrist, social worker, councellor, and my mother, and had to defend needing a new place to live. And the funny thing is that my mother raised this issue of my hoax. And there was no hoax really, I just want to be the most famous crazy motherfucker ever to live, and to do it peacefully. And really, I just want to make my damn film. And you know, I’m getting closer to it, day by day it’s coming together. But I did sink hardcore into a psychosis again, the interesting part was that this time all the threads made sense, because they went back into a longer term business plan. I mean, I don’t want to do that with every film I make, but since Bunnyhug does address psychosis, it almost did make sense to end up back at that place so I could talk about it.

And I think the interesting thing too, with all of this, is that I am also talking about changing genders. And that IS a big deal. Because gender change is hard to do and goes to scary territories and I’ve been thinking about it since high school. The irony of course is that in certain ways I quite like my female body. I mean, breasts are kind of cool in a camp sort of way. I’m not a masculine guys guy, I’m pretty femmy. I mean, on the girl end of things I’m quite butch, but as a boy I’m more of a glam dandy, and that is funny. In some ways I want to keep my boobs just because they’re so spectacular. And I wonder if any MTF’s, well I’m sure some do, want to keep their dicks because maybe they like them. Gender is a funny thing. Not all of us fit it.

I’m using Sarain on this blog now because it’s my boy name, and really the name I would have had was I born male, but I don’t mind being called Thirza either. It’s tricky. Add to this the fact that in some years from now I want to have kids with a woman, and I want it to be parthanogenesis because then my DNA would be involved too. The bipolar thing is tricky, but all of us have weird genetic abnormalities. And in some ways also bipolar is just normal for me.

The good thing, possibly, is I finally have a psychiatrist who actually understands and respects art. And that makes me feel hopeful. It’s a bit weird feeling on the defensive but mostly this time around I’ve actually (ACTUALLY) had decent caregivers while in the ward. And no restraints! And some of them have had higher expectations of their patients than just expecting us to sort of waste away somewhere. I have GRANDIOSITY, so they say, and that is true some of the time but the fact is I also have ridiculously intense skills. Like converting my mac computer to unicode just on a whim. Never mind that now I feel like, ooooh, I hate unicode, but still it was an interesting Mac IT experiment.

Anyway, I’m on Facebook now if you want to be my friend. Because I’m waiting for a message.

So as you can imagine, life’s been pretty bizarre, starting with the dreaded Lamictal Rash which got me to stop taking my meds. Nothing is more terrifying than the threat of permanent disfigurement, but it still made everyone mad when I went manic. But you know what? Fuck you. YOU”RE NOT THE ONE WHO HAS TO LIVE WITH SCAR TISSUE> THAT BEING SAID i don’t have any scars from it.

So yeah man, fuck you.

But where was I? Oh yeah, well I had one shrink who was convinced I was schizophrenic because I talked about having an international art career. I can’t help it if I’ve lead an interesting life. I’ve never lied about anything related to my career. Nina HAGEN REALLY DOES MAKE THE MOST SENSE RIGHT NOW> because I FINALLY FIGURED OUT HOW TO TALK ABOUT MY FIRST EPISODE OF PSYCHOSIS>

look at these two images and tell me you don’t see a filmic link:

That is my first psychotic episode in a nutshell really, and I finally figured out how to depict it. And then I re-read my screenplay and it fits perfectly! OMG!!! Synchronicity!!!!!

And that’s how I knew I was finally making sense in the business way.

It’s been 12 years that I’ve been making videos for the international festival circut. I turned 29 this April. When I was sixteen I made “Lessons in Baby Dyke Theory” which got me phone calls from places like Manhattan and Berlin. And I was stuck in a rinky-dink high school in Saskatoon, the same one that tortured Joni Mitchell. I was called brave for talking about being openly queer in a “rural community.” That appellation for Saskatoon would probably piss off fellow students who thought drinking to barfyness was evidence of high cosmopolitan living. No, having a coke dealer in high school does not a super star make.

Anyone who watched my hedonistic 20’s, however, would think I must have been a partier in high school. It’s a myth. My best friends were people in their thirties, in school I hung out with gifted outcasts and was the nerdliest of nerdlings, on the honour role without fail every semester. Christopher Lefler was the first person to hand me a drink, and was shocked to find out I was still a virgin. He encouraged me to go after my main crush, but after a sad little threeway I ended up getting pierced so I could lose my virginity a second time to someone who wasn’t afraid to be alone with me, and I did. I ended up making “Bisexual Wannabe” about the experience. Pretty much all of my films are autobiographical, which is why they keep ended up in places like Hot Docs.

“Well you had better never make a video about me!” my ex Margaret Flood once told me. This after she gave me a copy of Melting Point stolen from the New York Public Library for my birthday one year.

Anyway, I was looking for a worldly girlfriend, one who actually wanted to go all the dramatic and romantic places I ended up traversing as a world famous video artist. I think if you want to travel, becoming a filmmaker is the way to do it. And if you want to be rich, uh, you might want to go into stock broking or something, because like I said, it’s been twelve years and I’ve only moved onto feature films now.

I think after 12 years in this biz I can honestly say the sexiest people in the world are filmmakers. You have to network, for one thing, and the cuter you are the easier it is to get your connections. You need to be able to tell good stories. And you have to be able to talk about things like sex, religion, death and politics in a way where people will stay in their seats to find out who you are, even if they end up hating you.

And not only that, but you end up having just bizarre adventures, like a scene in the Sugar Refinery with one Mr. Paul Lang for the benefit of Bruce La Bruce. Duct tape is hard to wash off by the way.

FILMMAKERS ARE SEXY ESSENTIALLY BECAUSE WE ARE SHAMELESS>

And so am I. I’ve been in and out of the psych ward here, a classic panopticon, since April. I have to say compared to Montreal it’s a five star hotel. Which is why I ca now honestly say that after 4 years of working on it, my feature screenplay, “Bunnyhug,” is finally in the hands of a professional who is looking at the budget for it.

And yes, it’s a comedy.

Haven’t you ever been Alan Smithee’d?

Alan Smithee is a name given to a participant in a film which they have no interest in making. I decided to crack the Alan Smithee code. I looped it through a unicode server which already exists in several different languages, all indigenous. It is based in a unicode mainframe. I can’t access my computer without compassion. I looped it through Gmail. I took Nels Nielson off of my gmail account because he invited me and then we had a spat, at work. Anyway, whatev man.

I based Luke’s Alan Smithee account on Monty Python and The Holy Grail. After it was cracked I saw it was signed by Richard M. Nixon. A joke? Probably. Maybe. Either way, it was really funny when I finally watched it. I made it talk in French and all other languages, and I made it disability accessible. I also videotaped what it looks like in chaos theory, which is fucked up! I mean, the images. It was all wavy and zooming around and stuff. Either way, I am working through Stanford’s Project Backrub, which is what Google is. I cancelled my domain registration. And I also tried to report my SIN card as stolen, because I don’t know how much of my ID James ended up writing down. Either way, I didn’t get a chance to really report it, as I had Jerusalem Syndrome. April Fools Jerusalem Syndrome!

Plus I had a massive seizure, and was put back on Lamictal which made me go into anaphylactic shock. I died! Literally. I have a new pdoc, and a councellor, and my GP. And my weiner dog, who is a seizure alert dog. And he’s really good at it! I am going to try and get into formal service dog training this summer, I know a trainer in town who is most excellent, especially with little dogs. And especially training psych service dogs. But mostly, I dunno, it probably is epilepsy. I am trying to see a neurologist. And then I may also have thyroid issues. And I also have to fix my computer.

Either way, I am doing a LOT better since my job ended. Sort of. I still need to calm down. I have nightmares I am being chased by an Oscar Meyer Weinermobile yelling “Achtung achtung!”

Alan Smithee could be anyone really. And just about everyone in the Industry has run into an Alan Smithee.

My Alan Smithee was the montreal psych system, a brutal system which dehumanizes people. After I got out, I got hit by lightning. It was like getting ECT. I would just loop through that one time period over and over and over. And I decided to get out of the loop.

But getting off psych drugs is hard. And especially if you have TLE. Temporal Lobe Epilepsy. It’s almost the same as being crazy, but different! I’m trying to learn how to live with it. And I don’t know, I am gifted so there is that to work with too.

And there were also bad memories I had of someone who pretty much assaulted me before and after I went to the psych ward. And he decided to keep calling and telling me he was going to kill my whole family. My dad made a report with the Quebec police about death threats, but not much came of it, although it is on file there. I tried to report my ID stolen to the police, but not much came of that either. And then of course, there were the screen memories. It was like being put into a cult. I hate cults! Psychiatry is a cult, the way it works when it uses force.

Currently I am healing and just trying to get back to normal. I am trying to take a break from the News and Religion, but it always comes up again. Anyway, I am going to go have a nap now. I’m staying with family, trying to feel okay about life. It is hard, that is for sure. I decided to rewrite my screenplay, now that I know what the Alan Smithee is. I’m going to be spending the summer on holidays, occasionally writing.

That was stupid

I was trying to link my cousin up to a compassionate unicode mainframe for him to heal and ended up locking myself out of my computer!!! WTF?

Anyway, I will be fixing that later.

I have decided to forgo the boy option. I quite like being silky smooth.

I am trying to quit smoking, that is VERY hard. Depressing.

I am healing from my last job, I mean, my office worker job, because the stuff I was reading was WAY too hardcore for me. I still have nightmares.

I have nightmares that I am being chased by an Oscar Meyer Weinermobile, no joke!

Anyway, I am still healing, and I will write briefly now and then, but if other people want to write here they can go ahead.

Thanks
Thirza

Cast your votes!

Who made Easter safe for same sex lovers?

Okay, how about, who is Trogdor?

Okay, is alcohol detrimental to people’s well being?

Last question, and this is an easy one:

What does ACC stand for?

Entry for April 09, 2007
And the Exiles Church is a real name for a real group, but they have to go learn on their own. And they have a safe place to do it finally, because they chose the Albert Community Centre. Which has a jewish centre in it. And James Diamond is Jewish, so if he did good he can walk in and teach. If not, someone else has to teach. And I want the summer off so I can rewrite my screenplay. I hope you like it!! It’s a love story about hate. And chasing hate away. And it has metaphorical dragons in it, but I am a literal boy, so it will just be about a couple of people. And transitioning into male! How’s that for a story? Anyway, I don’t teach Exiles. But they maybe can learn on their own now. I hope so, because I work with professional artists. And THEY are cool, because they always get it.

So thanks a lot Art Community for watching me grow up and helping me get out. And I will be seeing you at the ACC!

Most Sincerely Yours
Sarain Stump
ACC stands for:

Assinine Confusion Collective
0
Atypical Canadian Collective
0
Aboriginal Curatorial Collective
1

Mawwige! Twue Wuv

I deliberately married a dyslexic to save people. I don’t know if you knew I could do that. But the marriage has been legally annulled. HOWEVER, Cindy and Megan really are legally married, it went safely. And I knew I could be there without hurting people because James Diamond though we got married ages ago. I don’t know why. He’s a weird guy that way. Anyway, I gave him a bicycle and a bottle of liquor in honour of him finding me. But even though that was a good game, it’s not good to play while on a drinking binge. And I quit drinking ages ago. I took up smoking temporarily because it’s a common thing in kundalini awakenings. Anyhow, there really is a dragon, it’s name is Trogdor! It is a burninator. And I burned my psych stuff ages ago. I have the bill though, if he wants to pay for it. It’s about 21 000. I hope he does pay for it, I know he has some money now. And after all, he wouldn’t let me work after, except for call centres. But I never had the super special thing with me in Montreal, it was left here in Saskatoon. I would never take my most precious possession out of my mom’s house without knowing it was safe.

Anyway Montreal, I bid you adieu. And Toronto, thanks for calling me, York, and I did want to get three letters of recommendation in but I couldn’t find any in time for the deadline. Mom didn’t want me to leave home again anyway. I’ll move out of her house, but not yet, I have to find a place that take service animals. Because they are well trained now. And I trained a master healer, at Cindy And Megan’s wedding. Her name is Deanna, and she’s my favorite cousin. She’s leaving university to come up here and find her path. And so I think she’s more important right now than formal education, because I like watching her grow up and I don’t want her to be in danger.

So I’ll stay in Saskatoon. I like it here, the river, the beaches, the art community especially. And hopefully now people remember what a cosmopolitan town Saskatoon is. Which is why I always laughed when critics of my work said I came from a rural place. No way man, I’m a city girl. Or boy. Or whatever.

Thanks for reading. I hope it illuminated some things for you, especially about how powerful true love is. And Cindy and Megan have it.

Ding Dong

Trogdor strikes again! And no one is dead okay. Schrodinger has been running all over.

E=MC2

This formula was discovered by Albert Einstein. Energy equals mass times the square of the speed of light. If you have two lightworkers hurling mass around, you get energy. This is different than nuclear technogy, which just does stupid shit. Energy, in this case, refers to God. And white light can never be converted into dark matter. 2 lightworkers on the same mission can still save the world, even when they disagree. Maybe especially when they disagree.

When I saw the lights in the sky they were disagreeing, they were fighting. And they displayed a particular pattern as they tangled, and it looked messed up!! And I deliberately didn’t stay to watch the end, because I knew I couldn’t. But in the end they were One again. In the end they were whole, even after all that conflict. And they chose specific dates to describe it. And they both guessed the end correctly.

Songs for tonight:
Shortbus Soundtrack.