Why should I? I'm also so excited about my defiance that I'm going to post my armpit hair growing progress on the interweb for ... tens... of ... twenties of people to see!

Day three of not shaving. I can't believe that you think I'm high in this picture. I am OBVIOUSLY not high.

Today is my birthday, and I feel strangely at ease. I've always hated birthdays, as it is just a reminder of how many years you've been alive, and a countdown to how many you have left. I'm 1/4 of the way through. Before I know it, I'll be even shorter, more blind, have more pain in my bones then I already do. My wrinkles will go from being cute to making me look like a hairless rat. The silver hairs that are appearing, giving me minutes of entertainment as I brush my teeth, will stop being so amusing to me. My chubbyness, which I like half of the time, will stop making me feel so feminine and get out of hand, making me look like a frightening blob. I'll probably end up in wheelchair fairly soon because of the rods in my back and the arthritis that I already have. I'm not looking foreward to watching everyone I love grow old and crippled and die around me.

Hopefully the fact that my life is 1/4 over and I haven't accomplished anything noteworthy will make me get up off my ass and do something. I want to sew a new peice of clothing every day, and loose 20 lbs and ride bikes for an hour every day, and stop driving altogether, and stop feeling self-concious all the time. I want to be able to go into the mall without freaking out that everyone will make fun of me (not that I want to go to that place anyway). I really really really want to make a new movie. My creativity is totally dead. I'm afraid that The Iron Maiden is all I had in me, the only story I had to tell, and now that I've told it, there's nothing left. Maybe I'll spend the rest of my life re-telling it, Lucas-style. I think I need to do more nude photos or strip or something. I want to embarass myself to the point where nothing else will phase me. We're going to be on TV tomorrow morning... maybe I will embarass myself then, although it isn't public enough. The problem is, I don't really get embarassed easily. I'm afraid that my voice will break or I'll sing the wrong words or I'll say something stupid, but that won't embarass me enough to temporarily change my life for the better.

I'm going to go take a shower and go to yoga with Amy. I don't know what else to do with myself.

x-posted to myspace, cause I'm cool like that.

I'm sewing cute things and eating fruit all day today. I hope to have some cute stuff to try and sell when we go on tour at the end of the month, but I'm having trouble making stuff that I want to get rid of. I need to design some sort of extremely adorable, easy to make, unique small item(s) that cute girls won't be able to live without... change purse? hair doodle? my crochet bear hats are awesome, but thats a winter thing.

Two weeks ago today, i had to put Go Go to sleep, something I swore I wouldnt do to a pet of mine. I am 99 percent sure that if I had taken her to Berkley for mass removal, none of this wouldhave happenned. The doctor here used string stitches instead of wire. GoGo ate them, tore a hole in her belly, got stapled, ate them off, tore more flesh, got a huge cyst near the wound, the doctor lanced the cyst and connected the two wounds, installed a drainage tube. I had to clean her out, hold her down and give her all this medicine, torture my baby. In the end, her wound just wouldnt heal and I brought her in with the knowelege that I wouldnt be bringing her back. Only a mother would know the pain im feeling. If your reading this and thinking "Whatever, a rat is nothing like a human, Cherub is a crazy bitch" Then you have no soul and no reason to speak with me again. When Switch died I had to be strong for GoGo, but now I'm a mother with dead babies and my heart is so broken I dont know if it will ever be able to heal. I want to get tatoos and pearcings, feel physical pain so my emotional pain wont hurt as bad. I cried myself to sleep last night next to Ben, who knew I was crying buy made no attempt to comfort me with a hug or a word. Fucking robot. I'm too scared of death to consider killing myself, but I want to tear my flesh off and crack my head against the wall. I want to howl to the fucking moon with my sorrows, so loud and long I cough up blood. I wish I believed in God, cause I could just say oh well, I'll see her again in heaven. But I dont believe in anything, and Its killing me that this beautiful little creature who had such a wonderful personality is missing from this earth, and I will never smell her grape soda fur, get a dry rat lick (she licked my tears when I was crying for her - the little vampire) I'll never have conversations with her werer I supply her dialogue as well as mine, or hold her on my chest and pet her silky head. She had more life left in her. She was aging, but not ready to go. If I had taken her to a different doctor this could have been avoided, but I was lazy. My back hurt. I didnt want to drive as far as Berkeley, and I was also afraid that the doctor there would say that she was too old for surgery. Maybe she was, and she would have died from the tumor instead, but at least then her last weeks wouldnt have been with a huge infected gash in her side, being held down and taped up. My poor baby. I feel like shit.

TUT... A Note from the Universe

Did you know that here, Cherub, in the unseen and in worlds far removed from your own, trees actually have personalities as strong and distinct as your own?

True... it’s the same where you are, but no one would ever believe it.

Timber...
The Universe

*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*

Except, Cherub, maybe you. Which is why thought I’d mention it...

My darling Switchey Jones died last week. I'm finally able to discuss it without crying, but it still hurts tremendously. I held her for as long as I could, and putting her cold little body into the cold ground was almost more then I could take. I'm going to get a tiny tatoo of her near my overy because she was my child and I never want to forget how beautiful she was.

I have a special request to pass on to you, Cherub, directly from the morning sun, herself; echoed by the clear blue sky, the earth under your feet, and the trees in your life who each long for your passing.

From time to time, however sporadic or brief, they'd absolutely adore your undivided attention.

I'd want to know, so I thought you would, too.

The Universe

Thoughts become things... choose the good ones! ®
© www.tut.com ®

I know, I know Cherub, you can't be everything to every tree, but you come amazingly close.

Your private, random Totally Unique Thought from the Universe... if you believe in random:



You're beautiful enough.
You're special enough.
You're sexy, playful, and fun enough.
You've worked enough.
You've cried enough.
You've been grateful, generous, and kind enough.
OK, then? So what are you waiting for?
Give it to yourself!
Your faithful scorekeeper,
The Universe

You see, I'm not the one who needs convincing. Nor am I the one who's holding it back.

On Sat Mommy and I took both rats up to Berkeley to see Dr. Reed. I was freaking out like a worried mommy, as he listened to Switch's heart, her tumor obscenely sticking off like a jumbo olive.

"Is there any hope for her?" I asked, the tears welling up just out of view and ready to come flooding out at any second.

Dr. Reed, who Mommy and I call "Dr. Rat", and who looks a bit like an old Hell's Angel pretending to be a doctor, with his long and wispy grey mustache hanging down like a furry Fu Manchu - Dr Reed held Switch up to his face and smiled. He addressed her directly, not me. "Of course there's hope for you!", he told my squirming white child. "There's always hope!"

You can imagine how that lifted my fears and sorrows away like taking off a nasty old thrift store jacket, all stiff and stinky. But then it was Go-Go's turn. After being weighed on the giant white scoop, Go-Go ran over to hide against my sleeve. Dr. Rat reached over with his stethascope to listen, and announced that her lungs sounded clear. Then Go-Go hooted. The frightening high-pitched barking that accompanies her breathing for weeks sometimes; the sound that tells me I've failed as a mother... and Dr. Rat heard it. He moved the stethascope over to her right side and told me, as id he was announcing that she had a hangnail, that she had phenomonia in her right lung. He told me that yes, she has a tiny tumor, but he wants her to take some Doxy for a few days, and that we should just come back next week to get it removed. We left Switch there, and took Go-Go with us to shop on Telegraph.

Before we hit Telegraph, however, we came across the Berkeley Farmer's Market, and I'm pretty sure it was one of Go-Go's favourite trips yet. Everyone was friendly to her, sawing hi in baby voices, waving, and telling me their own personal rat stories. That isn't what thrilled Go-Go. What she was enjoying, was the fact that EVERY vendor had a lovely taste-testing plate laied out, and Mommy and I kept knicking these samples and stuffing them into her cage. She dined on Asian Pear, stripy green tomatos, melon, red bell pepper, bits of bread, peaches and more. She was in Rat Heaven! She didn't enjoy shopping on Telegraph quite as much, although she got a kick out of the several darling Asian guys who did doubletakes when they saw her, their faces lighting up with huge smiles, and especially the one who waved at her, as if I wasn't even there. He was saying hi to the rat. <3

We're going back this Saturday for Go-Go's surgery, and I think the moral of the day is pretty clear:

WE SHOULD MOVE TO BERKELEY.

Your private, random Totally Unique Thought from the Universe... if you believe in random:



I have a confession to make.
You know those folks in your life, who you kind
of wish weren't in your life?
Well... they're plants.
No, not the green, leafy kind. You know, stooges. Like “plants” in an audience. People placed there
as if to test you.
I know, I know, I shouldn't have, but...
that's how much I love you.
The test, is to not let them bug you. Can you do that? If you can, I'll either normalize them or pull 'em out like weeds, as you prefer. Otherwise, they stay put, or worse, start multiplying like Spring
Rye watered with Miracle Gro®.
Of course, I wouldn't have planted them in the first place if you hadn't insisted. And the test analogy? That was just an analogy.

If you tell them I said the weed thing, the deal's off.

Oh, they love me all right!
They really, really love me.
But sometimes I wonder if the reason they love me has anything to do with the thought that one day, just maybe, I'm going to be the spark, ignite the fire and summon the magic that will make all of their dreams come true?
Yikes, are they ever going to be surprised when they find out that's their job?

http://www.livejournal.com/users/uber_ratten/

Show the rats some love!

Switch has the biggest tumor on her chest, between her arms. I hadn't noticed it before, because she is so encredibally fat. And Go-Go is huffing again with that awful barking breath, AND it looks like she is developing another small tumor in her armpit. I'm taking them both to Dr. Reed at Albany Animal Hospital in Berkeley this Saterday. Everyone please send them (and me) good thoughts. I love my baby ratties so much - they are my children, and I just want them to have the best life possible since ratties have such short lives to begin with. I would normally be histerical right now, but the anti depressant I'm on makes me stronger and able to deal with this a little better. I really miss Ben though. I need a hug from him so badly. He's so big and strong and warm and smart and calm, I'm really lonely and small and scared and sad without him :(

First place at the Shockefest on Sunday. So now I can the say "Oh yes, my award-winning film, 'The Iron Maiden'", ect. We decided to play Old Whore's Night on the Town, and pretend that we are Thelma and Louise, and get ugly drunk at the party... but when I said ugly, nasty drunk, I guess somehow Paisley still wasn't expecting how drunk I was. Our friend at the hotel gave us a free room, and our other friend barfed on my pants because I threw them off and jumped into me and paisley's bed... so I ate my continental breakfast in a towel!

We made such good friends with two awesome makeup artists, Rick Gonzalez and Ed Martinez (and Ed's cutie gf, too!) And that night, Rick gifted us with a terrifyingly hideous zombie head mask that he made himself!!!!!!1!1!1! It's so awesome! We learned so much about makeup, and now we are really excited about doing our zombie movie. The effects will be wonderful, and we will have two of the best makeup artists to help give us advise!

Us on Friday, all fixed up for the "dinner with the stars"


here is Rick, Ed in the background, doing a horrible burn that took less then 5 minutes!

it started hurting when i woke up yesterday - every time i sleep with paisley it goes out of whack like this.... and last night i took a whole soma and moaned and groaned like an old man whilst trying to get comfy on the couch. I have to go to yoga in an hour, havent managed to take a shower yet. my whole right side is relitavely useless, and i cant breathe deeply without intense pain. this is so gay.

Hola! Paisley and I forced our bestest friend Robert to take some piccies with these here free baloons, but without Ben for lighting, we didn't do a very good job! We LOVED Robert's direction, but... but... Oh we are so lost without my cinematograher cat! So here are my favourite shots.

We are going to try and shoot D.a.r.y.l's music video again tonight. Well... in a few hours. Or one hour. And I'm procrastinating writing on here, because I dont want to start looking for my nurse outfit. This is going to be a really difficult shoot. The gay bar, the crazy friend extras, the drummer who doesn't show up, the blood... these are the things I already know are going to go wrong.

Josh: The Aviator was really good.

Ben: Yeah, it was cool, but it wasn't Scorsese's best film.

Josh: Well what do you think his best film was?

Ben: Taxi Driver! Of course!

Balty: Oh yeah, that movie was really good. That's the one with Queen Latifah, right?