Monday, 23rd January, 2006

A Wispy Plume Of Disappointment...

bloggies

...curls it's way over the Victorian Terraces of West Lancaster, and settles gracefully on the fragile head of a thirty-something transvestite, currently chuffing her way through a pot of coffee and 20 Marlboro Reds.

Dammit — I thought I was in with a chance this year . Despite my "*La la la*, I don't care" posturings, I can't help but feel a small wave of "*pah*" that I didn't get in "The Five Big Poofs Of The Year™".

(I also can't get rid of the Voice Of Ian™ at the back of my head, which is now chanting "I told you so" repeatedly and doing that thing where you put you thumb against your nose and waggle your fingers)

At least I made the Long List eh?

...

Interesting group of weblogs this year I'm rather surprised that, glancing down the list, I don't actually know anyone on there. This means, presumably, that I'm going to have to actually read new blogs rather than just check the radio buttons of people I link to.

...

In other 'disappointing' news, my little New Year's Resolution that I made myself (but didn't tell anyone) has been broken. I had promised myself that I would post at least one picture every day this year to Flickr so that every calendar page in my archives would have no blank spaces, and I could flick(r) through them this coming December and reminisce on the year.

Never mind — I've got another little plan that will take shape over February...

Rats — I just tried to stage a photo of me stroking Tish whilst wearing black gloves as a hilarious retort to that, but he wasn't having any of it

It would stop him flicking rubber bands at people though

God, I'd forgotten that I'd included him in my "be nice to other bloggers and try and do something more radical than the usual 'blogroll' (which incidentally appears to be broken today) by hard- coding names and links into the very core of my proprietory blogging scripts" thingie.

I could take that out I suppose, but I'll leave it in, in the hope that he sees what you just said, and vents against you in his endeeringly perky way

Um, okaaaaaaay. Thanks for sharing

A Small Series Of Oddities Resulting From A Trip To The Shops

thoughts random

I am the Laziest Man In The World™. Official. Later on, I'll stick a picture in my photostream that might serve to justify such a statement, but for now, I'd just like to get down on paper pixels one or two (or three) things of note that just happened.

Baby Steps

So I'm in Waterstones, right? And I'm looking through rows and rows of books (naturally) just on a whim, to see if there's something good there. I've grunted disapprovingly at the lack of transgendered fiction available, and skimmed the "Bittorrent for Dummies" tomes (just how can you fill a 300-page volume with "how to use bittorrent BTW? I would have thought "Install, search, download, watch" would cover it ), and I find myself in the 'self-help' books.

There, on the shelf, is one called (something like) "Overcoming shyness and embarassment", and I briefly think to myself that that might be interesting and useful to read.

(This whole "*la la la*, I am a princess" stuff is just a cover for a deeply insecure and nervous individual. So is the excessive drinking come to think of it...)

But then I start to think that if I hand that over the counter, the person on the till is going to think all sorts of things like "Oh dear, what a pathetic young man", so I put it back on the shelf.

And I decided that books like that must be the second lowest selling books ever¹ — if you're confident enough to buy them, then you don't need them.

Menaces On Two Wheels

Crossing the road, on my way to the kitcheny-thing shop, I saw a guy nearly get run over by a guy on a bike. The cyclist turned as he passed, and shouted "fucking idiot!".

Perhaps. But, as I pointed out (under my breath²), the pedestrian wasn't the one going full-tilt the wrong way up a one-way street.

Ranting about cyclists is one of my favourite things. But I'll save it for another time, because I always lose the argument (smug self-satisfied bastards that they are )

Margret! Margret!

Deciding that wandering around town was not going to help me achieve things today, and what with me having freezing hands as well, I decided to go home, stopping only to buy some fags in a newsagent.

I seemed to have arrived in the shop at a bad time though

Two old ladies were behind the counter, having a blazing row, that only stopped when one screamed "Don't you talk to me like that in front of customers!"

What in God's name are you supposed to do at times like that?³

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¹ second after books called "How to Read", I guess

² This is why I need to read books on "How not to be shy"

³ I suppose, were I not the easily embarassed and shy type — like if I'd read that book — I would have made some grumpy comment about "Never shopping here again". I'm going to add the book to my Amazon wishlist...

I only ever write about cyclists to get comments out of you My self-centred ego, incidentally, thinks you do exactly the same when you talk about Macs

You are, of course, absolutely right. But often, the idiotic actions of small sets of individuals manages to tar an entire group with the same brush. I apologise for falling into that trap

Which reminds me, later on I'm going to get a bit drunk and have a full-scale rant at that "Paul" who left the comment above, on exactly the same principle.

The TrannieSphere is a small place indeed

I must say, that I personally cannot stand Volvo drivers. They're always most likely to be the ones driving at 35 mmiles an hour down country lanes with their sidelights on.

Current Mood: Wankered

self tranny

Not being a paid-up LiveJournaler (although bizarrely, noticing the other day that livejournal.com seems to have 'automagically granted' me an address ), I have no idea how the "current mood" thing works. Do you get some kind of pop-up list complete with random smilies to convey your head-state? Or do you have to manually tell the world how you're feeling?

(And if the world can't tell how you're feeling by the tone of your post, then you're doing something wrong )

I'm not actually wankered, it must be said. "Wankered" is what I was on Saturday night. "Wankered" is what I was in Birmingham last November.

"Wankered" is also what I was when I suddenly realised two years ago in NYC that I was clinging on for dear life to a road sign, not entirely sure what country I was in, let alone what street, or how I was going to get home.

No, "wankered" is inaccurate. "Mildy drunk" is probably a better approximation.

And naturally, with "mildy drunk" comes brain-shatteringly-paralysing-self-doubt.

Somewhere, locked deep in my psyche, is the cause of my transvestism. Somewhere, hidden in a frilly-stuffed wardrobe (metaphor) inside my brain are the causes, reasons, and triggers that makes me what I am. And every now and again, I try deperately to try and find that wardrobe, in the hope of understanding myself a little better.

I've got theories, obviously — my oddly random phobia is one that springs to mind — but I also sometimes entertain new thoughts and ideas about what makes me a transvestite, and sometimes the conclusions I come to make me feel a bit unsettled.

(I think I can vaguely remember what sparked off this train of thought. I was sat in the car, on the way home from Sainsburys, feeling flushed with myself and all fluffed up in my new jacket — noting internally that my little analogy about "the clothes that we wear" does indeed pan out, and that I felt remarkably different — more confident about myself — just through wearing an item of clothing. I'm turning, incidentally, into the drab-transvestite-version of Marge Simpson in that episode where she finds a Chanel suit in a charity shop...)

Sorry. Lost the plot a little there.

Basically, it occurred to me that part of why I enjoy being Siobhan so much, is that as her, I'm able to get away with a lot more bad things than I could ever as a guy.

I do, it has to be said, occasionally do bad things. Spankable things, I guess. I find myself indulging a side of me that's hideously self-indulgent when I'm in a Siobhan-head-space. I find myself ignoring the normal (for me) notions that the feelings of other people are significantly more important than me.

I find, if I'm honest, that I'm a selfish little bitch sometimes.

But it's not just that that's worrying me this evening, (I have, in the past I think, surmised that the single most selfish group of people — after Conservatives that is — are transvestites), it's the notion of what what I do says about the way I perceive the people around me that's bugging the hell out of me.

Not explaining this well, am I?

OK. For some reason, in my head, Siobhan is a lot younger than Graham. Siobhan makes mistakes. She's clumsy. She's an airhead a lot of the time.

But she gets away with it.

I find myself, on regular occasions, slapping myself (metaphorically) around the head when I do something stupid, and saying "For fuck's sake Curran".

I have, I guess, created some kind of character. If this was a novel, then you could probably quite easily come to the conclusion that "Siobhan Curran" was just another character — that she was some kind of literary construct within a piece of writing.

But it's not like that is it? "Siobhan Curran" is me. She's "me as a woman".

And what (she said, trying to get to the point) is really bugging me about all of this — in particular to the representation of myself in a non-physical space, as a woman — is "Am I giving the impression that this is what I think women are like?"

Am I bundling up all of my insecurities into some neatly stereotyped package, resorting to male chauvanism to disguise my inability to come to terms with the inadequacy of myself to admit to being "a bit shit sometimes"?

(You know, I used to have a Font Of Knowledge™ on this very subject that would glance over my shoulder at times like this, and say things like "No, you're OK")

but transvestites (mtf) happen to like dressing up in clothes of the opposite sex

No, I'm convinced there's something else going on. There has to be. This is not just about "fun" — this is about a desperate yearning for something. It's a thing that I've never seen anyone actually get their heads round. There's something underneath what we do — a fundamental core that is, I feel, as-yet undescribed.

So your actual address is still the best place

True, but my actual postal address is even better. If you could press your eyes against the crack in my blinds and see what actually goes on here — the unedited, unespurgated version of events, it would be more interesting than anything I could write about

Woah — OK, that I get. That's never occurred to me before.

Thanks Selina.

Hold on — yous mean that people can actually see what I do at night when I think that no-one is watching?

This would explain why I got no Christmas presents last year

(I did, actually, get Christmas presents. They were all lovely. Please accept this as a "thank you note")

to help me look hard

Was that intentional?