I think I need more food

Hmmm, eggs make a meal out of anything. HP sauce doesn't.

Forget Naan Bolognese. Brown Sauce á la spread, anyone?

...

I need to go shopping again, don't I? :-S

Is it really that time?

Oh lordy, it's nearly Christmas. Again.

The bad news: there won't be a Becky's Blog Advent Calendar this year, in case anyone was expecting it.

Well, I didn't get one so I don't see why you should!

(It's not at all to do with the fact that finding 24 vaguely Christmassy things last year was a complete pain in the Litte Donkey.)

If you're really desperate, you could always use last year's.

Wow, recycling advent calendars; how green am I??

"All My Children" to feature transgendered character

It's nice when random readers do your blog spadework for you. :-)

Drwolfe2 (I doubt that's his/her real name) sent me an interesting link today, following on from my post about the tranny in Hollyoaks.

I've heard of All My Children, but never actually seen it. I think it's one of those American soaps filled with evil twins, amnesiac lovers, and plastic surgery that makes you look like a completely different person. So it's debatable whether there'll be much realism in the plot lines involving "Zarf".

Apart from the name "Zarf", there are one or two things that amuse me in the piece:

"GLAAD and some transgenders were brought in as consultants."

Is "transgender" now also a noun? As in "I'm a transgender, she's a transgender, they are some transgenders"?

I'm not sure. It might be. The vagaries of TG grammar and taxonomy often foxes me, that's why I stick to "tranny" and "trannies". :-)

"An American who nonetheless speaks in an exaggerated British accent."

Why do Americans always seem to prefer anyone villainous, weird or slightly fey to be British? I think all this time after the War of Independence they've still got issues. ;-)

Actually, for some reason in this case I'm imagining Zarf sounding like Dick Van Dyke.

"Gor blimey Meeeery, I'm 'avin me knooorb chopped awf 'dis time tomorrer! I ain't got toime for these shenanigains!"

It always happens

I did a Friday Big Shop last week. I made a deliberate effort to buy food that was fresh, healthy, would combine into interesting meals, and would last me a week. Each item was appraised and slotted into a meal plan.

Okay, so it got a bit vague plan-wise towards the end of the week, but I was confident I had enough of everything to prevent me resorting to combining foods solely on the basis that They Need Eating Up.

So why is it by Monday evening I'm reduced to Reheated Bolognese With Naan Bread?

Heavenly bodies

For a while now, the rhythmic nature of tranny behaviour has fascinated me. The way the trannies seems to ebb and flow in their levels of "tranniness" and visibility over time. I've slowly worked this up into a new theory.

If you've been collecting my theories, this one can be filed with the others in my Overwrought Analogy series, along with "Trannies are like Snowflakes", and "Trannies are Like Gases". When I get five theories I'm going to present them all as a series of Christmas Lectures. You have been warned.

Trannies are like heavenly bodies. They orbit around a sun that - if you'll permit me a certain about of sickliness in my theory - we'll call "Femininity". The Femininity Sun warms all the bodies around it with a girlish glow, and the closer you are, the girlier you get.

Some trannies are comets. They fly in from the cold depths of space, swing perilously close to the sun (briefly becoming the most spectacular thing in the night sky) and then head out again into interstellar obscurity.

Usually the orbit is an ellipsis. No matter how far away the comet gets, it feels the gentle pull of gravity and is doomed to repeat it's flirtations with the sun.

Sometimes the orbit is hyperbolic, the comet is seen once but never comes back again.

Some trannies are planets. They find an orbit that's just the right distance from the sun, and steadily follow it. The hot inner planets are analogous to the "full timers", the outer planets are less obvious or open, but are still warmed by the sun's rays.

Even the Planetary Trannies aren't on entirely circular orbits. Sometimes they get closer, and the influence of the sun grows stronger. Sometimes they're venturing out into cooler climes.

I'm somewhere between a Planetary Tranny and a Cometary Tranny, I think. My orbit is more elliptical than many. I occasionally get so far in as to skim the asteroid belt of the "Tranny Scene", but I also spend long periods out at the edges of the system.

I can think of good examples of "inner planet" trannies, and several "outer planet" ones too. The internet is my observatory, allowing me to look out and see where my friends are in their orbits.

But the ones that really interest me are the cometary trannies. Especially when they disappear completely off the scope.

I'm not sure if the fact that I always expect them to come back shows that I'm ever-hopeful, or just overly cynical.

Tranny and TV are still on holiday.

Rain

Lots of the wet stuff about today. Luckily I'm indoors with everything I need, i.e. hot soup and big mugs of coffee.

The first rule of Fruit Fly Fight Club...

...is you DO NOT talk about Fruit Fly Fight Club.

The second rule of Fruit Fly Fight Club is...

You DO NOT talk about Fruit Fly Fight Club.

That doesn't stop me showing you a video, though.

Or if you prefer, girl on girl fruit fly action.

Why are those crazy guys at Harvard making fruit flies fight? It's to prove that one gene determines whether you fight like a boy (i.e. aggressively) or like a girl.

Apparently the gene is called fruitless. If you're a fruit fly, of course. In humans it's called the leaveitmatehesnotworthit gene.

I heart BBC4

I'm loving BBC4 at the moment. It's season on British Sci-Fi is a real telly feast.

Tonight, for example, kicked off with a repeat of The Day of the Triffids, one of the programmes that really scared the sh*t out of me when I was little.

Seeing it again was a real nostalgia hit, although second time around I was less worried about the motile pitcher plants and more disturbed by the early Eighties fashions.

Yellow jump suits. *shudder*

Then there was a fascinating documentary about Utopias (and dystopias) in British Sci Fi. All the way from A Brave New World to Brazil via 1984, Judge Dredd and Doctor Who. All excellently researched, with knowledgeable experts, and presented by a syrupy-toned Peter Capaldi*.

It was the telly equivalent of a lovely warm soup with crunchy bits.

---

*I sat opposite Peter Capaldi in a restaurant once. I kept saying to my friends "that's Peter Capaldi!!", and they kept saying "who's Peter Capaldi?".

Tranny and TV are on holiday.

You know the drill

Tomorrow I have to visit the dentist, where he'll perform a procedure that includes injections and drills and picks and strange alchemical tastes. Whilst I stare at the ceiling watching flecks of detritus getting stuck to the safety goggles and listening to piped Classic FM drowned out by the horrendous BRUZZBBLBLBLBLBLBLBLBLBL noise of that big drill that makes you think the dentist has decided to start a rival Channel Tunnel in your bottom right molar.

"Just wake me up when you reach Calais," I'll quip.

Except that, impeded by fingers, that vacuum thing that the nurse holds, and the fact that most of my mouth is effectively dead tissue, I'll actually say...

"Yush way ee uh uhen oo each alaigh."

I don't know if dentists receive training in re-inserting consonants, but if not he's going to miss out on a mighty fine quip.

On Thursday I'm going to a leaving do, where I'll have to dress smart, make small talk to people I've never met before and I'm unlikely to meet again, and basically Be Simon in an Unfamiliar Social Situation.

It says something about my psyche that I'm actually dreading Thursday a lot more.

I fear for the children of today

When I was a nipper, I wanted a Girl's World head. Every young tranny does. It's the law.

Imagine then my horror when, whilst watching Children's telly late one afternoon last week, I came across this monstrosity:



It's a Barbie "Groom and Glam" styling head.

But, more importantly (and this is what I was screaming at the telly): it's a freakin' horses head!!

"Yeah but little girls like ponies, Bex. It's not that weird to have a fake pony that they can pretend to groom," I hear you say.

Okay, maybe combing it's long mane I can understand, sticking a couple of barrettes on is acceptable, but this thing comes with eyeshadow and lipgloss FFS!

Are Mattel trying to teach little girls that making your horse look like a whore is a a normal part of "grooming"? Or perhaps they're helping raise the next generation of animal cosmetic testers.

Whatever, it's wrong.

Parents, I implore you. Don't tuck one of those in your daughter's stocking on Christmas morning.

Especially if she's just watched The Godfather the night before.

Boys don't get it much better. The next advert after Barbie Whore Horse was for Star Wars Transformers

Why, in a nation of nearly 400,000 Jedi, are we teaching our youth that the Millennium Falcon was made out of a giant robot Han Solo and giant robot Chewbacca? Surely there are laws against such heresy!

Wide versus deep

I pointed out a strange fact to Jane today: because of this site, more people know me as Becky than know me as Simon.

She agreed, but noted that although fewer people knew me as Simon, the ones that did knew me a lot better.

Which is also true.

One type of knowledge is wide but shallow, the other deep but narrow. Overall, they're probably roughly equal.

That's all there is to this post... I thought it might go somewhere but it didn't. Ho hum. :-)

Why

I was asked it again tonight. By a twenty two year old straight girl who'd just been dumped by her boyfriend and was "off men".

"Why do you do it?"

It's not a question I can even attempt to answer when I'm sober.

But at the moment I'm gloriously drunk and about 2 hours ago I had one of those moments. A moment where something clicks, something engages in my brain, something falls into place, something makes a connection, something in my hindbrain says:

"This is why, Simon. Remember this."

It's not a religious experience. But I imagine that maybe that's what religious experiences are like.

Put it this way: if I ever had a religious experience I'd want it to be like that. A moment of total clarity that lasts for a brief time and then...

I awake, clutching desperately at slippery gobbets of meaning as they skitter giggling into the shadows.

...

Why?

Because Becky isn't Simon. Because Becky can engage with people when Simon can't. Because I've been given a small portion of "me" that's not me.

"I can't imagine you ever being a man", she said.

"Neither can I", said Becky, in my mind.

"I'm a man 99% of the time," said Simon, out loud.

And then there was dancing. And getting the meaning of songs. And more dancing. Not with anyone in particular, just with people who didn't know who Simon was and didn't care.

One of the gobbets of meaning is still here, squirming unconfortably in the daylight of sober reason. I think it says:

"It's a joyous thing, to have a real-life avatar. Many people make do with avatars that exist on another plane. Most people don't get an avatar at all."

...

Enjoy this post. I might delete it tomorrow.

...

"Why do you do it?"

So people can ask me why.

Training strain

Going on a training course is a strange experience. It’s kind of like a holiday, but without the lie-ins or nice weather or interesting scenery or opportunities to get pissed.

Well, there are opportunities to get pissed. But boy, don’t you regret it the next morning when you’re attempting to assimilate the finer points of some Important Thing with a five star hangover and your eyes trying to convince you that the inside of your eyelids is far more interesting than what’s on the whiteboard.

I’m taking this current course in Milton Keynes. If training courses are strange experiences, training courses in Milton Keynes are doubly so. It already seems to be the case that every training centre is built to exactly the same specifications. The same drinks machine, and the same posters and paintings on the walls. That, added to the “samey” nature of Milton Keynes itself is giving me the unnerving sensation that I’m in a dream. One of those dreams where everything is made up of things you’ve seen somewhere before, mashed up together to generate something new but completely lacking in originality.

Jane told me the other day that I’m a “plant”. Not of the flora variety, apparently. It’s something to do with how I fit in to a group dynamic. I’m the person who wants to provide my input, then gets thoroughly bored and wants to bugger off and do something else fun. Basically, completely unsuited to sitting on my arse listening to people talk about “fascinating” features of some computing system.

I end up being hyper-aware of little things that start to bug me.

The trainer bugs me.

You know you’re in for a tough week when your trainer tells you that on day 3 you’ll get to play with the "coolest feature" of a software program: "making personalised error messages to amuse your work colleagues!"

w00t.

He also seems to have been cursed with italics. Every other word seems to require being emphasized to make it seem important. When words require extra emphasis he brings out the big guns, the "two fingers on each hand air quotes".

Is "he was using air quotes mi'lud, and not even at grammatically appropriate points", a good defence for murder, by any chance?

He also has a great repertoire of over-dramatic phrases. My favourite so far:

“And when that [avoidable disaster] happens, are you going to kick yourself? BOTH feet!”

The trainees bug me.

Nowhere is the lack of women in IT careers more starkly represented than IT training courses. In my last three courses there’s been only 2 female attendees. This current course only has one, and she seems a little... er... strange. She was personally offended, almost to the point of tears, that a question in a review section was worded badly. If it had been a cookery course I would have been hiding the knives.

The rest of the attendees are just regular IT types. I.e. boring, friendless, borderline autistic, goatee-sporting geeks. The goatees make it easier to play ‘spot the tranny’ (especially when YOU’RE the tranny.)

The toilets bug me.

They’ve been fitted with hand-driers so pathetic that they barely hasten the natural evaporation of water from the skin. I suspect if I lifted the lid I’d find a miniature mastodon blowing asthmatically through the hole. Who’d look up at me, shrug, and say ‘it’s a living!’ in a New York accent.

Perhaps that only happens in the Flintstones.

The air conditioning bugs me.

The trainer is constantly switching it off and on. When it’s off, the room quickly becomes stiflingly hot and devoid of fresh oxygen. When it’s on, the room gets kinda chilly, but, importantly not so chilly that we wouldn't get used to it if he didn’t keep fiddling with the bloody thing.

Today was day three. I made an error message:

“Error 50001: The trainer is a cock.”

It was kind of cool.

Nothing camper than a Campanile

They've done it up! It's all leather sofas and twirly cane things in vases. Feels a bit weird drinking here in male mode.

Everyone knows they're trannies

If it's Sunday it must be Milton Keynes

So after the bright lights of Reading two weeks ago, I'm off on another week-long training jolly next week, this time to SimCity Milton Keynes.

It's weird, I've not been on a training course in years, but just recently I seem to be doing nothing but. This is partly due to a new Axis of Evil that the NHS has formed with Microsoft. The deal they've made means that we get lots of "free" training in Microsoft apps. In the Milton Keynes training camps we're taught to use weapons of MS distruction and indoctrinated to hate Linux users.

I'm not complaining though! Free training and a lavish expenses budget for the week.

Well, I say lavish.

The NHS guidelines for overnight accomodation expenses were written a couple of decades ago and have steadfastly ignored any subsequent inflation. So much so that these days they just about cover a largish-cardboard box under a flyover.

I was ringing around motels in the Milton Keynes area, trying to find anywhere that wouldn't require me to fork out my own cash to make up the difference, when I suddenly remembered: I'd stayed in a cheap hotel near Milton Keynes loads of times!

I emailed my training colleague to let him know I'd found a place, sub £50 a night, convenient for the training centre.

I waited until he'd booked it before I told him the "bad" news.

Yep, it's the Campanile, scene of many an Angelic Christmas bash, and a few hundred yards away from the biggest LGBT club in Middle England, "Pink Punters". :-)

I've packed Becky, I've yet to decide whether she'll make an outing, but it seems a shame not to. My work colleague knows about Becky, so it won't be a total surprise!

If anyone fancies joining me let me know, but be warned I might be joined by a slightly non-plussed workmate.

A year of sunsets

This is incredibly clever! Jim Bumgardner, self-confessed Flickr geek who once rendered me in flowers, created it.

It's basically lots of pictures tagged "sunset" plotted onto a chart showing the time of day and the time of year it was taken. The lazy milky-way curve at the bottom shows the slow change of sunset time as the seasons change.

Click on the picture to see enlarged versions, and some other graphs that Jim's created with a similar theme.

The stuff that people are doing with the Flickr API never ceases to amaze me.

Epilation with extreme prejudice

Sorry it's a bit late!

Corollaries...

... to Tip 41

1. When you cancel a credit card it's a good idea to remember to update any automated payments dependent on it, such as domain name renewals.


2. It's also good idea to check that your spam filter isn't quietly eating all the gentle reminders from your registration provider to re-register your domain.


3. Where possible, when the slightly-less-gentle reminder letter from Nominet turns up on your doormat, don't be on a week-long course in Reading.


4. Basically, don't be a numpty.

Hiya, I'm back! Missed me? :-)

Finnish ursine mathematical fun

Not content with just building his part up on my blog with excellent impressions of David Mitchell in peep show, NH sent me this link:

Alkulukuja Paskova Karhu
The Prime Number Shitting Bear

Joyous. The woods must be full of prime numbers.

Somebody else’s problem

That possible TG sighting on my course today got me thinking about ‘passing’ again.

Some trannies really fret about passing. They go on and on about it. The highlight of their week is a successful trip to Sainsbury’s without being clocked by anyone. I applaud the achievement, but I don’t personally want to replicate it.

Leaving aside the fact that I personally have about as much chance of passing as an oversized kidney stone, I’m not that interested in going unnoticed anyway. I want to ‘pass’ just long enough that the person on the street’s initial impression is that I’m an attractive girl, and then for them to realise that I’m a guy who looks like an attractive girl.

Yeah, basically I want to mess with people’s minds. So sue me.

I’ve said this before somewhere. I want to look like a pretty tranny. That’s different from wanting to look like a pretty girl. In my head.

Some trannies I know seem to have a kind of Somebody Else’s Problem field.

The SEP field is a cloaking technology invented by Douglas Adams for a book in the Hitchhiker’s Guide series. Basically you could park a spaceship fitted with a SEP field in the middle of a cricket ground during the Ashes and no-one would see it, because it’s Somebody Else’s Problem and doesn’t even register at a conscious level. It takes a lot less energy to make people think that something's invisible rather than actually make it invisible.

My TG friend Sophie has a brilliant SEP field. I’ve watched her walk down busy streets and not one person bats an eyelid. Despite the fact that she’s got several features that betray her genetics, she somehow sublimates them and passes seemingly effortlessly. It’s almost magical to see. I always felt a little guilty going out en-femme with Sophs because my natural Stick Out Like a Sore Thumb field almost always cancels her SEP field out!

I felt like that today with the girl in the training centre eating her lunch at her laptop. The Trannydar went ding and I was left with the strong impression I was witnessing a top-class SEP in action. And maybe if I blinked or tilted my head a certain way I’d see through to what was really there...

...or maybe it was just a girl with big-ish hands and a continental attitude to eyebrows.

...

Come to think of it she’s probably wondering who the nobhead who kept tilting his head and blinking was... :-/

Dingdingdingding

There's a girl taking a course at this centre who's making my Trannydar™ go off like crazy but I can't find anything definitive. According to her badge, her name is Alexis.

Gah, we should have developed a secret handshake or something by now.

Guys, agenda item for the next AGM, okay?

A poem written on the occasion of a week-long training course in a Berkshire town

Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!
It isn’t fit for humans now,
But if you miss, don’t change your heading,
With any luck you’ll land on Reading.

With apologies to John Betjeman.

This is my first proper trip to Reading (although my mum says my very early years were in this area). I’ve been to the Microsoft Campus here a few times, but that seems to have it’s own private road from the M4 up to it’s front door; I’ve never been in the town centre.

So far, not impressed. I may be missing the good bits, but my walk-in route from near Caversham bridge to the training centre - along the street with 5 off-licences but no pub and past the disused bus depot carpeted with used needles and Burger King wrappers - is less than enamouring.

Last night we gave up looking for a decent pub near where we were staying and opted for the TGI Friday’s up the road. Big mistake. What happened to TFI?? They used to be expensive and tacky but good, now they’re just expensive and tacky.

I’m here for a couple more days. Anyone got a tip for a good place for a night out near Caversham Bridge?



Oh yeah, and they read your mail at the sorting office!