Saturday, 18th June, 2005

How to Ruin a Perfectly Good Blog Post By Trying to be Too Clever

doctorwho

(A desperate attempt to avoid ranting about tomorrow being "Father's Day" and the hideous commercialisation that represents...)

Well, having spent most of the morning trawling through a couple of threads on Roses, I'd like to present you with my edited summary:

Grumble grumble grumble Let's have fun! Grumble grumble grumble Let's have fun! Grumble grumble grumble Let's have fun!

...etc

Ack, it's like World War Three's kicked off I have a deep temptation to go off on a rant, but I've been doing a lot of that recently, without any positive suggestions, so I won't

It's perhaps better than the usual stuff...

I got my date to see the Doctor! *Dances the Happy Dance*

The thing, to me, seems to be that some people (myself included, obviously) have objections to some of the things going on at Sparkle next weekend. Which I think is good. But the issue that I think a lot of people are missing, is that these debates are happening because of Sparkle. Without it, it would just be the usual closed-community theorising.

Now, I know some people like to live in the safety on closed, online communities, building up levels of achievement. But it's about time we started taking the debate outside that space.

And that's what Sparkle is all about. I think what's being lost is that next Saturday is an initiation of something — a chance to start setting the agenda rather than the extended navel-gazing that usually goes on.

...

Have you ever read that "Men are From Mars..." book? I tried reading it years ago, and I quickly came to the conclusion that the author had one point to make, and would just spend the rest of the book making the same point in slightly varying and rambly language. The point, I thought, was that men and women do things differently...

The male way of dealing with 'issues' is to skulk off back to our "caves" and try and work the problem through and then emerge with the world in order.

And that's just what's been going on for so long. We huddle in our enclaves, trying to rationalise what we do, how it works, why the world hates us, then expect to emerge on a glorious summer day in Manchester with all the answers in all the right places, and wonder why everyone is still laughing at us, making us feel Bad. Wolf-whistling sarcastically...

What we need to do — and what, I feel, Sparkle will help us do — is take the agenda outside of our cave. OK, so the venue is a bit 'safe' (although I have a feeling that we're still going to feel a bit odd, out of place, like aliens (of London perhaps, but not Manchester), but it's a start. I don't know what some people are expecting, but if they think that on the 26th of June, the world is going to be a trannie-friendly place, then they're going to be disappointed. The whole thing might be a big Bust, or it might be a big Boom. Town will certainly be full of trannies, but will we have an impact?

You know the other day when I mentioned that quote from Germaine Greer? The thing that annoyed me sllightly about it was that she was using the word "transvestites" as an automatic joke. And the reason she does that, is because we cut ourselves off, rather than having discussions in public.

I don't think we should be afraid of being wrong — I don't think we should get all protective of ourselves to the point where we just rant against people who criticise us. I think we should be prepared to accept that many of the things we think about ourselves might need rethinking.

But we're never going to be able to do that if we just cling to our security blankets and sulk. I think we should be Vocal, Out-there, and deeply deeply Unquiet.

Dead right.

...

Ah, I think my "I'm not going to rant" thing was wrong.

...

To use a Mac analogy, this is "Sparkle Public Beta". It took Apple five years to get to Tiger, and it'll probably take us five years to get to the Sparkle equivalent ... and then we'll still have a long way to go. (maybe even to the End of The World)

The wonderful thing, is that we have a group of people who are quite serious about it running the whole shebang. When I spoke to Kim about it a while ago, and voiced one or two concerns about things, I ended the call feeling a lot happier about the way things were going.

We're playing The Long Game here — and Sparkle is just the start of it.

...

Sorry, I should probably have thought all that rantage through a little bit better. Plus I got side-tracked by trying to do something clever.

I'm rather surprised, incidently by how many people I've seen who have already worked out what they're going to be wearing next Saturday — personally I haven't even worked out what I'm going to do with my hair. Hair up? Hair down? And what about my parting? Of the ways I could do it, I'm currently torn between (a) all frizzed up and scrunchy, and (2) sleek and pony-tailed.

One thing I do wish is that we could have got some more public figures to attend. Eddie Izzard, Paul Grady, that kind of thing. Maybe even Dale Winton.

No, not Dale. Kinda wouldn't work eh?

I thought that was one of the better ones — the "aliens (of London" was a bit crow-barred for my liking

Crap! I can't believe I forgot one!

Hold on, hold on. We did all spot what I was trying to be clever about today didn't we?

Want me to go back and make them all bold? (My favourite, apart from the Dale. K one Miss K...) was the "...parting. Of the ways..." — I felt that was particularly clever myself

I should point out, that despite my negativity towards certain things, I'm really excited about the potential of next weekend. Just being over in Manchester today, getting ready for the fashion show, has made me even more excited.

What I can't quite believe, is that all this has come from chance remarks a few months ago. I didn't expect, when I pressed SEND after writing a particularly crappy email to the Angels*, that 8 months later I'd be sat with a week to go before what I think is one of the most significant events in the TV calendar. Ever.

My little rantings about some of the things are just rantings — I expect there will be several debates to be had about things come the 26th (and about time ), but right now, I'm looking forward to a really really goo day and night out on the razz.

So, I'll try and post some kind of me-based timetable for the day closer to the event, just in case anyone would like to come up and say "hello". But for now, I think I'll just spend the rest of the day writing a review for my post tomorrow on tonight's Doctor Who episode...

* (I know that Kim has been the one that has done the vast majority of the work involved in organising Sparkle — all I've really done is draw the tiarra. But I'm going to go to my grave insisting that "it was all my idea" )