Bio Updated: December 03, 2009
Bio Updated: December 03, 2009
(This bio is auto-biographical due to also being the bio for my personal web site.)
Pictured to the left, I'm fending off a fit of the giggles. Hence the strange set of my jaw. Yes, even a deranged lunatic like me loses a grip on her guffaws from time to time. I had this picture taken and hooked it up into my bio back when I was still running Death Equinox, so it isn't exactly current. Feh, let me live in the past for a while. It's better than a Go picture!
I edited and published the magazine Cyber-Psychos AOD from 1992 to 2001, and also published CPAOD Books from 1995 to 2001. Note the date coincidence: I ran the Death Equinox convention from 1997 to 2001 (where my much photographed bloody torture readings occurred). What's with 2001?! Well, I'll get to that. Let's have a brief summary of my arts fringe endeavors and general stats first. Before Death Equinox I organized a handful of smaller events, played in a few bands (mostly wacko techno noise, but with variety), and started a church called Our Blasted Lady of the Jellyfish -- First Church of Cnidaria. I am, of course, The Blasted One: St. Sailing. I have written 1000s of reviews, articles, and essays, and also a fair smattering of fiction and poetry here and there.
CURRENT!: Prepping a "Cnidaria: End Times" ebook, followed by a CPAOD Sampler ebook. Added more links to the bottom of this bio (Twitter, YouTube, Imgur).
Writing is and always has been my #1 processing/ coping/ communicating mechanism. If anyone wants me to write something for them, feel free to ask. I may even say yes! (I may also space out and forget to respond, in which case you should try try again. And again and again and again. I'm pretty absent-minded.) I enjoy writing fiction the most, but do it the least often. This could be because I never know what to do with it, other than leave it sitting around on my hard drives. That is why I should be asked, I was never really into submitting work anywhere. I am, by nature, a neurotic and reclusive introvert.
Some of my fond memories of being published include the essays It's a Quaintly Weird World in Q Zine (Permeable Press), A Cycle of Transformation (Bloodreams: Collective Cauldron), and Self-Mutilation: Therapeutic or Self-Destructive? (Morbid Curiosity), and the stories Without Pain, Without Death (What the Fuck: The Avant-Porn Anthology), Vacuums Preserve Faith (Bloodreams: Collective Cauldron), Of Waxen Figures and Screaming Tombs in Mammoth Book of Historical Erotica (Robinson UK/Carroll & Graf US), Flow Like Rain (Bare Bone), and Frogs (Bloodsongs). I was pretty happy with those appearances, despite all of my neuroses, and I read all of those fiction tidbits at conventions (some at multiple conventions).
In my "spare" time I have posed as the Mother of Bastard Perverts to the Cyber-Psycho subculture, maintained (kind of) several web sites, and generally committed endless rambling on most conceivable topics. My main focus for most things is dark psychology and general human endurance. A personal fascination for reasons of... having been there. I have never formally studied psychology, but I have known a lot of interesting people and been through a lot of interesting times over the years. I HAVE formally studied Rocky Mountain Gardening, and avidly work my creativity on trying to transform my yard into a plant-filled paradise that the Blessed Jellyfish could be proud of. Even if it is more of a high desert (I live in the steppes) plant paradise than a tropical plant one.
I live in Denver (a misplaced mountain person, my heart has always remained up there in the wilds where I played as a youth... I currently have annual National and State Parks Passes and spend as much time as I can returning "home") with my 2nd and 3rd heads (Mr. Tibble and Bruce Young), my 2 precious children (Griffin and Amara... Griffin is 20 now, recently relocated back to Denver, and living with us temporarily), and my insane cat Wildflower -- who forces vets to put her in a carrier labelled "aggressive patient". But, but, she's my cute fuzzball! Yes, there have always been CPAOD cats. What do you expect from a crazy cat lady?
So. About that 2001 thing. There was something of a mental, physical, and financial
collapse. Grave's Disease probably played the biggest roll (aka beat me up the most when
it was left untreated for too many years), and Multiple Sclerosis was a factor as well.
For about 8 years I flaked off and worked on easier projects like my anime cel collection
web site, and my Go endeavors. Starting in 2004 I ran a Go (an ancient Chinese game) club
and AGA chapter (Fiery Rain of Go Stones, a Cnidarian namesake... which is not at all
inappropriate, there were generally 3 Streets at each meeting + occasional other disciples
of Cnidarianly ways. We also met at the Cnidaria-approved Mercury Café where I made plenty
of interesting memories in the CPAOD days), and I also started the US' 1st non-Congress
Pair Go tournament (Te wo Tsunaide). The Japanese Pair Go Association (now the
International Pair Go Association) had wanted Pair Go promoted in the US. With some
valuable assistance from Korean female pro player Janice Kim I gave it a good try. After
4 annual tournaments ('05-'08) I finally put it on hiatus so I could return to my previous
life.
Which is where I seem to be getting to now. Slowly, but... slowly.
And now for a "brief" history of me...
I originally entered the promotional fields as a "music journalist". My first reviews were published about a month after I turned 20 (August 1991). I was at the Colorado Music Magazine abode due to being in tow with some friends (right after a Pigface show... which I remember because I had the purple marker in my hand that Ogre had used to write his address down on... sadly, I never actually used the address -- despite having been a pen klepto -- but he was included in the CPAOD interview 2 Pigface shows later) and stumbled across their CD review rack. Having for many years been the type to forget things like buying food because I was addicted to exploring music, I was quite into the concept of grabbing a few CDs and reviewing them. (Which eventually back-fired, when I wound up needing to write WAY TOO MANY REVIEWS WAY TOO CONSTANTLY for Cyber-Psychos and had a long-running burn out that I have fortunately finally recovered from.)
This led to live show reviews and photography, and my first band interview with Dark Shadowz (such a beloved band, I miss them so much!). Dark Shadowz (I had already known John Graves via hanging out chatting at Across the Trax) led to falling in with the Dr. Pain and His Exercises For Deformity performance that was being planned for January 24, 1992. I worked as a promoter for the show, with a silly side joke of being the blond photographer who got thrown down into the pit of foul-smelling guts (I'll never forget hearing the cry of "The blond's on the floor!"... which was the 2nd blond moment I'd had in a very short period of time, the other being a bit of a story at a Foetus show I covered For CMM in October, 2001).
This was the timing for meeting future bandmate John Kerper and future numero uno right hand left-handed person Bruce Young. Aside from the much more collaborative and sprawling Dr. Pain, the 2 were already in another band called Futura Ultima Erotica (all of them + Dark Shadowz did the Dr. Pain music). I sat in one night, played on new songs such as Future Lament and The Number Song (which I like to claim resulted from my first happy Klonopin moment, heh)... and then ran home to pen lyrics for Future Lament. John liked the lyrics, and I "sang" (vocalised) the song at many art gallery shows, the obligatory Lion's Lair show, and at our bigger Mile Hi Con performance.
Shortly afterward, John, Bruce, and I spun off to form Goon Patrol. We also played several art gallery shows, and at my next big multi-band and multi-media presentation: the Local Electronics Extravaganza (of course this is me who put the event together, so it also included things like a fetish fashion show by local store Uzi and surreal-psychedelic visuals by Tantric Lobotomy Commission). Other bands included Ludicrous (John and I) and YHVH -- a grand combo of John Kerper and I plus John Graves of Dark Shadowz and Gordon Klock of Elan. It would've been difficult to assemble a darker combo, the cats were flipping out while we recorded. The lot of us had strong hopes (well, joke hopes at least) of summoning giant demons that would eat us and the audience at our big performance. Sadly it never happened because John Graves passed away and YHVH simply wouldn't have been the same without him.
In 1992 I began Cyber-Psychos AOD. My thought and hope was to create a forum for unknown fringe artists of all sorts. I would put them in the line-up equally mixed in with known names, so people would (in theory) read about both. Little tales like the local band Massive Deceleration Trauma (who had a demo and got a self-publishing band profile, written by me) winding up with fans in Australia after being in CPAOD made me think perhaps I was succeeding to some extent. Both CPAOD and Death Equinox, plus all of the on-line endeavors, hooked up a lot of people from many different fringey walks of life who likely would've never otherwise encountered each other. I'm glad my flaky eccentricity and eclecticness was good for something!
Our Blasted Lady of the Jellyfish, the First Church of Cnidaria, formally came into being shortly afterward. It could potentially lead one to believe I have environmental sympathies if I'm saying things like, oh, "The entire human race deserves to be flayed to death by Jellyfish tentacles thousands of feet in length for what they have done to this planet". But this isn't to say we don't have plenty of addled fornicating fun-ness amongst Cnidarians as well. Currently there are 5 Handy Cnidarian Booklets in existence, compiled by St. Sailing and St. Young and written by various Cnidarian disciples (most of whom not so coincidentally contributed to CPAOD as well). It's all pretty damn serious. You shouldn't make the mistake of taking it lightly. Mormons might steal your daughters if you do. Hell, Mormons might make you one of them after you die if you aren't careful. Wouldn't you rather be a Cnidarian in life and death?
What to say about CPAOD Books? The books I published were good, in my opinion, but they were 100% fiction (+ art). I'm a multi-media person. I suck at selling fiction. I should apologize to the authors and never try to sell fiction only products again (readers should buy the books, though!). One of the first books was Nice Little Stories Jam-Packed With Depraved Sex and Violence by Michael Hemmingson (with art by Paul Schiola and Jim Bob Cook, who used to run Cutthroat many years ago -- they also wrote the Incredible 2-Headed TV Casualty movie review columns in early CPAOD issues) and an introduction by Full Force Frank who had been in Apocalypse Culture. Mike said the whole run-on Nice Little Stories etc was a working title and something better could be found. I said "Hell no, we're keeping that title!". Talk about truth in advertising... (Sure enough, it's the 2nd best seller next to Doug Rice's A Good CuntBoy is Hard to Find!)
At that point, if not earlier, people would've begun to notice I heart long titles. The other first book was Star Bones Weep the Blood of Angels by Sue Storm, which was a very beautiful and sad contrast.
Next came Death Equinox. Sadly, setting up Death Equinox + a CPAOD issue + CPAOD books all at once (oh, and we mustn’t forget the Death Equinox conbook) damn near bankrupted me in the first year so it was the beginning of the end. I'm still paying debts, but I am slowly nearing the finish line.
Death Equinox started big, and then kept getting smaller perforce. It was great in many ways though... 4 days of diverse weirdos living in an alternate reality of our own entropic creation. How to sum it up? Hmmm. One night at DE '97 a crowd of us managed to convince ourselves that we were being pursued by malevolent spirits or forces conjured up by all of the dark magics there. A handful of us boarded an elevator. After standing there flogging each other (I always carried my fancy flogger so I could flog myself awake all day every day at each DE) for a while we realized the elevator wasn't moving, and fell into a panic about the spirits controlling the elevator. AAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!! Eventually we realized no one had pushed a floor button. Read into this what you will. The DE reality was so FUN.
My torture readings were spawned at Death Equinox. Part of it was my joking thought of "What would everyone working at a convention want to do? Torture the Chair Tyrant!". Part of it was my eerie sense of promotion: "I bet if I'm mostly undressed and getting tortured a lot of people will listen to me read a story...". But the important parts, to me, were the exorcism of demons and the focus of my will. Little things like the torture readings and the play piercings often caused people to mistake me for a masochist (I'm sure this is still a common misconception). The truth was that I had a very high pain tolerance mostly from being accustomed to pain, and that I prided myself in being trained to handle it. It wasn't something I liked, it was something I could handle. I did, however, enjoy the endorphin rush I would get from a successful torture reading. I could get pretty seriously happy and hyper if it went well.
IMO the best one was the DE '98 torture reading where Don and Rosemary Webb performed it as something akin to a Carnal Alchemy session. Bill Lemieux assisted with wax, and Gordon Klock assisted with scalpels. This was an 8,000+ word story reading (I read Of Waxen Figures and Screaming Tombs), strapped to a St. Andrew's Cross, having my back, legs, and arms burnt with heated needles all the way through (breaks for other flame or for having my back cut with scalpels were a RELIEF!). I broke quite a sweat, but I didn't break my reading voice. Gene Santagada, who joined in with the torture readings the next year, said it was funny that my one slip was not from the pain... while being so painfully tortured, I had a fit of giggling over needing to read the word "penis". Heh, I'm stunningly prudish!
In the end it turned out to not be such a bad thing that I was into blood-lettings. I have hereditary hemochromatosis and, believe me, the torture readings were a lot more fun and fulfilling than sitting in a Cancer Center chemo room getting a pound of blood routinely sucked out of me has been.
Hopefully that's more than enough history for now, though I do hope to break this into sections so I can add a lot more detail eventually. Must... feed... my... megalomaniacal... ego... ;)
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