Things that Scared the Shit Out of Me as a Small Child

Number 1: This Film.

"A warning may come quite unexpectedly."

Shudder.

Misread Blog Roundup 27-Feb-2006

This week on the Traineesphere and beyond:

Kris has an interesting piece on how to chuck a dog, which is of no use to Kat who's mourning the fact her foster dog has been taken away by Dogtanian. Speaking of pets, Siobhan wants someone to buy her a live monkey.

Karol's been having fun selling rakes and stuff at the National Weeding Show. Charlotte's going back into the water closet, but judging by this picture, Connie beat her there by a whole year.

On the technology myths front: the Pillow-Book relates the Saga of Stephanie versus Grendel, and Ian is continuing his crusade against the fallacy that Mac Owners don't get menswear.

There'll be another round-up of blogs that I've misunderstood, misread and misrepresented next week. Or when I get around to it. Whatever.

Oooh...

... I made it into WIRED!

Well, Flickr Sudoku did. It's appeared on their Ten Best Flickr Mashups article!

Thanks to Siobhan for giving me the heads-up. Here hon, have some extra sloppy seconds with my thanks. ;-)

Really Big Things

I hope that that the old Routemaster (the classic "Red London Bus") never completely dies out, for one reason: what else would journalists use to measure Really Big Things?

I was reading an article today that described the new A380 passenger aircraft as "as long as seven Routemasters laid end-to-end". It also has a wingspan "wider than a football pitch", another favorite unit of measurement for the journalist.

In fact, they seem to have their own set of SI units, among others:

The Routemaster - for Really Long Things
The Football Pitch - for Really Wide Things (or Really Big Areas)
The Storey - for Really Tall Things

I used to think of it as an insult to my intelligence when they used these terms. I know how high 24 metres is. I don't need to be told it's "over 6 stories high!"

But then I realised that journalists are incapable of talking in normal weights and measures, due to some kind of mental re-conditioning they get at Journalist School.

Living with these people must be exceptionally hard.

"How far is it, Dad?"
"About a mile, or nearly 391 Routemaster buses placed end to end!"

"How much milk would you like in your coffee?"
"Ohh, just one 5 billionth of an Olympic Swimming Pool's worth, please."

"What size inside leg is Sir?"
"32 inches, that's the equivalent to a trip to the moon and back 0.00000000105659101 times!!"

The IT-Girl

Do you remember the Saga of the Missing Sky Cards? I wrote a long and rather snotty letter of complaint to them, and yesterday they wrote back offering me a £20 rebate as a means of apology.

I eventually got the card just before going on hols, which meant I was able to record the new Graham Linehan sitcom, The IT Crowd, set in a computer support department. I watched a couple of episodes last night.

I think it's the first ever sitcom where I've identified with every single main character. The slobbish but aimiable Roy, who doesn't really care that much about IT support beyond "turn it off and on again"; the socially inept computer nerd Moss, who gets excited by incredibly geeky gadgets; and their pretty line manager Jen whose obsession for nice shoes that are 2 sizes two small for her result in permanent foot injuries.

It's like someone gave me some dodgy Kryptonite* and split me into 3 people! :-)

*Pop quiz: what's the extra ingredient you need to make dodgy Kryptonite? You probably need to be over 30 to know this, or Richard Pryor.

Travesty

The English language is a strange thing. This is only really apparent when you compare it to other European languages like Dutch and French. What made me notice it recently was this sign in Lellebelle, the Amsterdam tranny club:



Travestie means transvestite in Dutch, as well as a few other languages. This had always amused me, it sounding so much like the English word travesty, meaning "an exaggerated or grotesque imitation or parody". I'm not sure I like the idea of being a "grotesque imitation"!

The similarity between the words transvestite and travesty doesn't end there, though. The "vest" part is from the Latin vestis, meaning "clothing". We also use it in words like "vestment" and, or course, plain old "vest"!

The "trans" part is also from Latin, meaning "across" or "switched". In the word "travesty" it got shortened further to "tra", but the word literally refers to something pretending to be something else though "switched clothing". Presumably that originally meant someone pretending to be someone else, but now we use it to mean anything that's not what it's pretending to be. A travesty of justice is something that appears to be just, but just isn't! (Two different uses of the word "just", I told you English was strange!)

Travesty got into English via words like travestire, an Italian word which means to disguise by dressing up.

So the words "travesty" and "transvestite" share identical roots. Somewhere in the melting pot of Indo-European languages the word "transvestite" lost most of the negative connotations that "travesty" has; or maybe "travesty" gained them.

Either way, I'm glad I'm a transvestite and not a travesty, however you spell it!

Amsterdone

I'm back!

Amsterdam was cool. No correction, Amsterdam was cold. Seems like my predictions for Mart Weather were horribly accurate. We still had fun though. :-)

A quick summary of activities partaken in:

• Canals: lots


• Van Gogh paintings: 100+


• Fries with mayo: 3


• Spacecakes eaten and miscellaneous druggish activities: 0 (that ain't my bag, baby).


• Windmills: 1


• Anne Franks: 0


• Tulips: 0


• Diamonds (in total carats): lots


• Very nice evening meals: 3 (1 Italian, 1 Indonesian, 1 kinda Dutch).


• Dressing up activities: 0 (look it was cold okay?)


• Erwtensoeps: 1 (just the thing on a cold Dutch day!)

There was other stuff. I'll upload some pics when I get around to it, but at the moment I'm still technically on holiday and away from my own PC. I could do it on Jane's but I can't be arsed. :-)

Seeya soon!

Gezellig

A perfectly Dutch word which sort of means 'cosily convivial'. It describes exactly all of the best bars and restaurants that the city has to offer.

This italian place is nothing special to look at, basic furniture and plain tiled walls. But the food is stunningly good and the atmosphere is fantastic.

Very gezellig.

Birthday Prezzie!

It my birfday! Yay me! :-)

The view from Gate 19

The weather's awful, but I don't care! It's my birthday and I'm off on holiday! Just realised I haven't checked whether roaming is enabled from this phone. So if you don't get any blog entries for a few days, you know why!

When it's spring again, I'll sing again...

... I'm going to Amsterdam! With the lovely Jane. Next week, in fact.

Actually, chances are it's not going to be spring-like at all.

In my home town we have something called "Mart Weather".

The Mart, or "Valentines Fair", is an old-fashioned travelling fair that takes over the centre of King's Lynn every February. It marks the start of the season for the Showman's guild, who's members take their travelling attractions from town to town throughout the year.

King's Lynn has a long association with fairgrounds, being the home of Frederick Savage, the inventor and manufacturer of the "platform gallopers", merry-go-round horses that actually galloped. And as a town we're rather proud of the fact that the annual fair season always starts here first.

Of course, we forget that this means we always get it during one of the coldest months of the year! In fact the arrival of the Mart nearly always marks the beginning of a particularly cold snap. Hence the term "Mart Weather". When I was growing up, my birthday (February 12th, fact fans!) was often spent snowed-in. Great if I had a new toboggan to test-drive, crap if I had WHSmiths vouchers that needed spending.

Maybe Amsterdam will fare better than King's Lynn, weather-wise. I don't really care, I just need to get away from the fens and dykes and get a change of scenery!

Er, they have mountains in Amsterdam, right?

Ben Rooney has the easiest job in the world

Ben Rooney compiles "Today on the web" for the Guardian newspaper.

This is what I imagine his working day consists of:

10:00AM Get up.

10:30AM Read the papers. Find some semi-interesting person or story in the news.

11:00AM Type it into Technorati. Probably Google Blogsearch it these days too. Maybe check to see who's back-linked to stories on the Guardian site.

11:30AM Spend a few minutes cutting-and-pasting what he finds into a template.

12:00PM Send finished template to editor. Have lunch.

So...

Abu Hamza Obesity Bird Flu Sion Jenkins U2 Chip and Pin Child Maintenance Evo Morales IT Crowd

Did you get that Rooney? My little Buzz-word Bomb has brought you here! We're on to you Rooney! No longer are the bloggers of the world going to put up with you growing fat from the hand-crafted content you've stolen from our sites! I dare you to quote from this blog post! I dare you!!

Wowsers trousers!

I've just checked my Google Ads stats, and thanks to yesterday's appeal I've had my best single day's takings ever, by a country mile!

Keep up the ad-clicking and we'll be well on track to donating a huge wodge of cash to this year's Sparkle.

(Although don't overdo it. I don't want Google getting suspicious and accusing me of faking ad traffic. One of two judicial clicks a day per person should be enough!)

Have you outsourced your brain?

I swear I just had this conversation on the phone:

Me: Hello, could I talk to your IT department please?

Woman: I'm sorry, we outsource all our IT functions.

Me: Okay, in that case could you give the number of the people who look after your email server?

Woman: I don't have a number, it's all outsourced.

Me: Ooookaaaay.... so how do you contact them if you have a problem?

Woman: We email them.

Help! It's the Hair Bear Bunch!

Just what is going on with the British popular taste?

The next time you take a sicky, be sure to tune in late afternoon on Channel 4. Nestled cosily between Countdown and Richard and Judy you'll find Deal or No Deal, presented by "Mr Crinkley Bottom" himself, Noel Edmunds.

Firstly, I have a shameful declaration to make:

I actually quite like Noel Edmunds.

I know. It's sad. He's kind of like my TV Dad. I grew up with him presenting Saturday Morning Kid's TV, in the form of the seminal Swap Shop. (Bonus question: Swap Shop was better than Tiswas. Discuss.)

Later on he fulfilled the Dad role by being excrutiatingly embarrassing in public. Oh yeah, he also has more than a passing resemblance to my real Dad.

I also quite enjoy Deal or No Deal. It's a guilty little pleasure, the kind of show you know you shouldn't like but you do anyway. It's such a simple little concept: give someone a box with a random amount of money in it, and try to tempt them into selling the box for a guaranteed sum. Basic concept, but thanks to Noel shamelessly hamming it up and building tension it works really well. Plus, he genuinely seems to like the contestants and enjoy what he's doing.

So Noel has successfully begun his rehabilitation into popular culture. The Beard is back.

Meanwhile, in pop-land, another hairy wonder is enjoying a renaissance. Leo Sayer, he of the frizzy locks and 70s hits like "You Make Me Feel Like Dancing", is tipped for Number 1 next week with a dance re-mix of "Thunder in My Heart".

Hair is obviously back in fashion!

Working on my Repartee

A while ago I imagine Repartee's publishers came out with a great marketing campaign: get as many trannies to write articles for or be photographed in their magazine. This ensures a huge base circulation purely due to the featured trannies buying hundreds of copies to hand out to friends.

Of course, I wouldn't do something like that.

Being a cheapskate, I only bought one copy.

Yep in the current mag you can read a coruscating article about holidaying in Barcelona en-femme, written by Yours Truly. The Angels are flogging copies, if you'd like to take a look-see.

On Saturday it plopped onto my doormat, sealed in one of those "discreet" opaque plastic envelopes that just scream to the postman "this man is buying hardcore pornography".

If you're unaware of Roses Repartee, it's kind of like the UK tranny equivalent of "Hello" magazine. Full of glossy pictures of trannies at parties with other trannies, and articles by trannies saying just how great it is to be a tranny and go to parties with other trannies.

After I'd counted the pictures of me in it (six! a new record!), and re-read my article a couple of times to make sure I'd not said anything too stupid (I hadn't), I passed it on to Jane to read.

I think her horrified reaction to the magazine more than justified it's cover price, for me. Every now and then she'd let out a little terrified squeal, and at one point she half-threw the magazine to the other end of the sofa as if it had just bitten her.

"That's just so... ewwwww!", she cried, shuddering.

The offending article was one where a t-girl was describing needing to feel "utterly feminine", from the tip of her ickle powdered nose to the ends of her pink-painted toesie-woesies.

It was such a cringe-worthy comment that I couldn't decide whether it was possibly supposed to be tongue-in-cheek. But still, I agreed, pretty ewww.

Repartee has to walk a very fine line, editorially speaking. On the one hand it has to be of interest to "out and proud" trannies of the UK, giving information on events and tg-related news. On the the other hand it has to speak to the closeted cross-dressers who've never made it out of the bedroom, let alone the front door. It also has a responsibility to the wives/partners/friends of cross-dressers to present it as a normal, healthy activity that's not something to be ashamed of.

It has to be attainable, presenting images of "normal everyday" trannies. It also has to be aspirational, and show off some of the really stunning t-girls with looks that most of us could never achieve. I don't blame it for doing this, all special-interest magazines are aspirational in some way, petrol-heads might never be able to afford the Bugatti Veyron in their Top Gear mag, but they still want to read about it.

It also has to pay for it's own existence, which is sometimes where it strays a little too far into the realms of "seedy". Adverts for hair removal clinics and dressing services nestle alongside dodgy contacts ads and nasty recorded message phone services.

On the whole, it's a great magazine. Superbly produced on a small budget, and definately the best in it's small field. But I don't think I'd ever be happy giving it to a non-tranny and saying "this is what being a tranny is all about."

That's not because it doesn't give an accurate image of UK trannies, but perhaps because it speaks to such a broad church, it gives too accurate an image of UK trannies. From the tips of our powdered nosies to the ends of our painted toesies.

Blogging mood

Sometimes you're in it, sometimes you're not!

At the moment.. not.

Went to Trans-Mission at the weekend, with Jane. The first time she's been ever, the first time I've been in ages.

It was a really good night. Trans-Mission is like my "gentleman's club" now, somewhere that I'm guaranteed a good night out in London. Except with "ladies" instead of gentlemen, and more dancing, and less pipe-smoking.

It's a commonly-used phrase by jaded trannies that Trans-Mission (TX) and it's ilk are just "extensions of the closet", places where a tranny can come out without really "coming out". That's not really true. When I first went to TX it was a huge deal for me, and it didn't feel like staying in the closet. Just because I don't "need" TX as a safe haven now doesn't mean it's still a huge deal for other new trannies. To say it's "just" an extension of the closet lessens what a venue like TX offers.

I don't go as much as I used to, but TX definitely isn't "below me", it's a fab venue, I'd recommend it to all trannies, newbie or not, and frequently do. And if I lived up the road I'd definitely go more often, just for the craic!

Sponsorship deal

So, I got this free voucher for Google Adwords.

I couldn't not use it, could I? :-)

Best. Strip. Ever.

Is anyone else loving the Perry Bible Fellowship, currently being printed in Friday's Guardian? Superb stuff. The artist seems to be able to effortlessly emulate virtually any graphic style (although his main protagonists are often just blobs with faces), plus he's very very funny.

I've tracked down the website, it's a bit poor design-wise, but the strips are genius. The strip archive is the best place to start.

I'm sorely tempted to steal a couple of strips and reproduce them here, but that would be naughty. So you'll have to make do with links to my favorites: here, here, here, and um... here.

Oh to hell with it I'll sponge one and damn the consequences. It's free advertising for them, right?? :-)