Dolly in the doldrums

Years ago the mother of a friend of mine was diagnosed with terminal cancer. As her dying wish she decided to go to Dollywood. Pause to consider how rad this is, please.

"...."

Thankyou. So, she went to Dollywood, soaked up wonderful Dolly goodness like this:


And then: WENT INTO REMISSION. This is a true story. Dolly cured her cancer.

Earlier this year two young people I know and love were diagnosed with cancer. I made them both compilations of Dolly tunes, and just recently the news has come through that they have both gone into remission too! Sure, the chemo may have played a played a small part but we all know it was Dolly who saved them.

Everyday this month I have cried. I just can't shake it. I am on anti-depressants and have blamed everything from the moon to alcohol to end-of-the-world doomsday signs (I like to mix my depression with a good dose of anxiety and paranoia). Today I self-medicated with a full album of Dolly Parton and I'm still fucking sad. Mental health breakdowns are horrible and when even Dolly doesn't help times are really scary.

Gay Paree & Me

I have not long returned from my second visit to Paris & now am spending my time trying to figure my way back again. So much to love about a city that is most commonly qualified  by the adjective 'gay'.

While I was there I met ladies who piss standing up at LadyFest Rennes...

 

Joined an action with the bearded women of La Barbe, who I hero-worshipped on my first trip over...

Stayed with lovely people...

Went UFO spotting with an Aussie street artist...

& teamed up with artist/activist extraordinare Anne-Laure in Paris to do some street art myself.

Here's the fence stitch we did on the streets of Paris, 75% des pauvres ꞊♀ (or: 75% of poor are women). A woman actually came up & hugged me in the street while we were doing it. HUGGED ME.  The police drove by without stopping & little children clapped. This is how people respond to art in France.

& if they weren't enough reasons to move to France, the Government has now prohibited the use of the term mademoiselle (the French word denoting an unmarried woman) in official documents. Hooray! Why any reference to marital status is needed ever is beyond me & luckily the French agree. Now the French language is going to be all the more delightful & it was already sounding pretty damn good.

I've written in the past about how the French do not have an equivalent for 'cunt' as a destructive insult (♥♥♥!). I discovered on my most recent trip (& this is what has really made me want to pack my bags & give in to my Francophile urges) that they also do not use those innane little asterix things to blank out 'offensive' words. That's right. In France publishers will either print a word or not write the bloody sentence in the first place. None of th** stupid fuckery.

I asked a local about it and he looked at me with suprise, "No! We do not use these things," he said, clearly shocked at the notion, "Why would we do this? To do this would be hypocritical!"

Exactement.

Pussies are ALL RIOT

Have you been following the extreme rad-ness of all-female Russian art-punk band Pussy Riot?

These women are guts on a mic. They've performed on top of buses, in shop windows, in subways, at protest rallies, on fashion runways & most lately, in a Russion Orthodox Church. All uninvited but definitely appreciated (at least by hopelessly love-struck sycophants like me). They've also performed outside prison walls to political prisoners which you can see in this ace vid:



But unfortunately that last performance in the church has landed three of their members on the wrong side of those prison walls & now they themselves are political prisoners.  They're facing charges or hooliganism over the next couple of days which could land them in prison for 7 years. Outrageous.

Melbourne Femme Fight Club got together a couple of weeks ago to show their support for the group:

And you can too - tomorrow arvo 4-6pm at Parliament Steps, Melbourne. Come down & show that it is A VERY GOOD THING for women to be loud & forthright & gutsy. Pussy Riot faced enormous obstacles in getting themselves heard - make yourself heard in their support.

Free Pussy Riot!

If you don't needle a cunt now, you might be needling your own cunt later

It's a sad truth, over in the US of A, that if the Republicans are able to override women's control of their own reproductive systems, many of those women will resort to dangerous and self-harming measures in desperate attempts to regain that control.
But they haven't won yet! So, American sisters, before you start thinking of alternate places to shove your knitting needles - shove them where they belong: in a ball of wool & at your Congressmen.

The genius 'Government Free VJJ' is encouraging sane people to knit female reproductive systems & send them to those less sane & in power with the question "Congressmen: If we knit you a uterus will you stay out of ours?"
Their site has free patterns & instructions so you can learn how to crochet if you don't know how 'cause seriously: this is the only thing you ever want to use a knitting needle for.

Tweeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!

Happy New Year Cunts! I had the most gorgeous time up in Paradise, a.k.a. Northern Rivers NSW,

 

 staying with beautiful people

drinking...

 

relaxing...

eating amazing food...

 

more drinking...

 

swimming...

 

more relaxing...

 

CRAFTING!

even more relaxing...

 

!!CRAFTING!!

& performing at Gay Heaven, known colloquially as 'Tropical Fruits Festival'

 

The performance was in collaboration with the legendary Shiny Shiny band & involved feeding grown men pina coladas from latex glove teets...

& glowing orb boobs.

It was all a helluva lotta fun & I was so sad to leave I cried at the airport

 

I really did. And I wasn't even hungover! Relatively speaking..

But even with all that excessive radness, perhaps my favourite x-mas gift came from this man:

 

Gerard Henderson.

I checked my mail in transit on the way home & received a link to an article Gerard has written about ME! Partly about me, anyhow. It was a long-winded gripe published in the Sydney Morning Herald where Gerard takes swipe at what he sees as the ABC's 'left wing bias'. Apparently Gerard was lolling on the beach on Christmas day listening to the radio & heard a replay of a feature piece for ABC Arts about yarn bombing by Suzanne Donisthorpe in which I was interviewed.

During the interview, which was at the end of the feature after coverage of other artists, I spoke about the lesbian cunt fling ups which I hung on the Basilica in Vatican City last year.

 

Well, Gerard was not happy that the ABC reported on my work, not one little bit. He said that the ABC's inclusion of the work of "a certain Casey Jenkins" was "terribly twee" & then rambled on a bit about how I should be more catholic "in the universal sense of the word" (whatever that means) & suggested my fling ups would only be newsworthy if I'd taken them to "the Haj in Saudi Arabia or outside Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's office in Tehran" & that the Basilica had been "easy".

 

Hmmmmm...

Well, I suppose he does have a point. To get my two cents in, as a young queer woman, all I had to do was fly across the world, smuggle subversive artwork through several security checks & erect it on a heavily fortified, iconic building. Gerard on the other hand, as a middle-aged hetero man, had to go to the extreme effort of turning on the radio while lying on the beach digesting his Christmas dinner before his voice was heard in a major publication

O! Poor Old White Hetero Men! Poor Gerard! 

I hope the ABC takes note of his plea 'cause for Godssake! HOW MANY MORE OLD WHITE HETERO MEN ARE GONNA HAVE TO LIE AROUND ON BEACHES BEFORE THEIR VOICES ARE HEARD???

 

But anyway, I've gotta thank Gerard for using his precious media space to draw attention to mine again. Thanks babe xx