Hello 
I'm Siobhan Curran/Kisa Naumova, and this is my weblog. I tend to write about stuff like crossdressing, Macs, code, cats, wine and Second Life, but in general it's just an ongoing conversation about all sorts of stuff. If you'd like to know a little bit more about what this all is, I recommend starting on this page which has a little bit of info on who I am, and what I'm trying to do — or you could dive into my five years worth of archives if you like.
Otherwise, feel free to close this box and explore...
Rantage (Random)
/me twiddles thumbs
I hate waiting for things. Absolutely hate it. But what I hate even more is when, having waited for something for a few weeks, to be told that I've got to wait another month 
Email != Text Messaging
I don't know about anyone else, but I get a fair few emails each day that consist of things like this:
helo siobanh i am a cd too u look great wud like 2 meat with u nd be freinds i am on im yahoo do u want to chta
Don't get me wrong here, I love getting emails. When I flick my monitor on in the morning and see a little red blob on Mail.app's dock icon that says something like "47", I know I've got a pleasant wind-up to the day in the form of people saying hello, the odd "here's the stuff you needed", and a fantastically smart-arsed comment from Ms Enverite 
But these child-like squawkings confuse me 
. Whilst I'm usually able to decipher the meaning of them, I'm never quite able to picture the person at the other end of the keyboard.
Are they:
- under the age of 12?
- nervous as hell and are compensating by letting rip on their email client in a torrent of lower-case diarrhea?
- unable to reach the Shift key because they're typing with one hand and the other one is down their pants?
- really, truly, unaware that the other keys around the alphabet do exciting things like punctuation?
I dunno. Maybe I'm being unfair. It's just that whenever I write an email to someone I've never spoken to or emailed before, I tend to agonise for about a week over it, constantly checking and rechecking my grammar, my punctuation, and (believe it or not) my spelling.
I fret over whether the tone of what I'm writing matches the image I have in my head about myself, whether or not when the person at the other end of the address reads it, they're going to react to in in the way that I'd hoped. Whether what I've written is interesting enough to warrant a reply.
...
I wonder sometimes, if the people that send me emails like that spend the next few days wondering why I haven't got back to them. On the whole, I do try and reply to emails, regardless of content. But not when they're obviously the product of forehead-hitting-keyboard-randomly.
Text messages are different. With a text message, chances are you're in a rush, you've only got a hundred or so characters to get across a meaning. Mobile phone keys are fiddly and trying to write complicated sentences with long nails is a pain.
But email isn't like that. You don't have to type in a way that second-guesses what the predictive text is going to suggest. You can take your time.
...
A couple of years ago, before I felt as confident as I do (which admittedly, isn't all that much), I used to take every single email that came my way as a chance to make new friends. I would religiously add everyone who gave me a Yahoo IM id to my buddy-list and try and spark up a conversation.
But they would almost invariably go something like this:
<me> Hi
<them> hi siboahn
<me> How are you?
<them> im a cd
<me> Great
<them> r u a cd?
<me> Um, yeah.
<them> wot u waering
You know, I'm probably giving an impression of myself of being some up-her-own-arse snobby thinks-she's-a-princess here. But it's only because I've been worn down over the years by an incessant tide of "u luk gr8"
I mean, apart from "Thanks", what can you say to that?
Adverts
Adverts are great at annoying me. If I could, I'd restrict myself to watching the BBC only. But sometimes there are things on other channels that I'd like to watch (although, admittedly, not very often). And the problem with other channels is that they have adverts in them.
Sometimes, obviously, those adverts are inspired — I'm thinking of things like the current crop of Honda weirdness that's going on ("Cog" anyone?) — but mostly they just annoy me.
From the fat bloke in the bad suit telling me that I should contact the Personal Injury Helpline (a bloke who is obviously the boss, and insisted on pulling a Victor Kiam despite the pleas of his under-payed staff), to the never-ending parade of proles who've been helped by Ocean Finance, but not helped to the point that they could afford to scrub themselves up for the cameras.
But it's currently Marks and Spencers that are really doing my head in.
/me adopts slightly smug Middle-England voiceover
These are not just adjectives. These are the choicest, hand-picked, superfluous, hyperbolic, nonessential, redundant, unneeded, excessive, guaranteed-to-get-middle-class-foodies-wetting-their-pants adjectives
Yeah, the food looks great. But did they have to sound like a recipe in a Sunday Supplement?
Redistribution of Wealth
The genre of TV shows that tends to lead me astray from the world of BBC goodness, is those doing-up-your-house things. You know — "Property Ladder", "Grand Designs", that sort of thing.
Last night, I found myself gripped by a (obviously well-off) couple doing up a farmhouse somewhere on "Other People's Houses".
I like Naomi Cleaver She has the ability that I wish I had — to be able to tell people, without fear of insult, exactly what she thinks about their "interior design". The look on her face when this pompous asshole announced that he was intending on decorating the "children's" room in a "Gentlemen's Club meets Colonial" style, it was priceless.
I watched in horror, as the dimwitted fool with a silver spoon up his arse waxed on about "authentic" and "antique", then clad his dining room in MDF panelling painted to look "old" (or, as everyone else refers to it "painted to look like a theme pub").
The kitchen that he and his wife ended up with, tried to be "authentic English country kitchen" ... by having cockerels stencilled everywhere.
Very authentic that...
But anyway, despite the fact that I came to the conclusion that this guy was probably so rich and stupid that he employs local children at sixpence-an-hour to daub mud on his green wellies so it looks like he goes outside, I got to thinking "how come it's always the people with the worst taste that have the most money?"
Case in point, Kathie and I went for another walk yesterday. This time turning left at St Georges Quay and wandering through Freemans Wood along the paths to Aldcliffe.
Aldcliffe is a rather fantastic village, just on the southern outskirts of Lancaster, with some of the oldest buildings in the area. (Not quite as old as the Castle, obviously though)
There are some amazing buildings there. Some are Tudor I think This is a rather odd re-using of some old keystone...
(1793 it says, not sure what the text underneath it reads though. We couldn't work out what the "EC" stands for — thinking maybe it was the monarch. But that would be George III, and not Elizabeth)
But as well as some lovely old buildings, there are a clutch of what I guess estate agents would describe as "Executive Homes"
"Executive Homes" : even the words themselves send shivers to my core. Let me try and describe what I think of as an "Executive Home"...
Plastic pillars flanking the overly-glossed front door ... uPVC windows with faux-leaded-panes ... neatly trimmed gardens ... peach or pink carpet and William-Morris-inspired wallpaper ("inspired" in this case meaning "not quite right") ... a BMW in the garage and a Landrover "for her indoors to do the shopping" on the drive ... leylandii hedges ... "period" features in every room ... a "master" bedroom ... sprinklers on the lawn ... streets called things like "Oaklands Avenue"
The really annoying thing about that last point, is that you just know that they named the "Avenue" after the 400-year-old oak trees that they cut down to make way for the houses.
Anyway, sorry. It's a particular bug-bear of mine. I hate their leather driving gloves, and their habit of driving their BMWs so slow except when there's pedestrians on the road. I hate their obsession with golf, and the stupid clothes they wear when they're playing it. I hate that they manicure the countryside, and aspire to a bizarre Daily Mail-inspired view of what the world is like.
And I hate that they've got more money than me 
Ducklings
By way of compensation for a rather self-indulgent ranty piece of writing today, which probably shows up all my most unpleasant character-traits, I thought I'd show a picture of the exceptionally cute little ducks that we saw as we wandered back towards town along the canal...
Cute no?
Emails (continued)
In a bizarre coincidental twist, this link from http://www.snopes.com appeared in my RSS feeds a few moments ago...
A collection of unusual and urgent questions from our inbox.
The thing that amazes me about a lot of the emails they've quoted, is the "email me asap!" demands at the end of a lot of them. I think my favourite though, is this one:
I've heard that it is impossible to take a lightbulb out of your mouth once one puts it in, without either breaking the bulb or dislocating the jaw.
Do you know if this is true? I'm counting on you — my husband is really curious, and I don't want to have to drive him to the hospital...
Priceless 
"...apart from "Thanks", what can you say to that?"
How about "Scrfflg"? Doesn't mean anything and will annoy the life out of 'em trying to figure it out!
Alli' Cat'
I thnk yr being nfair. Vwls r gttng xpnsve ths dys.
Well, there's enough there for a host of comments, but I'll try and limit them.
emails: still get loads of the type you mention, despite making the whole position very clear on my site. Clearly a case of the sender being incapable of doing much more than look at the pictures.
Adverts: Why do the ones in question only appear during daytime TV? Do people at work not have accidents or need helping out by Ocean Finance? Clearly not.
Old Buildings: That keystone you photographed had two dates on it. Suggests to me it might have come from a monument or mausoleum with birth and death date. The E could be for "Entered" (this life) and the D, "Departed" The text underneath is possibly Latin? (And 1793 is newer than the house I currently live in )
Ducklings: The garden of the house I used to live in was used as a freeway by ducks and their ducklings. We used to put water out for them to drink in an old roasting tin, just so they'd get used to it.
Selina Morse
So who won Friday's caption competition and what is the prize?
Public service announcement
...and some people are very insistent about maintaining fairly high levels of spelling and grammar even in text messages (in as much as a 160 character limit allows.)
My life is also much better now I realise Snopes has a newsfeed.
those money adds wind me up... "want a holiday?... then risk your house for a couple of grand"
have these poeple not heard of savings? if you can't afford a holiday what makes you think you can afford the repayments on an assured loan with a ridiculous interest rate?
and the email thing — you think a lot. possibly too much of a lot.
and being in a text is no excuse for using stupid shortened words.
So who won Friday's caption competition and what is the prize?
Um, that would be the "Mysteron" caption. And the prize is a weekend in New York with me.
That keystone you photographed had two dates on it. Suggests to me it might have come from a monument or mausoleum with birth and death date. The E could be for "Entered" (this life) and the D, "Departed"
Aye Selina, but is that really a "D" ?
Well spotted on the two dates — although it would make whoever it was 83 when they died, which is kinda old for 19th Century isn't it?
My life is also much better now I realise Snopes has a newsfeed.
Ha! "Debunking Intarweb Muppets straight to your desktop"
the email thing — you think a lot. possibly too much of a lot.
and being in a text is no excuse for using stupid shortened words.
And being in a comment box is no excuse for not capitalising the first word of a sentence *wags finger*
(Couldn't resist )
...
What I find really interesting about the "u luk gr8" emails, is that they're never from who you'd expect them to come from, if you believed the hysteria in the Tranniesphere about "admirers"
There's a strange bashing that goes on within our circles, where for some reason it seems to be a general free-for-all against Trannie-Fanciers.
The thing is though, those emails almost never come from blokes — they come from other trannies. And I don't quite understand that...
Glass Houses and Stones
Yeah, Trannie Fanciers. A strange breed if ever there was one, but perhaps a misunderstood breed. True, from my experiences in trannie-chatrooms, there are a fair few men out there who loved to describe in great detail exactly what they'd like to do with my "bonus", but in general, all the men I've ever actually met have been lovely guys who just find people like me oddly attractive.
What gets my goat though, is the strange hypocrisy that goes on in conversations between trannies. There's a belief that all Admirers are furtive perverts in shabby raincoats, ready to pounce on unsuspecting 'innocent' transvestites whenever we go out (like a cross between a trainspotter and a seedy uncle).
OK, so on the internet, where assumed-anonymity is given, you do get the odd leery bloke. But how on earth can we, as a community, start dispelling public misconceptions about who and what we are, when at the first opportunity we stereotype every man who finds us attractive as a dirty-raincoat?
You're right that you build a mental image of the "u look gr8" emailers. The weirdest experience is meeting someone who seems intelligent and verbose in person and then getting an email from them that makes them sound like a 3-year-old bashing the keyboard with a squeaky plastic hammer. It's really hard to reconcile the "real person" with the mental image their email skills present.
Two lessons we can all learn from this:
1) Don't make big assumptions about people's intelligence and personality on their emails.
2) Learn to take time over the emails you send. Everyone's making big assumptions about your intelligence and personality on them.
Yay!!! I won!
And it is because I am VERY FUNNY. And not because of any other reason.
Good prize as well! Can't wait.
Kath
(Kathie inadvertently owns up to the "Can't admit it's me because of awful competition entry" there )
makes them sound like a 3-year-old bashing the keyboard with a squeaky plastic hammer
Part of me wonders whether or not some of it is intentional Loads of times I've seen trannies trying to pretend that they're a lot younger than they are (*looks at self, blushes*), maybe this email thing is trying to pretend to be young?
Loads of times I've seen trannies trying to pretend that they're a lot younger than they are
If anyone ever sees me type * giggles * in an email or a blog entry you have my permission to shoot me
Re the building work.
It could be a D — it's definitely not a C. And you'd be surprised how long some people lived in the nineteenth century. Certainly the well-off lived for many years (look at queen Victoria) and anyone who could afford the fancy carving on that capstone would have been very well off indeed. Just have a look around the plaques and gravestones in the Church Next Door To The Castle sometime and see how old the people who they commemorate were.
Selina Morse
Certainly the well-off lived for many years (look at queen Victoria)
True, and I realised just after I wrote that above that I was thinking about people in the 15th Century,rather than the 19th.
More Emails
I'm umming-and-ahhing about whether or not to post this. Truth is that even though those emails I get are laughable, there's still a real person at the end of them, and I don't like taking the piss out of people in public.
(I wait until they're not around, then laugh at them behind their backs)
But this one, that just plonked itself into my .INBOX, well, I figured I just had to share it.
It's not the grammar that I find so amazing (this, like a lot of the emails I get come from places where English isn't the first language — and considering my awful Pigeon French, I hardly think I've got a leg to stand on when it comes to criticising other people's English usage). No — it's not the grammar at all...
Dear Honey ;
I saw your pics in VIKI web site I felt so horny my cook get angry why he cann't get you right now. I hope you send to me more of sexy pics so I can came on it
I'm just wondering exactly what culinary mishap I've had to upset his cook so much
Genuine LOL!
If you ask me there are too many cooks on the internet.
Genuine LOL!
You mean the rest of the time you were faking it?
This must be a reference to burgers a la Curran. I didn't realise they were internationally famous.
I didn't realise they were internationally famous.
Big in Egypt it would seem.
Want
(via flickr.com/people/si08han) 
Been meaning to take a picture of this for a while
I just got exactly the same email! I think his cook must have some anger issues.
She did! She showed me! And I was like "no way!" and she was like "way!" and I was like "show Siobhan" and she was like "OK!"
Which one the slinky purple one or the red — I'm the wicked woman of the northwest one? It puts me in mind of that film where the anti heroine refuses to go to the ball in a white dress like all the nice girls did but insisted in going in a red dress and therefore was considered no better than she aught to be. It was called Jezebel wasn't it.
Just checked it was and it had Bette Davis in it!
Just checked it was and it had Bette Davis in it!
not sure if I'd like to buy a dress with Bette Davis in it... might be a bit smelly after all this time...
Both are nice dresses though
Yay! Guess who just checked their email and found one from " Tomas" (he of the angry cook).
/me doesn't feel so left out now.
And me.
Clearly Tomas has a lot of time on his hands (apart from anything else). He's probably a university lecturer somewhere.
I'll go now....
Selina Morse
I just got one too.... ((was beginning to feel a little left out))
Hi Siobhan,
Illiterate writing or speech as in the examples you show is usually intended either to look dumb and cute like a puppy or (clearly not in this case!) to help someone who is dumb identify with you.
I know university graduates who, when with their old o-level-free mates, will say stuff like "Was you havin' a good time at the Bingo last night?". This kind of thing can backfire when the listener sees through the ploy.
Susan 2
Pubs With Wells
(via flickr.com/people/si08han)
...it should be compulsory.
Kath and I are in The Sun
(via flickr.com/people/si08han)
...which is a fab pub and it has a well
Well this cheered my morning up no end, love your writings. As for emails Im feeling really left out here, bugger I didnt get the one from Tomas but then I dont have a blog or any other kind of website, so Im kind of an unknown. Love those dresses in the pic, I can see you in either one Siobhan (lol resisted the urge to say 'you'd look gr8' ). As for ads I hate them but then theyre handy sometimes to do those little 'jobs' that you dont want to do for fear of missing something, like refilling your wine glass eg.
Speaking of blogs, how hard are they to set up, remembering the fact in a computer dummy. ( Oh and I confess, I had to go back and change my first letter of this reply to upper case
Wait a minute. So what we're all saying here is that I'm not as special as I thought, and that this "Tomas" guy (who you'll notice, I spared the embarassment to the guy of actually mentioning his name...) has been sending the same email to every crossdressing transvestite this side of Houston.
At least I was the first
Did it really say the same thing? Did everyone else anger his cook?
I confess, I had to go back and change my first letter of this reply to upper case
I'd say go with Blogger.com Lana — seems easy enough.
One of the quirks of waking up and reading once everyone in the UK has finished contributing — so much to comment upon. And as always pretty much hits the nail on the head.
E-mails: You have to laugh don't you? I mean, the senders of these missives must think that they're going to get a reply. Not only think but expect. As if some mis-spelt, garbled one liner (sans vowels) is likely to make one swoon. Added to the insanity out there is the fact that chaps and chappesses from Nigeria, Egypt, Dubai and Timbukfukintu think that I'll be their confidential friend, despite residing in Sydney. Bueller?
As for the Trans community and the 'dissing' of admirers... I think some of the ladies out there protest just a little too much and create a demonic image of an admirer in their heads to stave off temptation. Heaven help some of them if an admirer who was courteous, handsome and articulate actually introduced himself to them. Or heaven help him. I think this is compounded by the overly loud protestations of heterosexuality from many, who suddenly fancy some "girlie fun" with another Trans person, but don't see that as being remotely bisexual.
And what the fuck is "girlie fun" anyway?
The red frock is fantastic... not so sure about the purple though.
(See the capitals?)
Back to annoying advertisements. There's one for Dove deodorant running in the states at the moment. It must have been written by the most moronic copy-writer ever to slide about the earth on a trail of mucus. The tag-line goes, "Dove. Puts back what shaving takes away." Well that would be hair then, wouldn't it? 
Alli' Cat'
!!
Love it!
How can you not be keen on the purple one? It's so elegant and slinky and gorgeous!
I felt the need for about 4 exclamation marks after that, but in view of the above comment's I think I'll restrain myself. I enjoyed reading the "Unanswerables" from Snopes, it makes you wonder how some people survive into adulthood.
Becky
I like the inside of your brain. It's even more random than I am