Sunday, 8th January, 2006

Re:

self coward

Stepping out of character for a brief moment a couple of days ago, I found myself in Waterstones, buying some books. I'm not an avid reader of books (apart from computer manuals), but sometimes I figure it's worth having a few things to read in reserve for when I'm on a plane or something.

According to The Pedant's Revolt (which is what I bought), the word "Re" is not an abbreviation of "with regard to", or "referring to":

[...] 're' comes from the Latin res, which means 'thing'. The word is short for in re, which [...] is a Latin phrase that originally meant 'in the matter of'

But that's beside the point

I am rubbish at replying to things (especially emails), unless they catch me at a very particular moment, when I'm in a conversationalist mood. I often find that unless I reply to something immediately, it tends to languish in my inbox for days (if not weeks) before I get round to writing a reply.

A reply that inevitably beings "Sorry for being so crap..."

It's the same with comments. If I'm not sat here, with my terminal windows open in the special little way that I have them¹, then I miss the thread — and that must seem pretty rude of me sometimes.

So, because I was out last night (we got bored with Triv BTW, and played the Rizla game instead) and was too drunk when I got home to respond to anything, I'm going to do it now...

Re: Mia

Rachel's idea hs some merit! I like it a lot and think it should be put to some use.

Indeed, I agree And I'm being rubbish at the moment by not getting back to her about it. The only fly in the ointment, I feel, is that it would take a rather large amount of organisation — and I'm not sure who's have the time or commitment to take the task on.

Re: Selina

So, they tried to change them to as inoccuous a colour as possible. They chose orange...

That is just hilarious I can't imagine what thought process they went through — apart from "Let's have orange. Blackpool FC's colour is orange" — to choose that. And how could they not know?

Reminds me of a certain mobile phone company putting their foot in it when they launched their services in Northern Ireland — "The Future's Bright..."

Re: Karol

Leeds is best for me

Me too. Let's do that shall we? You know the pubs better than me (I always seem to be in North Bar) so pick somewhere cool

What I'm trying to say is we should work from the assumption that shops are inherently trannie friendly, the challenge is to change our attitudes not those of the shop managers.

With some exceptions, I think you're right. And that's something I hadn't really thought about. I know personally that I hate shopping for anything (except Macs), so my "scared to buy girls' things", er, thing, is probably down to that rather than shops being untranny-friendly.

Re: Dan

and the presenter

Ours didn't have a presenter — it was just the same as the normal game, except then you landed on a piece-of-pie space, you answered a question from the DVD rather than the cards.

We did, however, play a round of "Party Bingo" beforehand, and the presenter on that — Mike Vyse, Bingo Caller of the Year — had me in stiches long into the night.

Re: Lana

Sounds like a fun evening

It was, but not (I think) because of Trivial Pursuit

Re: Becky

if you made it a weekend and a combo birthday-blog celebration I could be tempted.

Nah, I want to do something just for the blog. But we could potentially do some kind of joint-birthday thing. We're both on a Sunday this year, and I have plans for the 18th. But we could arrange something, maybe...

Re: Jo

we should play Risk instead

With or without missions?

Re: Steph

Anyone remember Track & Field®??

Was that the one with the little guy with the moustache? I think I broke the Z and X keys on my BBC Micro because of that game.

Re: Zaida

(btw, you should add "google" to the spellchecker word list)

Like I actually use the spellchecker? Good idea about signatures BTW.

Re: Susan

I wish I could come

Me too Susan. Maybe one day yeah? Sparkle?

Re: Joanna

we fly out on the 8th Feb to go skiing

Just had to get that in didn't you I dunno — you International Jet Set Trannies make me look so boring

Re: Zaida

It's like drugs, minus the fun.

But how exactly?

Re: Stephanie

socks with toes are kinda odd

Not just odd. They are the Socks Of Satan™

Re: Tiffany

each of your toes has a home

Aw That's sweet. But I still stand by my assertation that they're unholy.

Re: Lana

very sexy

OK, you're just weird

Re: Kath

I've got a really old set, with wooden pieces somewhere. I think it's got names like 'Siam' on it

Wow — OK that's old.

A friend of mmine was explaining last night how he plays Risk online. There's a game for the Mac (and Windows and Linux) called Lux that lets you play with people all over the world.

"I've been playing Risk with some guy in Canada", he announced.

Weirdo eh? Playing games over the Internet with people all over the world. You wouldn't catch me doing that. No siree.

---

¹ I used to have a web interface to write stuff on here, but it was clumsy and far too prone to posting duplicate entries. So now, what I do is I have one terminal window open running tail -f path/to/today, and below it one running cat >> path/to/today. It has the effect of making this weblog function more like a chatroom — or an IM client — than a traditional weblog.

Waaaaah!

photo 12.34

(via flickr.com/people/si08han)

Ah yes, the Bloggies...

I've kinda resigned myself to the idea that last year was a bit of a one-off freak occurence, and coupled with the fact that there are now more than a handful of transgender weblogs, it's probably someone else's turn this year.

That being said, I have to confess that coming third last year was a bit of a turning point for me.

If I've blogged about this before, by the way (and I probably have), feel free to ignore me...

Obligatory Bloggies Post

tranniefesto bloggies

I'm rather proud of what happened last year. OK, so I came third, and even then there's still some doubt as to whether or not the finalists were listed in place-order. But still, it wasn't bad for someone who'd just taken their first steps into a world outside the usual enclosure of trannies and admirers.

Before that, I'm pretty sure that 99% of my readership (which wasn't actually that small, I seem to remember) was either other trannies, or guys looking for pictures. It used to annoy me greatly that the first thing that people clicked on when they went to siobhansplace.co.uk was the 'photographs', rather than what I considered to be the better part of the site.

Suddenly seeing a bunch of 2005.bloggies.com referrers in my log-watching came as a bit of a shock. But it was a welcome shock.

I dunno. I guess that perhaps the one thing I dislike about the Status Quo of the TG/TV scene, is our insularity. People often make the observation that the Internet came at just the right time for transvestites — and that for us, it's the perfect medium.

We can edit ourselves — the images that we choose to portray — and edit out all the things that we think are detrimental to our perception of ourselves. You know — all the things that we take great (but fruitless) steps to conceal in real life.

I, for example, love the fact that I can assume a voice that materialises in the imagination of whoever is reading this shite, rather than my actual gravelly tones (brought on by having a Bass for a father, and 15 years of smoking 20 full-strength Marlboro a day)

I also like that I can hide my actual face behind a million and one PhotoShop filters (As you can probably see from my photostream today)

But I also happen to think that, perhaps, the Internet has not been the great panacea that it's often touted as being. There is a great tendancy for cliques to develop, and for people to get sucked into enclosed worlds — worlds that bear no relation to the world outside.

Safe spaces spring up, and develop into communities. But there is also the danger that these spaces act — not as 'protective' — but as inhibitors to progress.

I'm not explaining this very well, am I? (When do I ever?).

OK. Let me put it another way. If you get so absorbed in an online space — to the detriment of real life — then you lose the urge to try and change real life. If you start to feel like it doesn't matter how much crap gets flung at you outside your door, because you have a safe retreat online, then why bother trying to do anything to change the world outside?

It reminds me, somewhat, of those late-night student discussions I used to have when I was a, er, student.

We'd sit in someone's room, late a night, with a pot of coffee and a joint or two, putting the world to rights, making sweeping decisions that would benefit the comman man. But never actually doing anything.

Because we didn't need to — in our own little sanctuary, everything was OK. Outside, it was a different story — Thatcher was still in power for a start — but we never really got around to activism. Because we were coccooned.

I made a conscious decision last year, to make sure that I didn't get coccooned in the TrannieSphere. (God, I have blogged this before haven't I? I'm going to change the tag of this weblog — Tranniefesto: A Stuck Record).

I decided that I wasn't going to lurk behind the curtains any more — that I was actually going to stand up and wave the TranneiFlag a little bit. That I was going to try and engage with people outside of my own peer group — people that I presume had never really come into contact with trannies before.

And d'ya know what? It's been great. I have made some seriously good friends this last year. It's been really odd — yet wonderful — to see this site crop up in entirely unexpected places. It's been great to talk to people without the usual "OMG they're laughing at me because I'm a tranne".

OK, so it's not exactly InstaPundit-levels of impact. But I like to think that it's in some way helpful to the general cause.

I was racking my brains the other night though, after having been swept by some mystical force of bravado, as to what I could do next. There seems to be some uncontrolable urge inside me to push things a little further all the time. A desire to be more out.

Let's see: I'm out on the Internet. I'm out at work. I'm out with all my friends. I'm out with my brother and sister. I'm out (slightly) in Lancaster...

Fuck. If I'm going to push this any further, then I think I'm going to have to confront my (two) demons

...

Anyway. *la la la* Yes, I've nominated people for the Bloggies. But not me. How altruistic is that eh?

In Other News

work

Rather excited today Got an email from my gallery who have announced that they're ready to go live at the end of the month. That means from the 28th of January, my work will be on sale.

They seem to have put me in the "Abstract" category. Can't think why.

I could fit quite nicely into "mineral" I think...