Monthly Archive for May, 2008

vasecto-me

Published on May 23, 2008 by ABC | 0 Comments

Vasectomy Series by ABCIV Post 1*

its hard to concentrate when you just took a nut punch from the doctor, but ill give you what i can. the ingenious thing about the “whiffleball” procedure is that you are completely distracted the whole time. as soon as your cock is out the nurse gives you a tootsie pop and flips on the tunes. i could not resist cutting a “mixed bag” disk when i saw the option suggested in the info pack. few things in life give me the pleasure that making a mix-tape does. working within the constraints of a theme is terrific.so peep this – welcome to my scrote:

Mixed-Bag

1. A Plea For Tenderness – Jonathan Richman + The Modern Lovers
2. Barber Shop – Tom Waits
3. There’s A Love Knot In My Lariat – Montana Slim (Wilf Carter)
4. Monster (In My Pants) – B-52s
5. Big Balls – AC/DC
6. Love Whip – Reverend Horton Heat
7. Broken Arrow – Buffalo Springfield
8. Multiplication – Bobby Darin
9. I Gotcha – Joe Tex
10. Bring On The Pain – Radiskull + Devil Doll (Joe Sparks)
11. The First Cut Is The Deepest – Cat Stevens
12. Bye Bye Baby – Big Brother + The Holding Company
13. Nutbush City Limits – Ike + Tina
14. Hot Pants – James Brown
15. Funky Worm – The Ohio Players
16. Pistol Packin’ Papa – Montana Slim
17. Don’t Touch Me There – The Tubes
18. Knock On Wood – Otis Redding
19. Hard Ain’t It Hard – Woodie Guthrie
20. Tiptoe Through The Tulips – Tiny Tim
21. Mama Told Me Not To Come – Three Dog Night
22. Gimmie That Nutt – Eazy E

*dicta-typed by wife

OFFICIALLY JOINING THE NO BABIES CLUB

Published on May 23, 2008 by Corinna Carlson | 0 Comments

By the time you read the first sentence of this post Adam will have had himself snipped. Had a vasectomy. I don’t remember having to shave my hairy ass crack for my ass surgery but Adam did have to shave his balls. But I’ll leave the nuts and bolts talk for Adam because the boy goin’ blog about the whole thing. I would assume you’ll see his first post as soon as he can comfortably sit and write. Maybe if I picture a laptop long enough and concentrate hard enough one will just miraculously appear, that would seriously rule and prove me wrong on sooooooooooo many things.

There has been talk of this upcoming V in various forms over the past few months on GG. At first I was keeping pretty mum on it because Adam had not told his family, his relationship with his family affects me, I wish we were both closer to them but we aren’t and I asked him if he was going to call them and tell them or if he cared if they found out via the internet. He said via the internet was fine. I went from alluding to it to admitting it.

————

I remember being around twenty-six when my biological clock started to tick. I found this extremely alarming because I had fought endlessly with the self proclaimed pundits over the facts that “I was young” and “would change my mind about not wanting children when I was older”. I do not believe twenty-six to be old but it isn’t young either. I’d already been through more at twenty-six than I’d say most folks have gone through by fifty; until the ticking time bomb started my mind wouldn’t wander into hypothetical ‘baby bliss moments’ very often. I also met Adam that year. I was blatantly honest with Adam that I did not want children but that my body was seriously fucking with me and telling me I did but that my mind was working overtime telling it to fuck the fuck off. I spoke with a girlfriend I was extremely close in age with who also did not want children but was also feeling the effects of the good ol’ biological clock and how hard it was to fight. Other than finding someone who was my age and didn’t want kids but the clock was still ticking that was all the knowledge I gained from that conversation. Totally a let down.

I had never and did not want children and neither did Adam. At this point our relationship was still new so we didn’t discuss the whys. But like a lot of couples we had a couple of pregnancy scares. One that was just that a scare, for whatever reason my period didn’t show one month it was a January. The second I *may* have been carrying something, my period was over a week late but I was not showing positive on pregnancy tests and I had been to a walk in clinic when the bitch still hadn’t shown up and showed negative there as well but when I finally got my period it was EXTREME. More extreme than any period I have ever had. I won’t go into detail, I think every woman has either heard this particular story before or had it happen.

These incidents sent me on a mini lets constantly talk about a hypothetical baby and how AWESOME it would be to have a REAL ONE kick. This didn’t last long because eventually even the hypothetical kid grew up and we seriously boooo-ed on that. Once the hypothetical crap past we got married already knowing but having not revealed to either side of the family that we were one hundred percent not going to have children. With my being an only child and female it just did not seem fair to tell anyone before the wedding, but even when I would allow myself to fantasize for real about kids it would always be as a mom of two boys and I’d be a hockey mom but it never went past the hockey mom part.

I am not going to bash on my childhood or bash on my parents, what would that prove? The past is the past, although yes it is one of the biggest reasons that I do not want children. The truth is I despised being an only child and the neglect I felt was something that five years of therapy is still helping me work on. I can’t change the truth or how I remember my youth, I can just deal with it.

On and even more personal level what was torture for me aka highschool a place that ultimately lead to a suicide attempt with a lengthy hospital stay and how I was treated after this incident also play largely into my no baby reasons. Sure, I had my ass kicked a few times, was verbally abused in the hallways almost daily, my locker vandalized with nasty shit written on it almost weekly, I’d have to have people come pick me up at school from time to time, the tires were popped on my car, twice, and my photo was posted up in the males washroom with obscenities I won’t even repeat next to it and so on and so on but it is nothing, just NOTHING compared to the fate of a child targeted by bullies today and there is no way to determine who will be the loser and who will be the bully. And even if there were it wouldn’t change my mind.

There is nothing worth taking that risk for me.

There has always been a part of me that feels slightly guilty because there are so many women who want children and for whatever unfortunate reason can not have them. But it isn’t my fault that adopting is so hard. And I believe strongly having felt it that if you make it through that biological clock ticking away at the high decibel it tended to tick at that you know what you want, better yet, I’ve always known deep down what I want and it isn’t a child. I think babies are pretty fun, but the part where you hand them back over is the best. Kids like me since I’ve truly left any thoughts of having a child behind me, my energy towards them is entirely different and they are responsive to me, they used to scare the shit out of me before and I know they could sense me coming a mile away. I do get scared of being old and alone, like what if Adam dies? Or when Adam dies what if I’m pretty young but can’t bear to have another man in my life and am forced to live alone forever in pajamas with lots of cats and all the seasons of Oz and Sex and the City and masturbation becomes my life and I only order in, even my books?

And last but not least I obviously suffer from various super fun mental illnesses. Between the possibility of passing that on and my child having to deal with half of what I dealt with being a kid, a young adult and an adult, there were some great times, but not enough to even consider bringing a child into THIS world.

We always talked about Adam getting a V but we didn’t think we could afford it. And so we just dreamed of it until the fateful day it came up in a conversation with a couple who had made the decision to get the snip snip snip too and we discovered they are free here in the lovely nation of Canada, felt like idiots for a second for not knowing and then he made an appointment. We’d already been welcomed into the club; we are now just making it official.

AMERICAN PSYCHO & LESS THAN ZERO – did Ellis mean to include an almost identical scene in the books and movie?

Published on May 22, 2008 by Corinna Carlson | 5 Comments

This post includes a very small spoiler if you have NOT done one of three things:

  1. read either book, doesn’t really matter which one
  2. seen the movie American Psycho
  3. care about a part in the movie that is under five minutes in length, in AP is no more than three pages and in LTZ is a short page in length.

But I think you should read this post anyway because I made a discovery.

American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis (1991) is in my top three favourite books. I read it before I started to date my books but I remember that I read it in 2000, I worked with a girl who was reading it and having the word Psycho in the title was enough for me. In the minor, but WAY more than I usually do but still unsuccessful research I did for this post before deciding this was one for the readers and Googlers who happen across it I found perhaps the most disturbing thing about the book to a Canadian aside from its content is that according to Wikipedia;

A copy of the book was found in the house rented by Canadian serial murderers Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka, leading to speculation that the book had motivated Bernardo’s crimes. However, the first murder by Bernardo and Homolka happened in December 1990, before the book’s publication.

I also enjoy the film version of American Psycho [we watched it again last night which has prompted this post]. I feel that Christian Bale captured the character of Patrick Bateman with such disciplined and purely superb method acting that if it wasn’t a campy slasher flick he probably would have been nominated for some stuff. This movie also follows the book with very few missteps and the stuff they left out is more than alright with me, the full extent of graphicness both violent and sexual does not need to be written into a screenplay with every facet of his possible serial rage brought to the screen for the viewer to more than get the point.

Less than Zero (1985 Bret Easton Ellis), I read this in January of 2006, if memory serves I gave it five stars, I enjoyed it immensely. It was while reading it that I noticed the repeat. If it weren’t for the scene in the American Psycho movie I’d have probably missed it. Less than Zero is also a graphic and disturbing novel but it is pretty real and no less scary than Gossip Girl, although Gossip Girl is unfortunately marketed at a much younger audience.

I got to page 85 of Less than Zero and must have read the page over at least ten times. It had been years since I had seen the movie American Psycho but even longer since I had read the novel. But I knew I had seen on the screen almost word for word what I was reading on the page.

It is apparently common for authors and Ellis himself to repeat or carry on different characters on a smaller and/or larger scale but I can tell you I have never noticed anything this blatant before. I know that in his book Rules of Attraction the lead character is named Sean Bateman and during the movie I have not seen but read in the trivia [wiki] section on American Psycho where it mentions that in the movie Sean receives a phone call from his brother Patrick Bateman.

But this is a hell of a lot larger than that and my mind is rather boggled that it isn’t in at least one of the three FULL Wikipedia pages I read and none seemed to have any outward links that would be of any help.

I remember that when I finished Less than Zero I had a brief conversation with Adam about how shocked I was because the scene from the American Psycho movie stood out rather largely against the backdrop of a reference from a book published in the 80′s.

Last night while watching the movie it really started to take over my mind in an obsessive fashion the beginning where I say I didn’t research this post is bullshit for once I have now in the writing of this I called two people I have massive respect for in regards to everything not just their book knowledge and neither had heard about this but had both heard of Bateman’s brother in Rules of Attraction. I grabbed both books in the middle of the movie and was lucky enough to find the parts in both books. [American Psycho, Pages 360-362, Less than Zero Page 85].

In my mind, the easiest way to connect the three is to start with Less than Zero.

We have a conversation between the main character and his on again off again girlfriend;

(I am only including relevant parts of the page)

I roll over onto my back, I feel something hard and covered with fur and I reach under myself and it’s this stuffed black cat. I drop it on the floor and then get up and take a shower.

“Will you call me before Christmas?” she asks.

“Maybe.” I pull on my vest, wondering why I even came here in the first place.

“Clay?”

“Yeah, Blair.”

“If I don’t see you before Christmas”, she stops. “Have a good one.”

I look at her a moment. “Hey, you too.”

She picks up the stuffed black cat and strokes its head.

I step out the door and start to close it.

“Clay?” she whispers loudly.

I stop but don’t turn around. “Yeah?”

“Nothing.”

Even if you have not read Less than Zero if you have seen American Psycho that part although Christmas is Thanksgiving and the names are Courtney and Patrick, the lines I have used from Less than Zero are the EXACT words used in American Psycho in both the book and the movie and there are more from the scene that I haven’t included.

IF this was supposed to be some kind of allusion to the character of Patrick Bateman being a fan of Ellis and had read his novels then why the black stuffed cat? In order for there to be advancement in the use of a character from a book written around the time the character of Bateman is coming out of University I do not see the development or the relevance and if there is none this is extremely disappointing and screams lazy author to me, even if I do love two of his books.

By taking the stuffed black cat out of American Psycho I may have been able to accept some kind of continuing theme but being that it’s pretty much exactly the same dialogue used in both book and movie I can’t find a connection or a reason.

This minor reference to Patrick Bateman in Rules of Attraction that could be found by a four year old makes it extremely hard for me to wrap my head around why information on this other parallel is nowhere to be found especially when all of the articles state that Ellis reuses his characters. I am pretty confused and would LOVE to know if anyone has noticed this or knows why it isn’t mentioned anywhere [that I can find], I feel it is one thing to reuse a character but to literally plagiarize yourself, I don’t get it.

On an added note both Less than Zero and American Psycho are on the list of 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, this flabbergasts me even further that I can’t find anything on this three way connection. Granted those lists are a dime a dozen and it also has Glamorama on it also by Ellis, which I hated, it quite frankly went straight over my head; I’m still surprised I finished it.

Longer than you think

Published on May 22, 2008 by Corinna Carlson | Closed

I am currently writing some posts.

I’ve decided to still blog but to stay the hell away from anything other than straight up old school blogging.  I’m staying off of Facebook and Twitter until further notice, of course my traffic will suffer but I’m looking for a more “fuck stats, make art” [Dave O] approach.

Thank you for your comments, emails and insight.  You guys are truly amazing I could not ask for better readers and friends.

I think because I had already broken the longest clip of not blogging that just getting that wee bit out yesterday helped give me a little re spark and kick in the ass.