Fellow traveller.
 I have seen things.

Michael Collins.  Liam Neeson was great, Julia Roberts need never attempt any sort of accent again.  She is just not able to do it.  It is like me trying to be a swimsuit model or trying out for cheerleading.  Not a good idea.  Interesting topic and led me to look up some info on Ireland online so that is good.

The Panama Deception.  For those of you who don't like to be blindly led around by a government who kills people indiscriminantly without the knowledge or support of the general public you might just want to jump off the good ship U.S.A. because we do that kind of stuff ALL THE DAMN TIME.  Welcome to Panama and the thousands of people we killed while invading a country that never made any hostile move towards us.  Good documentary I guess, dated now but worth looking at.

Erin Brockovich.  Yeah yeah yeah, it was a gyn-fest but still, I liked this spunky little movie.  And it gives me a chance to relate my only brush with stardom once again!  Ahem.  While visiting my friend Matthew Charles Lacey in NYC for Halloween one year he got me a ticket to see the show he was working backstage as an ASM on, STOMP.  It turns out that the husband of Julia Robert's sister was also working backstage on the same production and the night that I went to see the show in my house seat, two seats away from me sat the tallest skinniest redheadedest Roberts in the woild.  It was HER.  Yes friends, she was there in my row, sitting next to her sister with two guys who must have been body gaurds.  She laughed a few times and at one point her laughter stopped the show.  The guy on stage just stood there and pointed at her - it was awesome.  After the show she went backstage and so did we, and she was tall.  And smiley.  That's about it.  I of couse said nothing to her and didn't approach, but there yah go, my brush with fame.  The movie was sweet, a bit sentimental, but the real Erin Brockovich is still fighting crime!

The Parking Lot Movie.  Best film of the five, by far.  Existentialism and the meaning of the universe in general are explored in this movie.  Loved it.

Birdy.  Weird.  1984, Nicholas Cage was so young he still had hair and this was a strange one.

Hello fellow traveller.

Read this the other day: "Memoir of an Addicted Brain" about a man who used a lot of drugs and then became a neuroscientist, studying the effects of those drugs on the brain.  Exceptional story.  His life and the science behind the drugs made for a quick and informative book.

Also I am finishing "Well Out To Sea" which is a memoir/collection of stories by a Maine woman, Eva Murray, about living on Matinicus Island year-round.  It might have been titled "This Place Sucks - We Eat Nails For Breakfast and Shit Rocks" or something equally flowery.  I got sick of hearing about how hard island life is after the second story but soldiered on through the rest of it because some of it was actually touching and lovely.  I have a friend who lives in Lincolnville which is near Rockland and Camden and Thomaston up near this place.  I have lived in Portland for 14 years and never been on an island yet, other than Mackworth and whatever spot of land Eastport is on.  Both are connected to the mainland by roads so they are not even close to being islands.  I have also managed never to set foot on a boat or ship since coming here.  So not only am I a flatlander and from away but also a landlubber/blithering booby who thinks living on an island is sheer insanity, a life for those who fish.

Re-watched Gangs of New York yesterday or the day before, enjoyed that.  Saw Rampart with Woody "Hemp Activist" Harrelson, it was ok, some good sexy scenes.  Tried to watch Hobo With a Shotgun but couldn't do it, the first damn scene did me in.  White bikini clad woman being sprayed with gushing blood, not my style.  Never been a horror fan with the exception of Shaun of the Dead.

Recently on the screen at Casa Tanya:

Sweetgrass.  Abysmal.  If you want to watch a herd of sheep walk from Texas to Montana, this is the film for you.  Literally the most boring thing I have seen since I watched that one movie about whales, only difference was that I did not fall asleep this time and while I find the voices of whales to be resonant and soothing tons of sheep bleeting and baa'ing eventually sounds like a clusterfuck of mondo-annoying car horns.  Car horns that eat grass, walk and shit.  Sweetgrass = baaaad.

51 Birch Street.  Wonderful documentary about an American family.  Interesting point of view and insight from the son who made the film into the workings of a middle class couple with three children.  If you're into that kind of thing.  You know, dialogue, conflict, drama, life.  Perhaps you would rather watch some sheep wander around.  If so, see above title.

I have a friend who said something to this effect: "They make a hundred documentaries a year, one or two are worth seeing, Tanya watches those and the other 98 as well."  I do seem to watch a lot of these things.

I am still creating eggs from time to time.  I made one the other day with a praying mantis on it.  I was going to take a photo to share here but I varnished it before I could do that.  I wasn't thinking.  With varnish on it the egg just glares like a horrible glaring thing and is unphotographable.

Fed up with what I would call the shittiest "relationship" I have ever been involved with in my shortish life I have decided to search for love online through the website POF.com which stands for Plenty of Fish.  Yes, I am sort of glad to be doing this for myself because of the prospect of meeting someone who doesn't treat me like crap, someone who at least has the decency to not make fun of me, someone who knows what kind of movies I like - the guy in question, the asshole who I have been sharing space with for three years, last night I asked him what kind of movies I like, he said "Movies?"  No, that is not an answer.  He knows about as much about me as the first day I met him.  Not for lack of trying on my part, but hey - whatever.  Right?  So, moving on, again.

I have been slamming my head into this particular wall for over three years now and all I have gotten for it is a serious headache, lots of emotional scars, and a sort of addiction to banging my head into walls.  I can comfort myself with the fact that soon enough these events will just be unpleasant memories.  Memories fade.  Yeah, I am trying to stick to that kind of positive shit for the moment anyway.  Maybe drinking would help.

Wow, here it is four days since my last post and I am posting again? My world must be just rocking or something. Yeah.

I went to my first ever Al-Anon meeting on Monday night, last night. It was interesting. They say go to six meetings before you decide if it is the right program for you. I don't know of any other cults that ask you so politely to attend six times before you cut ties with them. It sort of felt like if there had been kool-aid there I might have been persuaded to drink it. However, I was brilliant and made the virginal mistake of telling my "qualifier" (note the newfound lingo) that I was heading to a meeting and he wasn't too happy about that.

I have been having a really rough time with this person. I know with every fiber of my being that he is not good for me, and yet somehow I keep letting him back in my life, even to the point of seeking him out when I know it is bad for me. This is some sort of cosmic joke, that is all I can think at this point. I am not laughing though. And that is unfortunate.

I got the game Skyrim and an XBOX 360 for my birthday and I have been dedicated to playing that every day since I got it because it is awesome. I haven't played for a few days because I finished the Thieves Guild quest and that is my favorite part of the game so I am just letting myself breathe for a little bit here. Some people like the Dark Brotherhood quests the most, or the Mages or the Companions or whatever, I am a thief at heart. Oh, btw, Shadomere, the awesome black horse with the red eyes that you get at one point? He can die. Um. He died. In my version of the game. I don't know if he will be coming back either, according to different info on the web, he might, he might not. In Oblivion, the previous awesome incarnation of Elder Scrolls, Shadowmere did not die, but just regenerated at the Dark Brotherhood Sanctuary place. Not so in this here version. Sorta sucked because riding the pony was my favorite part of the game. No comment on that from the peanut gallery please.

I have been egging up a storm recently. I completed an ostrich egg on Sunday. Since I am having this show in April I have been quite productive. I wanted to show two ostrich eggs, and I broke one last Sunday by accident, it got knocked over, and sometimes eggs break. So there it is. The new one has two images of the Virgin Mary on it with a traditional band around it, it is brightly colored and sort of strange, I am thinking of calling it "Our Lady of the Perpetual Mittens" because I cannot do hands and well, they are mitten hands. What can I say? No one in college ever intended for me to succeed in the art world! I was not allowed to take figure drawing and only had a basic Drawing 101 class when I was a freshman, hands? Not so much.

Tonight the grumpy old asshole who I sometimes hang out with (also known in this version of the story as my "qualifier") is even more grumpy at me than usual because I did't do what he wanted me to do. I try to help this jerk at every turn, I helped him buy his damn laptop for chrissake, but that ain't enough, I gotta be his go-to IT all around helper beeyatch too. Something wasn't working right in some program and I emailed the company who makes the computer about it and then it was 11:00pm and time to go to sleep so I left. He comes and complains/knocks and tells me that they wrote him back three different emails and if I had "just taken a second" I could have helped him fix the whole thing. Well screw that, seriously. It never "just takes a second". It would have been at least another half hour of doing crap with his cranky ass and I am through with it all, I swear. He doesn't care about me, that much is painfully obvious. I tried to talk to him about my job today and I might as well have been speaking to a brick wall. I try to concentrate on the good stuff but sometimes, my word. It is so difficult.

I often have commented on how I need a t-shirt that just says "ENABLER" on the front and back so that people will know my role in the world of the play. Thanks Al-Anon for making that part so abundantly clear to moi.

I have no cheese in my house. I might do something rash for a few slices of provolone right now. That is all.

Just started a rather interesting "conversation" on FaceBook by updating my status. I recently read the book "Sybil Exposed" which deals with the famous Multiple Personality Disorder case from the book "Sybil" and the movie of the same name. Turns out the whole thing was basically a fabrication and the new book, written in 2011, is a startling look into some unethical psychiatric practices of the 1950s-1970s. Let's just say I am glad I didn't go nuts back then, because I would still be in the state mental hospital and probably not where I am today if I had been born in a different time. The facebook back and forth was to be expected, people get hot under the collar when you start talking about things that matter to them, and mental illness is one of those hot button topics.

That book was great and I also recently read "Travelling Mercies" by Anne Lamott. It was a wonderful book by a great lady, most of the stories were about faith and her struggles in her life, it is a memoir. One thing that did bug me slightly was that it used the dreaded "quote" formula of memoir writing, I can look up pithy quotes in my online edition of Bartlett's, I hate it when people rely heavily on quotes to convey their message.

My personal life is a shit filled mess. A bag of shit right now smells and feels better than I do about my personal life. However I am finding solace in my egg work and also in my day to day work that I do for a local housing agency that provides housing to people who are mentally ill (see how that worked in there? the mental illness thing? yeah. i do that for a living.)

Advice from someone who has had bad relations with men who drink, don't become involved with Men Who Drink. Meeting men at bars for random hook-ups is fine, sex is great, necessary even. However, bonding and having day to day conversation and sharing meals and trying to "help" someone who has a serious drinking problem? Well, there is a reason God made beer, but there is also a reason he made those crazy kooky A.A. people. Oh, and nothing sets off the drinking problem better than a little crack smoking and prostitution. He didn't whore himself out, but he was buyin' what they were sellin' if you get my drift. As far as drug abuse goes, a wise man named Brian Studler once told me:

"There ain't but one kind of crack worth smokin', and it don't fit in a pipe."

Amen, and get that man another round. Brian did enjoy a few frosty beverages in his time. He also used to sing this little song that went:

"I didn't make it, to the A.A. meeting today..."

I don't know the rest of the song, but I appreciate that line and sing it to myself from time to time.

I have seen so many films since I last wrote on here that it is criminal to think I used to actually update this blog regularly with the movies and books that I read and saw. Such a shame when one starts something and doesn't follow through on it.

Best movie I have seen in recent memory though was Buck. It is about that guy who is the Horse Whisperer in real life. It was riveting. The whole thing. His abusive childhood, his name - Buckshot - for cryin' out loud. He comes to Maine to do a workshop in Limerick every year and I am going to try and go this September if they still allow people to come and just watch. I am gonna go and see that man do his thing. Amazing.

EGG SHOW!!! I am having a show in the Gallery where I live. It will be happening on the 6th of April and will be running until the 30th. My eggs are central, however I will be showing collage and photography also.

Tonight the relationship thing weighs heavily on my mind because I have done somethings that I cannot undo and I have been hurt in ways that are just plain ugly. And tomorrow is his birthday. So of course he is out drinking tonight. Whee-haw! At this point it is none of my beeswax. If feelings were only a faucet. I would turn that fucker off. Pronto.

Hey man!

Movies! Whee!

Dear Zachary, a letter to a son about his father. Dr. Andrew Bagby was shot by his ex-girlfriend five times in a parking lot in Western PA. She escaped to Canada where she announced that she was 4 months pregnant with his son. The baby would be named Zachary and he was so amazingly beautiful, seriously - he looked just like his daddy. This was an amazing film, so much going on here that I cannot even really tell you everything because I hope you will some day see this one, saying that it completely changed my life sounds cheesy, right? But I had such a deep reaction to this movie, I cried, I was drawn in, I mean, I wanted to know every single person in it, other than the psycho bitch who shot Andrew, and I wanted to help the amazing David and Kathleen Bagby through all the trials they were facing, they were such beautiful people. SEE THIS FILM. find it someplace. must see.

Waging a Living. The story of a bunch of Americans trying to make a living on the low wages offered in most dead end jobs here in the US. Disenheartening, seriously sad and reality based of course, it is a documentary after all. I hate to say this but the "American Dream" is just that - a DREAM. It is not the same for everyone, and it will not be accomplished for everyone at the same time.

Nursery University. HI-LARIOUS. Watching seemingly rational adults go actually coo-coo to get their little monsters into Nursery schools in Manhattan, it is cut-throat process and after listening to The Nannie Diaries on audiobooks it really um, made me wanna upchuck a little. These parents are willing to spend thousands of dollars for their kids to play with finger paints and playdoh, when I say thousands, I mean 20,000 a semester, I mean, 40,000 a year.