The quantum nature of trannies

Case closed

Do you remember the case of the mystery football fan? An unknown work colleague of mine who'd been defending the rights of transgendered people in the unlikely auspices of a Middlesbrough supporters forum.

At the time I racked my brains trying to recall anyone at work who I knew supported Middlesbrough. In the end I gave up, and I'd more-or-less forgotten about it until yesterday.

I was just heading out of the office when a work colleague I'd not seen in a while nabbed me and said "can I have a quick word?". When we were away from prying ears he smiled and said "I'm NorfolkNGood".

After the penny had dropped, he explained that he'd not had the opportunity to talk to about it at the time, that he'd found my blog in the same manner as Mrs. Y, and he'd kept reading because he found it entertaining (entertaining in a "this is interesting" kinda way, not entertaining in a "what's the weirdo up to now" kinda way).

Which is incredibly cool, and sobering.

Sobering because this guy was one of the people who I'd considered as the mystery Middlesbrough supporter (he comes from the North East), but discounted because he didn't fit the profile of what I thought of as someone who'd be sensible, cool and groovy about the whole tranny thing.

Which, at the end of the day, is all about my prejudices and nothing to do with his. If I want to expect people not to judge me on something as superficial as wearing frocks, then I certainly shouldn't use similarly shallow methods to measure others.

Picnik

Picnik is a free online photo editing tool I've been playing with this morning.

It will do all the everyday photo-tinkering functions, without the need for a desktop app. If you've not got a tool for editing photos, or you're working away from your desktop, this is ideal.

Best of all, it integrates fully with Flickr. You can even use it to touch-up photos that are already in your stream on-the-fly (although it does seem to want to reduce the resolution of very large photos by a fraction).

I was quite impressed. And now no-one's got an excuse for uploading bad pics to Flickr! ;-)

Norfolk, in pancake form

I think you'll agree that last Tuesday Crouchy had a miracle occur in his frying pan.

Visual aids

More movie mashups

That got me thinking... how about cross-breeding some other movies?

Dawn of the Dead Poets Society
A mysterious virus sweeps a private school causing all the boys to stand zombie-like on desks.

Little Miss Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
A family's cross-country road trip is disrupted by continuously having their brains wiped.

The Sixth Sense and Sensibility
"Miss Dashwood, Elinor. I must talk to you. Something of great importance I need to tell you... I see dead people."

All Reservoir Dogs Go To Heaven
Touching animated family movie portraying the gory aftermath of a botched jewellery heist.

Funny Face/Off
Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire swap faces and identities in an ultra-violent romantic musical thriller.


That's five. Any more? :-)

Am I the only one...

...who's thought of combining The Good German with The Good Shepherd to make The Good German Shepherd, a film about a canine CIA Agent in post-war Berlin?

Probably. :-)

Barcelona retro-blogging

In June 2005 I went on holiday in Barcelona with 4 friends. 3 of them are T-girls like me, one of them is a real girl, but we don't hold that against her. With so many trannies in one place, at least some dressing-up fun was on the cards. While I was there I kept a bit of a diary of events, or a 'blog' if you will.


June 11th 2005 - 11.55pm
Arrival

We've arrived at our apartment in the Raval district of Barcelona. The apartment itself is very nice, but the Raval is distinctly seedy. It's described in one guidebook as "historically a den of thieves, artists, prostitutes and transvestites". So we should fit right in!



June 12th 11.00am
Packing for Two

I've unpacked. There is a slight problem.

I'm used to packing to go away for tranny weekends, where it's essential that certain items are included (boobs, wigs, etc), and normally the only boy clothes I'll need are the ones I'm travelling in. In my determination to make sure I'd packed all the tranny essentials, as well as enough clothes to give Becky at least 4 distinct outfits for going out in, I've forgotten to pack much boy stuff! My boy wardrobe currently consists of 3 pairs of trousers, and 3 t-shirts. This wouldn't be a big problem if I was planning on dressing en-femme full time for the next two weeks, but I really don't fancy two weeks in the sun wearing full slap and the functional equivalent of a woolly hat.

There's a great big pile of guy stuff sitting in my cupboard at home waiting to be packed, but it looks like one of the first jobs of the holiday is shopping. For boy's clothes. Oh the horror!


June 13th 9.14pm
Retail Therapy

The shopping opportunities in Barcelona are superb. The Passeig de Gracia, the city's equivalent to the Champs-Elysée, has lots of the familiar big-name clothing stores. I spent a few minutes in H&M grabbing some cheap t-shirts and trousers to wear in boy-mode.

After that we headed off into the back streets of the ancient Barri Gothic, where there are less familiar shops with strikingly varied and vibrant clothes. The only problem for the tranny shopper is that everything tends to be sized for tiny Spanish girls! Even tops labelled as "extra large" seemed to be the equivalent of a UK size 12!

Later we travelled further to the east of the city, into the Born district. This is the most fashionable area of Barcelona to live, and the stores reflect that! Lots of achingly chic but horrendously expensive jewellers and dress shops.

I was finally tempted by a fab pair of pink camouflage combats back in one of the less expensive stores. Well you didn't think I was only going to buy boy clothes on this holiday, did you?




June 14th 2.07pm
Metro-sexuality

I've just finished a rather late breakfast of baguettes and cheese. We needed a bit of a lie-in after the first Tranny Night Out of the holiday. Well I say "first", but actually Sophie Green's been en-femme more or less all the time since we got here. She's decided to try and do most of the holiday in girl mode, she's a lot more committed than me. I like dressing up to have fun, I'm not really a full-time kinda gal!

Last night we decided to visit a nearby gay club called Metro Disco. Despite it being my first time out dressed this holiday, it's not actually my first time at this club. We went there during a shorter holiday last year and liked it so much we decided a return visit was in order.

Metro was just as I remembered it. The entry price of €9 includes the first round of drinks. So it was vodka and Cokes all round when we arrived, with those 'tip over the bottle and count to ten' vodka measures you never seem to get in UK clubs!

A couple of those and I was ready for anything!

A couple more and everything was kind of a blur.

I seem to remember daring each other to run through the "dark room" in the club (quite why a gay club needs a room for photographic development is beyond me), watching some of a Spanish drag show, and being chatted up by a short fat Frenchman who swore he was an English teacher but didn't seem to speak a word of English. Luckily my schoolgirl French was good enough to make myself clear.

"Non, merci!"


June 16th 23.44pm
In Sitges

We've spent most of the day in the town of Sitges, 30 minutes by train down the coast from Barcelona. It's a really nice resort town, with long beaches and a buzzing club scene. Sitges has been know as gay resort for many years, but apart from the odd rainbow sign and a few well-bronzed gay couples on the streets you wouldn't really know.

It's a shame that the last train back to the city leaves at 10.30pm, as I'd have really liked to have sampled the nightlife in the town. I suppose we could have stayed in-town clubbing and caught an early train back in the morning, but after a day on the beach we were all feeling a bit sun-stroked and weary, and none of us had brought a change of outfits anyway!

If I come back to Catalonia in the future, I think I may use Sitges as a base. If I get bored of the beaches and clubs I can always catch the train into the big city!


June 18th 2:15pm
VIP Treatment

Another late breakfast after another night on the tiles. Actually "on the tiles" is apposite for Barcelona, as there are tiles everywhere. From the big hexagonal ones with sea-life patterns that pave the entire Passeig de Gracia, to the millions of colourful mosaic tiles that encase some of Gaudi's edifices.

Last night we decided to try another club, the Arena Classic in the city's gay district, sometimes called the "Gayxample". There's no real gay village in Barcelona as such. The Gayxample is a large and ill-defined area, and the city's gay and straight club clientele seem to intermingle quite freely. One big happy family!

It was fairly quiet when we arrived at the club, but the music and venue was promising. We'd been there about 10 minutes when I was approached by a friendly local called Olga, who must have thought we were looking bored. After getting over the initial language barrier, she explained that the club she was heading to soon was a lot busier, and free to get in. Did we fancy tagging along?

I was unsure about the "free" bit, but she explained that the club we were in was just one of the Arena chain of gay clubs in the city. If you get your hand stamped in one of them you get free entry into all the others. Apparently we weren't in the Arena Classic, we were in the Arena Madre. The Arena Classic was next door. She was heading to the Arena VIP, a couple of blocks away, and for some reason only known to herself she'd decided to take a bunch of English trannies with her!

The Arena VIP was a lot busier than the Madre, and seemed a lot more mixed than the rather macho-feeling Metro earlier in the week. It still felt very tranny-friendly, as has everywhere we've been on this holiday. In fact, I can't imagine anywhere in Barcelona being particularly tranny un-friendly.

We've tended to stick to mostly gay venues for our tranny adventures, but that's mainly because a T-girl is more or less guaranteed a safe night out in a gay venue. Sophie and Shannon have both been out dressed during evenings when we've gone to regular bars and restaurants, and apart from the occasional bemused look, we've not had any negative reactions. I'm sure that once I got a better feel for the place, there wouldn't be many places in Barcelona that I wouldn't be comfortable going dressed.


June 21 st 2.17pm
Levels

It's remarkable how everyone in the group has had a different frequency of dressing en-femme. We're each at different "levels", but that just makes the group dynamic more interesting.

Sophie H, as the group's token "real girl", has (hardly unsurprisingly!) spent the entire holiday as a woman. You could say she has the least amount of effort to make to look girly… but not in earshot while she's getting ready in the morning or you're likely to get a slap.

Next there's Sophie G, who arrived at the airport dressed and, apart from some odd moments when it was impractical to stay en-femme, has remained Sophie throughout.

Then there's Shannon, who similarly to me tends to dress up for special occasions. It's just that she's less picky than me as to what occasions count as "special"! She's been dressing up every other evening.

Then me, Becky. I often just can't be arsed to make the effort of femming-up. I'd count myself as the laziest T-girl in the world if it wasn't for…

Jessica, the youngest tranny in the group. Often to be found snoozing on the bed while the rest of us run about primping and fussing over makeup. She seems equally happy heading out to a club in boy or girl mode. It's not really laziness that stops her from dressing all the time, she's just got a clear idea of how often she wants to dress, and doesn't tend to dress up just for the sake of it, which I admire.

Last night, however, Jessica did dress up, which made it the first time all the girls have been out at once. We headed back to the Metro club, as it was nearby and we didn't feel like a long walk.



After a slow start the evening picked up nicely. There was even another young T-girl in the club, which was nice to see. She seemed quite shy though, and I didn't pluck up courage to say hello.

It was exactly a week since we'd last visited the club, and so it was drag-show night again. This time we all sat down to watch it properly, and I loved it. Trust me, you've never truly heard Beyoncé's "Crazy in Love" until you've heard it sung at breakneck speed in Spanish by a big black drag queen!


June 23rd 4:30pm
Meeting the Locals

We have to tidy up the apartment and head home tomorrow, so yesterday evening was our last opportunity to have a night out and not have to worry about an early start the next day. We were tired, and Jess and I didn't feel like dressing, but we decided a quiet drink in a bar couldn't hurt. So Sophie G, Jess and I ended up retracing our steps from a year ago and finding the gay bar we'd visited one night on our last Barcelona trip.

After a long walk through the grid-like Eixample district, we tracked it down, a swish cocktail bar called Z:eltas. We'd been sitting drinking a little while when an English guy came up and asked if we happened to know of any good clubs in the area. It turned out that he and the group he was with were English teachers living in Saudi. They were all gay, except for the one who looked like Jimmy Somerville, who was apparently straight. I gave them directions to the nearby Arena Madre.

After a drink or two, the tiredness had vanished and it seemed like a much better idea to actually take them to the club!

We'd been told by a local at Z:eltas that Wednesday nights were always quiet, but the Arena Madre was still buzzing. After only a couple of weeks in town I was already starting to see familiar faces, including the Spanish T-girl from Metro two nights earlier!

This time I did pluck up the courage to say hello. It took a little while to explain who we were, as I looked quite different to two nights ago. But luckily Sophie looked the same, and although Jess was in boy mode, she was still just as tall! She smiled when she realised that the lanky guy I was with was the statuesque tranny she'd seen in Metro! We chatted for a while, she told me her name was Sara, and she was thinking about going full time soon. She'd seen us at Metro, but had been too scared to come over and say hi, so I guess shyness is a universal trait in trannies! We exchanged email addresses, Sara's coming over to London later in the year so maybe we can show her something of the UK scene.


June 24th 11.50 pm
Going Out with a Bang

We're flying back to the UK, and everyone's a little subdued, especially after a rather fraught final night in Barcelona. I can only describe it as my first experience of cross-dressing in a war-zone!

Last night was the Festival of Saint Joan, which Barcelonans celebrate by setting off fireworks and partying until dawn. I'd fancied a reasonably quiet night out watching the celebrations, and maybe a meal en-femme… but we emerged that evening into a city gone mad.



Everyone seemed to have bought a hundred firecrackers each, and was going about making as much noise as possible. Even small children were brandishing lighters and fireworks given to them by their dads! We'd planned to watch the display at the famous Magic Fountain in Montjuic, but teenagers were setting off large bangers only feet away from the crowds, and it all got rather hair-raising. After I'd taken a few pics just to prove I'd been there, we headed back home. The back streets of the Raval were just as nerve-janglingly noisy, and we started to get really scared when we saw a guy firing what looked like a very real hand-gun! It seems that to stop us falling too much in love with her, Barcelona had saved her scary side until the end.



June 25 th 11.00 am
Homecoming

We're back in the UK, tanned and exhausted. It feels like the holiday is over, but there's still one more leg. We're heading off to Sparkle in Manchester this afternoon! The last two weeks have been fantastic. Barcelona is fashionable, fun-loving, cultured, dangerous, colourful, crazy and filthy-gorgeous. This just about makes it the perfect holiday destination for any T-girl!


(The above article was originally written for Repartee magazine, I dug it out today when someone emailed me for advice on trannying in Barcelona. I figured that as the issue that featured it came out over a year ago I'd not hurt their sales by using it on my site now!)

Young gender-gifted music device of color

Wogan's gonna love this

My early favourite for Helsinki Eurovision success: the Denmark entry.

Because they used to be in a band called... oh never mind

The same day that Miss K reports on her current unwellness, her old bandmate Luis, possibly in a fit of one-uptrannyship, starts up a brand new blog with a post all about being spectacularly ill.

I know what they need...

...

...

Six Inch Painkillaz!!

Thankyouverymuchfolks, I'm here until Friday. Don't try the veal, Miss K sneezed on it.

Diffraction

Today I mostly went to the beach.

Half-way to 70

35 years ago today, during an ominous power cut, I was born!

Yep, today I celebrate surviving another trip around the Sun. I've got the day off, which means I'm blogging this in my dressing gown at 10:00 am, having just eaten a lovely Birthday Breakfast and tallied up my Birthday Present Haul.

So far:

• Jack Kerouac's On the Road - Thanks Jane!
• iTunes voucher - Thanks Thom and Sophie!
• Live Lounge album - Thanks Jane!
• Hard currency - Thanks Mum and Dad!
• Magnetix thing - Thanks Jane!
• aaaaand... my special main present. Made extra special by this exchange after visiting Tesco with Jane:

Jane: Don't open that bag, it has your birthday present in it!

Me: What is it? You didn't spend enough time away from me to buy anything!

Jane: Not telling!

Me: In fact the only thing I saw you pick up was those sparkly drinking straws.

Jane: It's a surprise!

Me: But, if it is the sparkly drinking straws then it won't be a surprise because I was standing next to you when you picked them up.

Jane: Not saying!

Me: It's not sparkly drinking straws, is it?

Jane: Not saying!

So today it was an immense surprise to open my final present from Jane and find...

...sparkly drinking straws.

Wow. I never saw that coming, did you? :-)

Living the T

When I got the email a few weeks ago asking me if I'd like to review a new book on transgendered teenagers in the US, I was flattered, but a little surprised. Firstly, it's not every day I get sent free books from the States!

Also, my own experience as a white, closeted transvestite growing up in rural England is about as far as you can get from life as a young transsexual on the mean streets of LA.

Which is not to say that I didn't identify with some of the characters in Cris Beam's book Transparent - Love, Family and Living the T with Transgendered Teenagers, because everyone can remember what it's like to be a teenager, and every transgendered person knows what it's like to feel "different".

A few years ago, seemingly due to a lack of anything better to do, Cris took a job teaching English at Eagles Academy, a feisty little school for GLBT children just off Los Angeles's Santa Monica Boulevard.

The school had a bad reputation, even amongst the foster services specialising in helping gay and transgendered children. The kids are all black or latino, and a lot of them live on the streets. Drug addiction, gang violence and prostitution are all daily experiences. But a lot these kids have an extra complication: dealing with varying levels of transgenderism.

Having worked as a writer, Beam was bundled into the role of Eagle's English teacher and, lacking any teaching materials or experience of teaching, sets about getting the kids to produce a school magazine as a class project. I'd really like to read the result, a magazine called Out and About, featuring such articles as "Hormones: Are They What YOU Want?" and "When Your Grandma Finds Your Drag Clothes".

The kids are immensely proud of their work, and distribute piles of issues to old neighbourhoods, or sneak them into the cafeterias of old schools. They desperately want to show the world that they're making something of their lives.

After two years working in Eagles, Cris is burned out and quits the school, but continues to stay involved with the kids she's met. She follows four in particular throughout the book: Christina, a feisty Latino who idolises the spice girls; Dominique, a "tragic, doomed beauty" with a crack-addict mum; Foxxyjazell, a black rap singer desperate to break into Hollywood; and Ariel, a quiet fragile creature from a strict catholic background who's certain she's going to hell for wearing a skirt.

Beam tells their stories with obvious sympathy, it's clear on every page she likes these kids and because of that is able to put up with their typical teenage tantrums, barefaced lies and flights of fancy. As she follows each of their stories, she uses milestones in their lives to relate the larger history and culture of transgendered people in the US, touching also on theories regarding causes of transsexualism and the legal issues confronting TG individuals today.

I thoroughly recommend Transparent. It's by turns horrifying, tender, funny and insightful. By showing how Christina et al "live the T" (T being shorthand slang among the kids for everything from "trans" to "truth"), Cris Beam has revealed truths that all people, transgendered or not, can learn from.

(Other than the free copy of the book, I received no material payment for this review.)

Taking the pith

Today I had one of those great little flights of fancy and discovery that the internet can send you on.

It started with a cartoon in my Gary Larson desk calendar, featuring two frogs in a car. One (with tear-shaped fancy glasses, so obviously female) is berating the other for driving badly. She accuses the other of "driving like he's been pithed".

I've been a fan of Gary Larson since my early teens, and I must have seen that cartoon a dozen times in various calendars and collections, and every time I didn't quite get it. Was it supposed to be a pun on the words "pissed"? But that didn't make sense, because Americans tend to use the word pissed in the sense of "pissed off", meaning angry. I think it's only really in Britain that pissed also means "drunk". Anyway, "driving like you've been pissed" doesn't make any sense, and why would a frog lisp?

It was obvious I was on completely the wrong track. When I was a teen I'd let it slide and move on to the next cartoon. Today I decided to make use of the sum of human knowledge represented as a little orange fox on my start menu.

It turns out that "pithing" is what you do when dissecting a frog, sever it's spinal cord to render it immobile and senseless. It seems to be a common element in biology lessons in US high schools, which is probably why Larson used the word.

I've never cut open a frog, and I don't know anyone who has. It's not part of the UK Biology curriculum, as far as I'm aware (Joanna might correct me on that). All I really know about it is from watching that bit in ET where the kid sets all the frogs free. I needed to know more.

Extra internet research turned up the web site for The Frog Anti-Pithing Campaign. Which explains the "barbaric" practice in more detail and tries to rally other anti-pithers to get it banned.

Read that site, it really is quite enjoyable. Before I go on, I'd like to say that I don't necessarily disagree with it's author (frog dissection does sound very unnecessary in this day and age), but I still got a lot of laughs out of his arguments.

I'll quote you some of the best bits:

"Pithing a frog is much more horrorful (sic) than gassing a Jew (sorry, dear Jews, no offense intended, we are only trying to emphasize the horror of pithing a frog)"

Not content with equating Jews with frogs, the author makes other comparisons...

"Compare this to slavery, please: Slavery sounds so cozy and warm compared to a frog being pithed and dissected while alive! (Think of the frog as a human and you'll begin to grasp the horror of it all.)"

Wow, you're right! Picturing non-human things as humans does make situations quite horrific! I just mentally pictured One Man and His Dog with humans instead of dogs! Naked humans being forced to run around fields and herd sheep!! I was physically sick!!!

Then we get to The Campaign. The author urges us to get in contact with our local politicians to complain about pithing. He offers some helpful advice:

"It is quite easy to word letters to politicians, simply imagine you're writing your daughter, and that she's loosing it somehow."

So, I've decided to do my bit...

An Open Letter to the Rt Hon. Tony Blair MP

Dear Tony,

I'm very disappointed in you, young lady! Who was that man I saw you with on Thursday? Are you doing drugs? Do you want to get pregnant? Do you? Do you?

What happened to the little girl who I used to bounce on my knee?

Your mother and I are very disappointed with you. We love you really, you just worry us so much sometimes.

Love,

Becky xxx

P.S. Oh yeah, and can you do something about cutting up frogs? Thanks!

Crikey, that was tedious work

After having a bit of a fiddle with the new version of Blogger, and finding out that the new tagging system was reasonably well-implemented (not brilliant, but not terrible), I decided to go back and retro-tag some of my old posts.

"I know!" I thought, "I'll tag everything that I've ever written on the subject of transvestism!"

It took bloody ages! But, it was interesting to see how much I'd forgotten I'd even written about. Interesting, and frustrating, there were one or two latent blog entries in my head that, it turns out, I've already done to death ages ago!

But now, if you really really want to, you can read everything I ever wrote about transvestism.

It's quite a lot, er, you might want a Red Bull or something beforehand. And don't blame me if you get RSI from using the scroll wheel.

Evil Becky Answers Your Mail #9

Mwahahahaha. Evil Becky here, Becky's nefarious identical twin. Nobody knows why I went evil, it was probably because I was given exactly the same name as my sister except for the word "Evil" at the beginning. That'd screw anyone up.

Anyway, on with my bulging sack (fnarr) of mail wot Becky's too polite, demure and goddamn ladylike to answer herself. Names changed to protect the guilty, as per usual.

Dave Lea <daveandclare.lea@btinternet.com> writes:

hi becky,just seen your web page,
i have an ambition to sometime meet a tranny,
i very often come to kynns lynn,
txt me sometime on 07900XXXXXX
thanks dave,

Evil Becky replies:

Dear DLT,

Okay I might be jumping to conclusions here, Dave, but I'm guessing by "meet" you mean "have sexual relations with"; and by "ambition" you mean "all-consuming trouser-rupturing lust".

With that in mind, in future you might want to a) avoid putting your mobile number on emails to trannies who have dubious ideas with regards to privacy and own a website; and b) send that email from an address that clearly mentions your wife's name. Nob.

And then...

2:00PM
I've always wondered: how come AND, OR, and NOT are logical operators, but no BUT?

Is it something to do with my primary school teacher's odd expression "but me no buts!" when you tried to come up with an excuse for something?

Mr Boole, you don't get teachers like that anymore.

2:45
I've said it before and I'll say it again: Milton Keynes is Sim City. I'm certain of it. I've just watched the same car drive past 3 times. It's CG traffic! I swear I just saw the area across the road get re-zoned as "medium commercial". It went all blue and then five identical american gas stations just popped into existence. Honest.

3:00
The funniest thing about Charlie Brooker's rant (referenced in Jane's blog among others) is that the internet version is running alongside two Get a Mac adverts.

I'm in two minds about the Mac adverts, in a way they're exploiting a loophole that lets them relentlessly mock Microsoft by using the generic term "PC". If Microsoft wanted to produce the equivalent pro-Windows advert it wouldn't be able to, because it would be directly attacking Apple. In a way, Charlie's rant is redressing a balance that poor old Microsoft can't.

3:30
Home straight now! I just have the chapter on "Joining Tables" to do and home!

"Joining Tables"... it think this will be about when you need an extra-large table at a big family meal. Maybe there'll be a section on "Finding Extra Chairs".

3:39
I've got to get on. That's yer lot.

Jus' bloggin about my day

Come on, you can say it, I don't blog enough about day-to-day stuff, do I? Yeah I know, it's a failing. So, here goes:

My day so far:

07:00 AM
Wake up to alarm clock. Realise that I'm in a hotel room and take a few bleary moments to work out why. It's the Campanile in Fenny Stratford, but there's not clothes, makeup and crap everywhere, so it can't be for a tranny event. Remember that I'm on a 2-day SQL course in Milton Keynes. Groan inwardly.

08:30AM
I've successfully remembered the route into Central Milton Keynes from Fenny, which is basically "turn right, go straight over several hundred roundabouts, you're there!".

09:00AM
The guy sitting in front of me has an astoundingly fat neck. It's got a huge fold in it near the base of his skull, with two smaller folds either side above it. If it were a text smiley it would look like this:

¦ |

The overall effect is that he's cultivating a second face on the back of his head. I swear it's staring at me.

10:00AM
Entrepreneurial idea: Set up a gourmet food company called NorthWind. Save a fortune in IT consultancy by using the default database on Microsoft SQL server.

11:00AM
SELECT event, date FROM my_life_experiences
ORDER BY boringness DESC
GO

Experience          Date
----------          ----
SQL Course          5/2/2007
Watching paint dry  1/8/1987
...
(1872 records)

12:30PM
Why do local papers always have the best headlines? Just read a story in the local rag provided in the coffee lounge about the return of the rare egret to a local wildlife sanctuary. Headline:

Egrets, We've Had a Few, But Then Again, Too Few to Mention

Genius!

And in other news...

Lavender oil gives boys boobs. (Remind me to buy shares in Norfolk Lavender before all the trannies find out.)

Tagging is the new black. (I'm such a trend-setter!)

And finally, the following bands are gay*. (Elton John! Who Knew??)

---

*For some reason (freaky Javascript related I think) that link doesn't take you to the actual gay bands list. You have to click on the "gay bands" link when you get there. But the URL of the page is the same. Go figure!