Becky's T-Blog

Transitional

2008-11-10T22:36:00.001Z

The F Word, and no not F*ck and not that programme by Gordon Bloody Ramsey

2008-11-05T23:28:00.002Z

Well, by posting our little announcement and then not adding anything new to the blog for a fortnight, I think I've squeezed every last possible comment out of my readership. Thanks for all your kind words, it really was nice to hear from you all. Thanks for turning out!

Speaking of large turn-outs brings me on to the big news of the day, the fantastic election results in the US. It's hard to believe it's all over, especially since even in the UK the US election has been headline news for well over a year now.

American democracy seems to be a strange beast, sometimes inexorably slow, other times remarkably swift. Americans appear happy to spend years preparing for each election, conversely on the day of voting they're impatient for the results, often declaring results just after the polls have closed and well before all the votes are counted. But then, after the result is known, weeks pass before the incumbent hands over to the President Elect.

Coming from a country where snap elections are called with a few week's notice, the results aren't declared until all the votes are counted, and leaders change overnight, it all seems a little arse-about-face.

But what I do I know? We only invented democracy. Or was that the Greeks? I forget. Or are we the ones who've been doing it the longest? Something like that. We're definitely the best at it. We should get a cup or something.

Anyway, thinking about Obama's victory brings my thoughts full circle, back to my life and the new life that's coming. In particular I'm thinking about the F word: the Future.

The Future isn't something I've thought about much in my life, to be honest. It's just something I've allowed to arrive and wash over me. One of the creeping realisations that's dawning on me since Junior started setting up shop in Wombsville (population 1), is that the future isn't a blank page anymore, it's got a definite structure and form, and certain things are going to have to happen.

The blank page is now more like a sheet of A4 feint ruled. With a margin and everything. Begging to be written on.

I've already started with the first line: "stop making crap analogies".

That will do for now.

Just a little thing I want to tell you about

2008-10-21T17:58:00.006+01:00

It's been a rather fraught couple of months here, to be honest. I hesitate to use a tired phrase like "rollercoaster of emotions", but until they invent another thing that has the same exhilarating highs, unexpected and terrifying lows, and twisty bits where you just don’t know which way is up, then the rollercoaster analogy will have to do.

It all started a couple of months ago. Jane didn’t like the taste of a cheese and pickle sandwich I’d made her. She was also feeling strangely tired. She told me both these things, and my brain took the two facts and cogitated upon them for a while. Eventually it reported back with a hypothesis, namely: “woohoo! I get to eat her sandwich!”

I think women’s brains works differently from men’s, because given the same two facts Jane arrived at “I need to go to the bathroom and wee upon a small white plastic paintbrush thing.”

You see? It’s like they’re from a different planet. Someone should write a book about that sometime.

Anyway, I was blissfully unaware of Jane's activities (probably distracted by the extra sandwich) until she reappeared clutching the aforementioned paintbrush thing and said tremulously “I think I’m pregnant”.

There was a line on the indicator that meant something but it was the wrong way up to the way it was shown in the diagram next to the legend “positive”. There was also a very very faint line running the other way which kinda made it look like a plus sign, and the limited information on the indicator itself didn’t mention plus signs at all. Jane, of course, had thrown away the box with the proper full instructions on, so all we had to go on was the rather limited diagram on the plastic paintbrush thingy itself.

 Cue a late-night dash to the supermarket to buy another, more expensive, pregnancy test. Jane retired to the bathroom with another plastic paintbrush thing and a small empty Gü pudding bowl (which we'd saved for making crème brûlée in but i'm never ever going to eat out of again, even if it is thoroughly washed). Anyway, that pregnancy test gave a more emphatic “yes”. Cue lots of excited jumping about and ringing of close family, just because we had to tell someone.

The next day Jane came back from an early appointment from the doctor, her face ashen. The test the doctor had carried out had given an almost invisibly faint line, and he was worried about a couple of other indicators Jane was experiencing. There was also talk of the possibility of something called “ectopic pregnancy”. After being so happy the night before, it was all a bit of a shock to the system.

Because of the uncertainty, the doctor decided to throw the NHS at us. For the first time since I’ve worked for the organisation it’s big guns were wheeled out for me, in the form of endless blood tests, scans, and friendly ladies with reassuring dark blue uniforms. This simultaneously heartened us, and played on our worries, because as fantastic as medical science is these days, it can’t make Mother Nature work any faster than she wants to. We’ve had a few weeks of news which was never actually terrible, just never particularly good. And lots of lots of waiting.

Until today when I sat with Jane (who has a new blog address, by the way), and we watched as a little comma-shaped blob swam into focus on a computer screen. In the middle of the blob, a couple of pixels flickered away, the pulsing of a tiny brand-new heart.

Then it hit home, really for the first time.

I’m going to be a dad!

Stupid people shouldn't be allowed on the internet

2008-10-11T15:21:00.002+01:00

Once more into the depths of my blog to fish out comments on long-dead blog posts, dear friends!

A while ago I had a whale of a time researching the (sadly now defunct) vanity publisher Protea, publishers of (how could we forget), the truly awesome Off the Hook phrasebook for Japanese wannabe gangstas. In the course of my research I also turned up the some of the other titles that Protea released before it folded, as well as their work on bespoke oil paintings from photographs.

The paintings are stunningly awful, and certainly looked nothing like their subjects, unless their subjects were both boss-eyed and had lips that didn't line up with their noses.

The mistake I made though was not realising that because the pictures were both of American soldiers, any mockery of the artist's skill was actually mocking the looks of the soldiers themselves, and therefore a direct insult to all men fighting for Peace, Justice and the American Way. Ungrateful bastard that I am.

Well, according to the last couple of commentators, anyway.

Enjoy the new depths of imbecility, I'm off to put on a bhurkha. Auf Wiedersehen!

How to turn your iPod Touch into an iPhone

2008-10-09T20:37:00.003+01:00

Well maybe not a full iPhone, you won't get the actual phone bit (yet) or the SMS messaging, but you will get a 3G-enabled iPod Touch that you can use to send emails and browse the web anywhere.

Firstly I should say that I adore my new iPod Touch. It's quite simply the best, cutest, most gadgetty gadget I've ever bought. I have developed a polishing fetish, it's just so damn shiny.

But the shininess of it's chrome behind is a subtle reminder that it's the poor relation of the iPhone when it comes to connectivity. It's not got 3G, so no web surfing outside of WiFi areas.

I also love my Nokia N95. Compared to an iPhone it's a brick, but it's a clever little brick, chock full of interfaces and much more open to modification and adaptation than Apple's sleeker but more locked down fare. The N95 also supports WiFi and 3G.

Which got me to thinking, what if I could turn my little N95 into a mini WiFi hub, and share it's 3G connection? Then I could simply hook up my iPod to my N95 and surf the web anywhere! That would be a Very Cool Thing.

Thankfully the guys who came up with JoikuSpot also thought that would be a cool thing too. :-)

Definitely worth a purchase if you have one of the supported phones (mainly Nokia models), and it really does work.

Who knows, with any luck the new microphone-included iPod headphones will work with Fring, and you'll be able to make free Skype voice calls from an iPod Touch too.

Geek post ends. :-)

ID

2008-10-06T20:38:00.002+01:00

In the Wild West days of the internet, one of the huge attractions for trannies wasn't the perceived "anonymity" you gained by interacting online, it was actually almost the opposite. Trannies don't want to be anonymous, they want to be known, identified and recognised. They want to go into a tranny chat-room and be greeted like a regular at Cheers. Sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name... you just don't want it to be the same name that your boss or mum uses.

The beauty of the early internet was your feminine side could have an identity on the internet, in a way that she couldn't in the real world. You could also readily maintain multiple identities, keeping real and assumed personae separate and unique.

These days the Internet has cleaned up it's act, somewhat. Your identity on it has become more important, and systems like Google, Yahoo, and OpenID allow your identity to "flow" naturally from one service to the next. Anonymity has been sacrificed for seamless access to personal and personalised content. Which is great...

...if you're happy to be one person. Which most trannies aren't. One of the biggest problems I have these days is striking a balance between keeping my online identities for Simon and Becky separate, and still making the most of the integrated services that the internet provides. I'm fed up with having to log in to two different Facebook profiles, for example, but that's the only way I can do it without steadily outing myself to every friend-of-a-friend-of-a-work-colleague that finds me on the net.

I want to keep two sides of my life separate to others, but integrated to me. The annoying thing is that this isn't a desire unique to trannies. Surely everyone would like to have a bit of distance between their various professional and personal personas. The online services don't seem to get that, or if they do get it they don't do enough to support it.

Take Flickr, for example, which allows you to mark pictures as available to friends or family only. The Flickr people have recognised that we don't always want everyone to see pictures that we're happy to share with our closest relations. But it goes no-where near far enough. How about being able to mark pictures as only visible to my drinking buddies, or only available to my professional clients? And even better, how about if my professional clients saw my Flickr ID as "Hyperglobal Mega Consultants" and my drinking buddies saw my ID as "Beermonster Dave"?

I'm not pretending it wouldn't take a lot of programming, and I'm not suggesting some kind of identity fraudster's charter. I'm just saying that maybe we all have more than one identity, and it's time that the social networking sites realised that a bit more.

Surprising amount of overlap

2008-10-02T17:54:00.001+01:00

I'm actually the Tranny Satan

2008-10-01T19:57:00.001+01:00

Keep it real

2008-09-27T23:56:00.004+01:00

Check out this video from the guys who did the Mentos-in-coke thing a while ago.

Pretty amazing huh? It's impressive not just for the visual imagery, but because you appreciate how much effort goes into making something like that happen for real and not just faked digitally.

We've got so used to jaw-dropping digital special effects this past decade-or-so that they just don't cut it for us anymore. Computers can show us anything we can imagine, but our eyes are still able to spot the tell-tale flaws (or lack of flaws) that separate a CGI effect from real life. That's why film-makers seem to be increasingly relying on producing genuine effect-free spectacles for us to wow at. You can see it in the films of Michel Gondry and Garth Jennings, and increasingly advertisers seem to be using the technique too.

Which is fine when done well, like the ads by Sony and Honda. I love those ads, but there are pretenders that really grate on me every time they appear on TV.

Two examples of adverts that have tried and failed to jump on the "reality" bandwagon.

The Guinness ad that showed a village apparently setting up an elaborate domino-effect system that involved cars and burning haystacks, finally making a glass of Guinness out of hundreds of books. Fakey Mc. Fake Fake. Filmed in segments, didn't really happen. Hated it.

The recent Cadbury campaign involving airport vehicles in some kind of race. Except that they obviously weren't real vehicles, and airport tugs can't jump in the air like that, and since when does an airport have a line of very tall floodlights alongside the runway? And don't get me started on them ruining the "Gorilla Drumming to Phil Collins" advert by blatantly re-editing it to make it look like he's drumming along to some fucking 80's power ballad. If I was that gorilla I'd sue for defamation of character. Er... but I digress.

Pseudo-realism. It's probably just me that gets annoyed about it, and I can't put my finger on why. Probably because I don't like the feeling that I'm being lied to.

In which case, I should probably stop watching adverts.

Fan art

2008-09-27T18:11:00.005+01:00

Kristina Roberts, who would definitely have won a BeckysWeb Badge (if I gave out such things) for her previous artistic submissions has once again fired up Photoshop and created for me... well, it's best if you take a look.

Of course I'm flattered at the "tribute", even if it is of course non-canonical (TV's backside doesn't look like that, believe me I've seen it) it's still nice to see such effort...

But if I ever meet her she's going to get a slap.

She knows why.

I'm sorry, but... WHAT?

2008-09-25T18:03:00.003+01:00

The "long tail" of previous posts on this blog is a pretty quiet place, but once in a while someone will see fit to comment on an ancient post, normally unnoticed by anyone but me when I get the email notification. I read them all (of course) but don't usually feel the need to expose the comment to the glare of publicity at the sharp-end of the blog.

Except today, when I got this gem:

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Keep Transvestism for Transvestites!":

I think transvestites should stick to LBGT venues only, really concerns me that men in frocks are out in the public in women only spaces. I could understand years ago there was no places to go but now loads. Transexuals dont want to be confussed with Tranvestites by the public if read!!! I think transvesites should be banned from the public , i have more enough reasons that I dont want to give details on . I want a safe world for all women and transexual women !!

It's been a while since I frequented the tranny forums, so I don't come across this kind of fuckwittery very often, so it was actually quite nice to see a good old-fashioned bit of bonkers-in-the-nut holier-than-thou-TS bigotry.

Unless it's a parody, like the piece being commented on. In which case, well done you, anonymous. You even managed to get the double exclamation point at the end like a true mentalist. I doff my hat to you.

Still Not Famous Enough Syndrome

2008-09-22T22:17:00.002+01:00

Sophie H wrote: Going to show my ignorance now Becky, but how do you find out if your photos are being pilfered.

Fairly simply Sophie, people write to me to tell me that they've seen my pictures somewhere. In this case, a friendly Belgian blogger. There's no magical image-matching Google search, although that would be cool.

Every time it happens a little Tranny conscience appears on my shoulder (you know, the ones that look like a tiny version of you with angel wings), and shouts "woohoo! We're so pretty that people want to be us!"

And then a devil (which always kinda looks like Siobhan) appears on my other shoulder and screams "but not bloody famous enough or they wouldn't steal your bloody pictures!"

2% of all Beckys in circulation "fake"

2008-09-22T12:22:00.004+01:00

The body that governs all trannying in the UK (The Royal Mince) has revealed shocking statistics that show the number of fake Beckys in current circulation to have doubled in the last five years.

Experts believe that the forged Beckys are being produced in Europe, where the public's familiarity to the more common EuroTranny has meant that British trannies have become a more attractive target for solo criminals.

External link: an example of a Dutch forgery.

How to spot a fake Becky
Closely examine unnaturally shiny and new-looking Beckys, the real Becky is usually more jaded in appearance.

Examine any associated website for poor-quality writing.

Bite one corner of the Becky. If it screams "Oi! Stop f*cking biting me!" you're almost certainly dealing with a real Becky.

Commentators have suggested that the real Becky needs increased circulation to restore confidence in the standard. The real Becky thinks the commentators need to get out more.

(Thanks to Virginia Janssen for very kindly pointing out the latest pilferer of my pics. If any Dutch-speaking readers want to confront "Monique" on my behalf, feel free!)

Another reason I'm annoyed that Tranniefesto no longer exists...

2008-09-16T17:33:00.005+01:00

... it means I can't guffaw at Siobhan getting really really annoyed at dumb trannies asking why she didn't wear a big pouffy dress to her wedding. :-)

But anyway...

Congratulations Graham and Amiee. Wishing you many years of happiness and Stuff™. :-D

Falling off the wagon

2008-09-11T20:02:00.003+01:00

Despite our differences, there's one thing that most people like me seem to agree on: that it's impossible to entirely keep it under control and bottle it up. If you do, it's liable to burst out unexpectedly and uncontrollably.

I must admit that just recently I'd been trying to deny my innermost urges, knowing that it was too expensive (monetarily and emotionally) to keep pandering to them. But my fetish found ways to escape, I found myself looking at niche websites again, living vicariously through other's experiences.

And then, yesterday, after a night alone in a hotel room with nothing to do other than reading specialist blogs, I couldn't take it any more, the dam burst.

I went out and bought a new shiny thing.

I know I've always protested that I don't want to make any life-style commitment, but I think it's time to be honest with myself. I think I might be Jobssexual.

Game Theory

2008-09-04T22:38:00.003+01:00

I don't buy computer games very often (hey, I use a Mac) but I'm looking forward to getting Spore tomorrow, because it looks like another stroke of genius from Will Wright, the creator of SimCity and The Sims.

SimCity broke new ground way back in 19-can't-be-arsed-to-Google-the-year by being a software toy first (a simulation of a city) and a game second (how big a city can I make? and what happens when I send a great big bloody monster down main street?!)

It was a pattern Wright repeated with The Sims, which was a software toy built around theories about how architecture and environment influence human happiness and lifestyle. They then slapped a big dolls-house "living soap" kind of game over the top of it, but at it's heart it's just a clever simulation toy.

Wright's games do something that few other computer games do, they actually use the power of a computer, i.e. to do stuff other than chuck polygons at the screen. They make the computer think, and as a result they make the player think too. For example, before I played SimCity I had no understanding of the complex interplay of industry, commerce and populace in a modern city; and before The Sims I didn't realise how important a proper breakfast is to getting a job as an astronaut.

With Spore, I'm hoping to learn the ideal number of legs a plucky young lifeform needs to conquer the galaxy, but we shall see.

For the last few weeks, I've been playing around with the Spore Creature Creator, which costs a mere £5 to download (or completely free for the trial version) and is an awesome amount of fun. And it's even available on Mac! I urge you to have a go.

Once you get bored of creating dinosaurs and giant perambulatory penises (everyone does it) you can have a go at creating truly unique creatures, or truly derivative ones. I had a crack at making Great Atuin. But my ambitious plans to include the elephants and discworld, meant I ran out of bits before he was finished.

Looks kinda cute though...

Bring on the Trumpets!!

2008-08-26T20:32:00.002+01:00

If you want to know what my essence looks like, it's something like a small jelly bear who demands trumpets.

Best advert ever.

Trumpets!

The History of Tranny and TV

2008-08-21T21:33:00.003+01:00

The Tranny and TV strip that appears on this blog is, of course, only the latest incarnation of the much-loved comedy duo. Trannies throughout the decades have laughed along at the exploits of the transgendered radio and his gender-confused television friend. Lets look back at the history of Tranny and TV, in a little feature I like to call "The History of Tranny and TV".

The History of Tranny and TV

Tranny's first recorded appearance was in the ground-breaking animated short "Tugboat Tranny", which was the first Flash-animated tranny cartoon skit, way back in 1915. Unfortunately no recordings still exist of this skit, as many Flash animations were wiped in the early 21st Century to be re-used for Vodafone banner ads.

Cel from the first appearance of Tranny, 1928

While Tranny was earning a name for himself in animated shorts, TV was still very much a stage-based actor. His 1920 performance of Piglet, Princess of Denmark, is still seen to this day as the definitive rendition of the greatest tranny play Shakespeare never actually wrote.

Ironically, TV's rising star in the theatre was stalled by the invention of his namesake, television. When asked about the new broadcasting miracle that was ruining his career, TV was characteristically stoical. "I always wondered what my aerial was for," he is reported to have said.

It was on a tour of the US that TV first met Tranny, and a life-long friendship was forged. They started perfoming together in burlesque, and were soon spotted by Hollywood.

Titles from Tranny and TV's first on-screen collaboration

Tranny and TV's early Hollywood films would be unrecognisable to someone more used to their more recent work. Their on-screen characters were almost the reverse to what they are now, with Tranny portraying the bumbling simpleton and TV his brash, overbearing (but only slightly more intelligent) partner. Audiences rolled about in the aisles whenever TV uttered his immortal catch phrase "And that's yet another awkward situation into which you've placed us, Tranny!"

Both Tranny and TV saw active service in WWII, TV entertained the troops (on radio and in person) with his bawdy semi-naked drag act, earning the nickname "The Forces' Sweetmeat". Meanwhile Tranny earned his wings as an RAF pilot, and even had time to make the classic transgender-interest movie "I was a Wireless War Bride".

The Fifties were a difficult time for the pair. For the first time the British Housewife could have appliances (albeit non-transgendered appliances) in her own home, and Tranny and TV no longer held the caché they once enjoyed.

"Four Trannies", Warhol, 1966

They fell off the radar for a decade, re-emerging in the most unlikely of places, as members of Andy Warhol's retinue of bohemian eccentrics and muses, known as "The Factory". Warhol actually used Tranny in some of his best known work, but TV tended to just lounge about eating crisps.

"TV Feeling A Bit Peaky", Peter Hujar, 1968

In the Seventies they went their separate ways again. TV decided briefly to go "full time", and after extensive reconstructive surgery (and panel beating) actually managed to convince everyone he was a genuine woman. This peaked with a part as a Bond Girl in the film "On Her Majesty's Secret Service". However he was ignominiously outed by a British tabloid, and after a period in hiding re-emerged once again as a regular TV in the early eighties.

News of the World Headline, 1970

In 1992 the BBC were looking for a new show to plug the gap in their children's TV schedule between "Cities of Gold" and "Neighbors". Tranny and TV pitched an idea for a show featuring two aging Northern transvestites who move furniture about and act like children, "but not in a creepy way", as TV put it! Thus "TrannyVision" was born, which kept the money flowing in throughout the Nineties.

TrannyVision titles, 1996

In 2005 retirement beckoned, until a third-rate tranny blogger ran out of real things to talk about and decided to fill her blog with made-up nonsense. Tranny and TV were once again in demand!

Thus we come to the end of the story so far for the Bakelite Boy-Babes, who knows what the next century will bring? I'll let Tranny answer that question himself!

"Who bloody cares!?"

I Walk the Line

2008-08-19T17:50:00.003+01:00

Right, bear with me because I'm writing this with a vague impression of something in the back of my mind but no idea how to commit it into words. So this is going to be rather rambling.

Being a transvestite is bloody difficult. Correction, being a good transvestite is bloody difficult. By "good" I mean one who makes the effort, who's happy to stand up and be counted as a transvestite, and who (and this is where recently I've been failing abysmally) actually cross-dresses. The Good Transvestite walks the line, the line that divides not bothering enough and bothering far too much.

Let me reel off a few more clichés.

The Good Transvestite lives on the edge. On one side is the massed hordes of proto-trannies who never get the urge to take it any further, and on the other side are the transsexuals who want to take it all the way. But the edge is a fun and exciting place to be. Edges are always where things happen. When two environments come into contact you get turbulence, conflict, excitement... life. There are a lot of interesting people on the edge, and even more approaching it from both sides. Away from the edge you get safety and uniformity, but nothing really ever happens.

The trouble is that there, in the middle, seems to be the hardest place to stay. The Good Transvestite who crawls their way up to the edge, fighting apathy, prejudice and self-doubt to become an "out and proud" tranny, faces a big problem. There are slippery slopes in both directions, back down the way they came or onwards into the murky realms of hormones, SRS, and permanent changes of lifestyle.

The Good Transvestite knows that although they'd fantasised occasionally about, say, having a proper set of boobs, they wouldn't be doing it for the right reasons and the novelty would wear off in a few hours, so they hold back. The craving for the "next big hit" (buying girls clothes, going out dressed, passing in public, whatever) has fuelled them all the way to the crest of the edge, so stopping before they go too far down the other slope can be hard.

Before I suffer the wrath of transsexuals angry that I'm implying they're just bad transvestites who couldn't give up on the "next big hit", let me qualify what I'm saying. I think that most transsexuals have a genuine need to do what they do, and you can tell by the huge sacrifices they've made with families, careers, etc.

And also, trannies that shade further down the transsexual spectrum face problems walking their own "line". The medical, legal and social structures in place in this country and elsewhere have great difficultly seeing any shades between "male" and "female". The transgendered person who wants to live a lifestyle somewhere after "man" but before "woman" faces huge difficulties from a society who wants to push them into one of the two available boxes.

But back to the point I was trying to make, and (rather predictably) it's all about me. I "walked the line" for a while, lived on the edge and sampled all the delights that were available there. But then I had to choose: fight extra hard to stay there or fall to the side. Falling "forward" never was an option, because I'm 100% sure I'm not a transsexual. And staying where I was became impossible because, despite Jane's utter support and understanding, the kind of tranny I was 4 years ago just wasn't compatible with a normal happy relationship.

Also, the need to dress has gone away since I've been with Jane. Maybe because I'm with Jane, but I'm not about to test that theory.

In many ways I've "lost" the old Becky, and gone though a bit of a mourning period because of it. I miss the hedonistic pleasures that came part-and-parcel with the particular way I chose to express my tranny side and "live" through Becky.

Despite Jane trusting me implicitly (and me being committed to deserve that trust), I've not trannied solo in over a year, and only once or twice since I met Jane. Going out dressed with Jane is a lot of fun (and she enjoyed it too), but it's strangely different from the pure thrill of going out solo.

When we first met I said to Jane that my trannying was going to be my garden shed, a place where I could retreat to be away from real life for a bit. But to allow Jane to be comfortable with the shed, she had to see inside, and somehow it never seemed right to shut her out after that. And so, unwittingly, my expression of Becky became diluted.

Part of me wants to reclaim that part of my life, part of me realises how selfish that would be. Perhaps the ultimate defining characteristic of the transvestite is selfishness - we want to do these things we do to satisfy our own needs and desires - but I don't want it to define me. So I'm going to have to find a new way to be a Good Transvestite. Giving up on personal short-term pleasures for the greater lasting pleasure of a loving relationship, perhaps that's the hardest line to walk of all.

A Tranny's Guide to Surviving the Credit Crunch

2008-08-18T17:13:00.004+01:00

The threat of recession is on the horizon. The current economic climate means everyone is having to tighten their belts, and us trannies have more belts to tighten than most (along with a couple of girdles, and a sash that ties in huge bow that sits delightfully in the small of our backs and... er ... I digress).

So anyway I thought I'd put together a few tips for surviving the credit crunch as a tranny.

Make the Most of the Panto Off Season

During the summer months there is very little call for pantomime, so why not make use of all those costumes gathering dust at your local theatre? Many of them are designed for the fuller figure, and come in a variety of striking and original styles.

Look for:

Ugly Sister costumes. Often actually quite swanky, it's the makeup that tends to let down your average Ugly Sister.

Cinderella's Ballgown. You never know, it might fit. Although the slippers probably won't.

Pantomime Dame outfits If anyone asks, tell them you're on a Grayson Perry kick.

Avoid:

Anything with a goose's head. Unless you're into a bit of furry (feathery?) action on the side.

Principal Boy outfits. Unless you look so naturally like a girl that it shines through even when you stick on a pair of hotpants, a pencil moustache and a jaunty hat. In which case I hate you.

Investigate Alternative Realities and Planes of Existence

Online realities such as Second Life have always been havens for the tranny without the budget for actual clothes / makeup / plastic surgery, but in hard times it can be hard to find the Real Life lolly you need to pay for the Second Life loot. So why not investigate some other online environments?

Try:

World of Warcraft. But don't do the obvious thing and play an anatomically impossible female maiden skipping around in extremely skimpy armour. The proper way to cross-dress in WoW (or any other online RPG) is to play a butch male character and then disguise yourself in as feminine a manner as possible. I myself have a male Night Elf rogue who has a fantastic range of frocks he picked up at festival events around Azeroth. And he can easily pass for a laydee, providing the dungeon is dark enough.

Pirates of Caribbean Online. Okay, so I've not actually investigated this myself, but surely in addition to all the swarthy eye-patched pirates there must be room for a few corsetted and be-hoop-skirted Governor's daughters for trannies to play? And maybe also ladies of negotiable affection inhabiting the taverns and docks? If not, wake up Disney! This is an opportunity missed!

Avoid:

EVE Online. The bit at the beginning where you create your avatar all looks very promising, and you can spend an hour or so getting the lipstick, funky hair and eyeshadow on my space chick just right. But then it's all just spaceships! And it's very hard to make a Caldari Battle Cruiser look femme. Believe me, I tried.

Make Do And Mend

Some tips for when things get really bad:

The discarded towels left behind The Boudoir and other dressing services can be wrung out for usable amounts of foundation.

Rather than forking out for an expensive wig, just let your own hair grow out. (Be warned: while most trannies who do this tend to make out they're frightfully lucky to have "such nice long hair", all their friends secretly know this is a sign of abject poverty and an inability to buy a decent wig. That's not envy in their eyes, it's pity.)

Take a tip from those wartime ladies who couldn't afford seamed stockings. If you can't afford to buy a decent pair of falsies, just drink a lot of beer until you develop an impressive set of man boobs, then take a brown eyeliner pencil and draw a large oval shape around each one. Hey presto! Instant faux fake boobs!

- - -

Hopefully my little guide will help you through the worst of the credit crunch.

And remember that it's incredible what you can get in charity shops. Why, just the other day I got some very funny looks and a black eye.

RRRRRRRAAAAAGHHHH!!

2008-08-17T17:35:00.001+01:00

That's a kind of textual representation of the amount of effort it's taken to free myself from a soul-sucking quagmire of indolence and finally put something in this blog.

No apologies, I just seem to have lost the part of my brain that deluded me into thinking that the stuff that happens in my life was worthy of being blogged about. Combine that with a distinct lack of Interesting Things happening to me, and the blog output is bound to suffer. I'm not even bothering to read blogs at the moment, let alone write them.

But, I'm still here. Keeping my head down and trying not to cause too much trouble. Life seems to be "on hold" a bit at the moment. There's so much that Jane and I want to do, but it's all dependent on selling our two smallish homes and buying something of a decent size. The news that house prices are tumbling would be great if we could actually get any buyers at all for our places. But just getting people to look at them is proving almost impossible. After years of feasting on the economic equivalent of calorific Kellogg's Golden Nuggets (so tasty, but you know it's bad for you), we're now forced to chew on it's evil high-fibre low-taste alternative: Credit Krunch.

It wouldn't be so bad if the perceived opinion didn't seem to be that house-buyers were reaping what they sowed, suffering from an economic downturn they created by artificially inflating the house market over the the last decade. It's not my fault. I've done nothing to inflate the house market, personally, I've just been quietly investing in my little pile of bricks-and-mortar, content to sit on the bottom rung of the property ladder, and now I finally want to step up a rung, the rules of the game have changed. All of a sudden the ladders are all snakes and the whole board is starting to look very slippery indeed.

If it looks like a girl...

2008-07-21T23:25:00.006+01:00

I might as well face it, I'm seen as the James Randi of Tranny Fakers. People always come to me when they find someone on Flickr who's pretending to be an amazingly passable tranny when they're just, well, not. Maybe I should put up a £1M prize for anyone who can successfully prove that they're not faking their pics when they look 100% passable. But I don't have the confidence or, to be honest, the funds.

A friend put me on to another one today, the first for a while.

Epigoth's profile claims "I'm an 18 year old GUY from the UK". And so commenters are saying stuff along the lines of "OMG I can't believe you're not a genetic girl! You look so femme!"

To those people I say, remember the famous Duck Test...

"If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck."

Never say never Non Non Photography Day again

2008-07-14T17:43:00.004+01:00

Yep, it's that time of year again. July 17th is your day to fight the evil that is Non Photography Day by participating in the far less po-faced and up-itself Non Non Photography day.

The plan is the same as always:

1) Take your camera with you on July 17th and snap as many pictures as possible all day. 2) Post them to the Flickr group.

Hopefully we'll completely undo the dent that the non-photographers want to make in the day, in fact with any luck there'll be even more pictures taken that day that there would have been normally!

Hair apparent

2008-07-02T17:17:00.003+01:00

It has been noted in the past that fellow blogger and fellowette tranny Lauren Close (now how can I put this?) wears her hair somewhat like me.

It's in fact exactly the same shade, the same style, and the same length. It's almost as if she gets her hair styled in the same place that I do. Or something.

This is purely accidental, of course, and even if it wasn't, it's not like I own the copyright on that hairstyle. Although as Lauren discovered for herself last weekend, there are pitfalls to coiffurial verisimilitude.

I've long thought that maybe trannies need to have the equivalent of the Clown Egg Register, to stop two trannies accidentally (or on purpose) picking identical looks.

Every clown in the UK is supposed to have their unique face makeup design painted onto an eggshell and stored in this register. It's kind of like the sex offender's register, except one deals with creepy men who you wouldn't want living on your street... and the other one deals with sex offenders.

So it seems although I didn't make it to Sparkle in person, I was there in ego spirit.

And if it's any consolation Lauren, that happens to me all the time.

...

Of course, my usual answer is "Yes I am Becky, nice to meet you!" ;-)

Okay, you can stop texting now

2008-06-28T14:30:00.002+01:00

To cut a long story short, I'm not at Sparkle this year. The relevant equation is

M + F + N + T < S

where

M = spare funds after recent hols
F = number of old friends I was hoping to see
N = number of new friends I was hoping to meet
T = my level of general trannieness.
S = Sparkle worthwhileness

Hope everyone going has a whale of a time without us. :-)

Becky's T*Blog [del.icio.us]

2007-07-01T08:00:35-05:00

My blog is temporarily broken.