Tuesday, 16th November, 2004

Stick it in your pipe and smoke it...

smoking rant

urgh

I am not, it has to be said, altogether happy about going over to Leeds this morning Partly because I feel like poo (which I guess is my own fault — Monday night wine is never a good idea), partly because my hair is rubbish this morning, and partly because I don't exactly know where I'm staying (again) tonight. Of all the things on my list from yesterday, perhaps the most important was finding somewhere to stay — and I didn't manage it.

Last year, you may recall, I stayed with a friend when I was at work. This year I've been alternating between friends and coming back home on a Tuesday night — which is taking its toll really.

Yesterday though, I rang up the accommodation office at the university. It seemed reasonable to me to expect that they did some kind of service to part-time staff and visiting lecturers ... and sure enough, I was told that they were just starting a scheme like that.

yay

Well, sort of yay...

After being shunted round a few offices, I found myself talking to the Vice Chancellor's Executive Secretary (who I would have thought has better things to do than try and find a room for a point 5 lecturer ) — who said she didn't know, but would find out and call me back.

sigh Maybe I should have hinted at the urgency of it all...

You may be wondering, why don't I just stay with friends/colleagues like I normally do? Well, I do enjoy staying with them — don't get me wrong — it's just that usually, on Tuesday nights, I'm absolutely shattered, and I'm not the most sociable, talkative guest you could have staying. I really appreciate when people put me up, but I hate the thought that I might be a burden on them, or that I might get in the way.

It's hard sometimes having guests — it's equally as hard being a guest sometimes too.

...

So, woo hoo — big news last night eh? England is the world's new non-smoking zone

I know, I haven't got a leg to stand on at all. I'm just grumpy about it. Any argument I might try about 'civil liberties' can be easily disregarded by pointing out that my smoking affects other people.

I know. Really I know.

It's just that, well, it pisses me off. As far as I can see, it's not really anything to do with health (come on — if it was a health issue then I can think of tonnes more things that should be banned, like great big bloody 4-wheel-drive exhaust spewing Stoopid-Cars eh? ) (not yours Sarah — you actually use yours off road )

It's more to do with the potential litigation from workers who may in the future sometime sue for being exposed to smoke.

I could, I suppose, rant on a bit about how they shouldn't choose to work in a smokey place to start with — but I won't cos it's a futile argument. Flawed to the bone. But I guess what pisses me off is that all the fun is being taken out of life

Every single possible little bit of danger is being eeked out from under our noses in a well-meaning do-goodie kinda way, and it's making life really boring

To fall back on my favourite analogy for a second ... I saw an advert the other day for a car (think it was a Citroen ) that beeped at you if you strayed out of the lane you were in on the motorway. Now, I can see why that might seem like a good idea — maybe the intent is to prevent people falling asleep at the wheel and flying off onto the hard shoulder — but I reckon that all we'll end up with are a bunch of smug wankers sitting in the middle lane of the M6, not budging, because their car tells them not to.

And also (and this is my main objection) — the more safety features you put in a car, the more risks a driver is likely to take. There's some serious research on this — so why is every single car fitted with stabilisers?

pah

I dunno — it's as if the Great British Public (gawd bless their souls) are wandering around like numpties, banging into things, crying out "Protect us from all these nasty things 'cos we're too stoopid to protect ourselves!"

Really, I just wish people would take some fucking responsibility for themselves sometimes, I really do...

la la la ranty rant rant rant

Sorry, I shouldn't swear so much (but admit it — it's fun isn't it? ) ... but here's where I think the Trannie Community can really come to the help of the tedious mass we call The English:

OK, so everything in England (and Ireland, natch, let's not forget they banned smoking first...) is turning a homogeonous shade of beige (true story: everything reverts to beige eventually — even the Universe is beige apparently) — so who better to bring a little bit of colour, excitement, and let's face it, risk back into everyone's lives than a bunch of exciting, fun, daring blokes in frocks such as ourselves?

Seriously — they need us. Without our avant garde approach to fashion, they'd dissolve into a Daily Mail-fuelled ball of goo.

...

Just going back to something for a second, I've just thought why all cars are fitted with stabilisers. It's cos that's what the car-buying-public want. Numpties.

Ack, that's my objection to the whole market-based economy thing that we live in — if you let the 'market' decide what it wants, chances are it'll stiffle any innovation whatsoever and the cheapest, crappiest pieces of shit will prevail (look at Windows for God's sake)

Seriously, don't give the public what they want — tell the public what they're going to get, and tell them to be bloody happy with it or you'll take it away.

pah++

...

Anyway sorry about all that. I just got sent into a Bad Mood™ last night when I was watching the News.

I had a minor revelation yesterday, while I was banging my head against the desk trying to make some blog code fit into an already existing site... I'm always trying to make things perfect before I show them to people. These blogs that I'm organising for the students — I think they'll really work in terms of encouraging dialogue between them — but instead of trying to make it look beautiful and fit gloriously on the course website, I realised that it's much more important to just get the bloody things working and then prettify them .

So, today, I'm going to try and track down my two guineapigs and get them started And find more guineapigs too.

The whole thing with them, you see, is that I think it'll give the students a real chance to participate in the course when they're not in the studio. We do organised presentations (a sort of adult show-and-tell if you like), but I'm hoping the blogs will act like a sort of ongoing 24-hours-a-day presentation.

It's not hard to give each of them a blog — what is going to be tricky is (a) getting it all on the University's servers, and (b) devising a way for seeing all that's going on. I've got it using Apache authentication at the moment — you type in your username and password and it takes you automatically to your own blog — but I need to do some kind of über-list of all the blogs, arranged in order of activity...

...and seeing as how I'm using flat-files rather than a database, that's going to be fun

...

Great isn't it? You either get Siobhan the radical smoking activist, or you get Siobhan the geek. Take your pick

...

Here's a question for you — what should I do with that frowny picture that I put up yesterday?

I know it's not my best (really) — when I frown, or scowl, my brow comes down and makes me look (a) neanderthal, and (b) like a boy. And I'm surprised it's even got 3 stars to be honest. But should I take it off?

I was looking at it again this morning, and I was sorely tempted to remove it — but I dunno. Maybe I should leave it just to point out that I don't always look like a girl

...

Rather disappointingly, I don't think I'm going to make it to Tootsies this weekend. I suppose I shouldn't have left it so late to organise — but it's mainly not having somewhere to stay that night (a running theme today). My spontenaiety (urk — how do you spell that?) usually does this to me: "Oooh! That would be fun!", and then my rationality kicks in: "Oh, to do that I have to do this, then this, then this, and then this. Crap".

So maybe some other time sigh Some time when I've got a bit more time to organise myself.

It's a shame, cos there's a lot of people I'd really like to meet — but I guess there's always Transmission in Manchester, whenever that is

...

Wierd — we seem to be going very slowly today. Seems like I've been on the train for ages and we're only at Long Preston

And what's more, the weather is crap

...

Not sure what to do instead of Tootsies then. I could tag along with Kath and her friends, or I could try and catch up with Beth — and maybe have a pootle at The Dress™

...

A couple of things I really must do this week:

(1) Sort out the navigation on this diary. The way I've got the little calendars is really nice I think, but it wouold be so much easier to get around if I made a page that had all the entries listed on it. Maybe I should sign up for Google's Search based thingy as well...

(2) Sort out my bloody research. I had an email last week from someone who looks like they could be a good acquaintance to make. Someone who seems to be working in a similar field to me — but not necessarilly an artist.

I'm feeling like I really want to go ahead with what I was talking about two weeks ago...

BTW, thanks for all the comments and emails I got about it — I'm getting round to responding to them...

I honestly think it would be a Good Thing™. Apart from anything else, it would be great to get this diary into print I'm trying to work out a way of scripting a page (or a search-and-replace) to repurpose the web-code into Quark Tags (or InDesign Tags — not sure which to use yet)

Could be fun

("Fun", in this case, is used strictly in the context of "Siobhan pissing about in her geek-world" by the way)

...

I would appear to have run out of steam Think I'll quietly sit here for a bit until something happens to spark off my rantiness again...

...nope, sorry. Nowt interesting at all now (apart from the woman who insists on coughing up flegm with her mouth open) Besides, we're nearly at Leeds, so I'll just stop here.

Davew writes:

Just out of interest are most rants on tuesdays?

Yes, funnily enough they are — well, actually, it's not that surprising. Tuesdays are the days I'm stuck on a train for 2 and a half hours in the morning. So I have more time to rant If you look back, all the big rants are on Tuesdays...

gossamer writes:

in the name of gosh what is the world coming to ? much the same sort of thing is happening in my country too, as i believe it is all around the world. my own city, Calgary, Alberta, Canada will become smoke free in 2008. mankind it seems is trying to outlaw death . don't know if you're an sf geek but Larry Niven, in a comment about his future history milieu, once stated that, once he got to a certain point of technological extrapolation in that future he had to give up writing about it. All possible dangers,
to human well being had been legislated or engineered away. He had to give up because there was no longer anything interesting to say. i don't know if you are a philosophy buff but Nietschze wrote about the last man, as opposed to his vision of the uber mensch, whose lives had became so drab as to be unbearable. nor do i know if you are a poetry geek but T.S. Eliot wrote, in a poem called "The Hollow Men" " this is the way the world ends/ this is the way the world ends/ this is the way the world ends/ not with a bang but a whimper". Maybe you are right. we as trannies can be a major force in staving off the stagnation of our race! i am doing my part. every time i buy makeup or feminine clothing or high heel shoes (which is often, gosh i love stilleto heels!) i know that the lives i interact with become more interesting and possibly less safe seeming. you have provided me with an epiphany Shioban. not only am i providing a public service as a trannie shopoholic but i may be helping to save the human race from a fate worse than death. bless you! you are now my official, honest to gosh hero(ine) (only partly in jest....)

gossamer writes:

i have to add, when I whimper, it is a beautiful thing.....

Funnily enough, there was a thing on www.snopes.com about a similar thing the other day — the idea that as time progresses, and democracy nears it's final goal, everything tends towards the bland.

It's also quite a funny piece because it predicts that "On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."

But enough of politics

...

6.20pm

Oh My God. I'm on another train...

I decided that it would be a bad idea to stay in a hotel tonight (actually, I just checked the price of hotels, and figured another train journey was a lot cheaper )

So...

Bit of a productive day really My Machieavelian plan worked, I am now Overlord and Mistress to the entire university website; my guineapig students performed well (bless them) and well, I kinda feel good about things.

No really

There's something I need to do tonight when I get home, but apart from that, I'm just going to chill out a bit.

It would have been nice to have somewhere to stay in Leeds, but actually, I'd like to see Kathie and George and Biscuit and Tish

(in no particular order)

...

The only downside is that I have to endure this bloody train journey...

...

The thing is right, I really like the journey to and from Leeds. The little train that takes me across the Yorkshire Moors, through the countryside is relaxing and fun. It gives me the chance to reflect, think, and rant () about things at a leisurely pace.

The journey back through Preston, though, that's different.

The train is full of sad, unhappy people, all travelling home from their offices with that dejected look on their faces that only office-workers know how to pull: "My God, is this all my life has come to?"

Ack, maybe it's because it's dark. Maybe when it's light you can stare out the window and lose yourself in the scenery. Maybe when it's dark you're forced to confront the sheer futility of life, cocooned in a Transpennine Express shell.

Maybe, when all's said and done, being in a dark carriage just reminds you that there is nothing better in life to look forward to, and that you're probably going to end your days mourned by a handful of sycophants who've only turned up to your funeral because (a) you shared an office with them, and (b) someone said there would be free sandwiches...

...

(quickly pauses to go to the loo, and decides to share the joy of British Trains' loos with the world...)

...

But enough of this morbidness

My life is fun

I was sat on the platform a few minutes ago, wondering about things (in the way that I do) and I got to thinking, "how many other people here have Big Secrets that they don't tell people?"

I mean, I'm looking around, and I can see all sorts of people (there was a girl stood next to me who was constantly checking the newly-done tattoo underneath her clingfilm-wrapped legs, for a start) but most of those people looked, well, boring really. Same suits, same sad faces, same desperation to be somewhere else...

...but underneath, how many others were transvestites?

There had, by the law of averages (although that's hardly a firm basis for argument) to be at least one other apart from me. But would I have been able to spot them? Or if I had, what would I have said?

There was a lot of talk on the Angels' email group recently about how we could have some secret sign that only we knew about. Maybe that would be a good idea — maybe a secret handshake.

Me? I'm just growing my hair so it's bloody obvious what I am

...

Ah, Bradford Interchange...

THe most noticeable thing about Bradford Interchange (from my point of view anyway — apologies if anyone lives in Bradford) is that the train changes direction here. Which means that all those people who insist on sitting facing the direction of travel have just fucked up Ha!

...

I would have finished there — in fact, I was quite pleased with my little closing "Ha!" — but I've been downloading the photos I took today, and spicing up this entry with them, so I thought I'd finish instead on (a) Preston Station:

...which I hate

and (b) The rather nice train that finally took me home:

Virgin Trains are great. They're just always late, and guess what?

You can't smoke on them...

Geena writes:

WOW! I first thought that your first photo was that of a Virgin Jet! Here in the states, pretty much all trains.... and even the new ones are filthy, dirty and depressing!

They'd be even worse if you were allowed to smoke on them!