Sunday, 12th February, 2006

/me waves at Googlebot

searchqueries

Got an email off Becky last Tuesday — the day I celebrated four years of blogging by switching things back to how they were when I first started this:

*ROFLMAO*

(by the way, are you sure is was a good idea to redirect ALL your traffic to that page? If the googlebot comes searching your site is gonna look pretty borked)

*grin*

A few hours earlier, I'd been sat here at home, getting ready to head off to Leeds for the week when I noticed that Googlebot had indeed decided that that day was the best day to come a-crawling

Typical

I very hurridly cobbled-together a quick robots.txt file, and bundled myself into my car.

...

I think I got away with it. And I'm noticing that this morning, my little cutesy, spidery friend is back, having a trawl through the archives

Anyway, this is all just an excuse to post some of the more obscure search queries that's brought people here recently...

• st trinians in stockings
  Ooh — The Great St Trinian's Train Robbery was on yesterday I've saved it if anyone wants a copy.

  One thing that always gets me about St Trinian's — or, more specifically, when people go to fancy dress parties as St Trinian's schoolgirls, they always go as the 'messy' schoolgirls. Personally, I'm much more fond of the sixth formers' uniforms — the neat ones. Maybe that's just me...

• kathy sykes
  Dear Professor Kathy Sykes, I am so sorry that I've somehow ended up on the front page of a Google search for you. I only said your name once, and Googlebot seems to think I'm some sort of authorative expert on your work I also apologise for probably making it worse just by writing this paragraph.

  Does anyone remember the TV show Rough Science? My favourite two were Kathy and Jonathon The Physicist. In my little daydreaming mind, I always wanted them to get together. I thought they'd make such a cute couple.

• what is emphasiemia
  I have no idea Nor do I recall ever mentioning it. Tell you what, let's see if Erin can remember...

• just a transvestite blog
  Oh, I think you'll find this is far from being "just" a transvestite blog...

• siobhan's teeth
  OK look, I know they're hideous and ghastly, but why on earth would someone actually go looking for them?

• photoshop tutorial nipple layer
  ?!

• meaning of the name shioban
  You might also like to try Googling for "spelling of the name shioban"

• countryside alliance selfish wankers
  Indeed they are.

• homophobic lowri turner
  Indeed she is.

• is crossdressing wrong
  Nope. And can I refer you to my learned friend who covers that one a lot better than I ever could.

• crossdressing i would like to live as a female and have a wedding dress on
  Whoah! Hold your horses there honey. Slow down. Baby steps, baby steps...

• fuck fucity fuck fuck fuck
  

• i need to see pics of transvestites as i crossdress
  *ahem*, Googlebot isn't daft you know. You can't try and pull the wool over his eyes like that. He's well aware that you actually need to see pics of transvestites because you'd like a quick shifty with your hand and some Kleenex.

  (I love that one — it's kinda assuming that if it gives some motivation for the search, then it'll get access to special secret things that only other trannies are allowed to see.)

• facts about transvestite
  You've come to the wrong place.

• transvestite pervert
  You've come to the right place

• whats on in hellifield
  "Your search — whats on in hellifield — did not match any documents. Did you mean: There's fuck-all on in hellifield?"

• crossdressing bingo
  "Twenty three, Enveritee"

• dressed as girls stockings
  I know — they meant "in girls stockings". But isn't that a lovely thought? Going to a fancy dress party dressed as a stocking?

And my favourite...

• can i be full time crossdresser and walk on the streets at any time in the uk only
  No. No you can't. Well, maybe — but people will point and laugh.

So when are we going to get the Trannifesto video podcast?

Heh I really don't think an actual video of me talking would be very interesting.

Having said that, funny you should mention it — I'm kinda working on something...

Honey, We're Lying About The Kids

rant makeover-tv

Is it just me, or does anyone else watch that thing on Three with its 'state of the art computer software' (Photoshop), and think "This is all just a pile of crap"?

The tipping-point for me came this evening, with the words "you've had the chance to literally lookinto the future", spewing forth from the most middle-class-patronising-the-working-class gob on the planet.

Um, no. Not "literally". They've had the chance to gawp monkey-like at a couple of morph sequences that your back-room-guys have knocked up, based on a bucket of speculation. And scientifically-based or not, that's not literally looking into the future is it?

I dunno, I was watching a trailer for some of Channel Four's "Life Bully" programmes earlier, and a thought struck me:

"Is there anyone in this country that hasn't had some kind of makeover-TV¹ experience yet?"

It's like there's an entire army of 'experts' on hand to tell us just why our lives are so shit, and what we're doing wrong.

But, you know, personally, I think I'm doing alright on my own, thankyouverymuch.

(¹ If you're my way inclined, the phrase "TV makeover" means something much different)

Decisions

wine

You know, every once in your life you have to make serious decisions about what it is you're going to (and perhaps, going not to) do.

This evening, for example, I have one of those moments.

See, I'm just happily pootling on my usual Sunday-night-idiom: A bottle of wine and then bed.

This is especially relevant, put into the context of "I am going to Leeds tomorrow to do some important stuff".

But I just had a phonecall from my colleague — the one I stay with — who said *"Um, I can't put you up, because our ceiling's just collapsed"

So, basically, I have an extra day off. And now I'm thinking "fuck it, open another"

The danger is, that I might get drunk and go on a right whinge about how much life sucks.

Life Is Not Shit — It's Just A Bit 'Meh'

meh

OK, lesson one for the evening: Do not go out the back of your house, even to put the milk bottles out, topless, in the middle of February.

Lesson two: Sometimes things seem a little bad, but they're not really.

...

I should explain

See, I've been feeling a bit down recently. I know I'm prone to That Sort Of Thing™ — and have, in the past (usually about this time of year, come to think of it) had to go on courses of drugs to try and compensate for some unfounded chemical inbalance in that thing-in-my-head that people call "brain", but I like to think of as The Grey Squishy Thing I Regularly Destroy Through Alcohol™

I really dunno what it is — I just have this general feeling of despondancy going on at the moment.

I was trying to describe it to a couple of friends this evening (See?! I do have friends) — but the best I could come up with was being exhausted and tired from work. My entire life seems to revolve around Leeds at the moment.

(Although, as one of them pointed out, it's Leeds that are paying me — so that's probably justified)

Truth is, I'm tired. I spent the whole of the Christmas break working on things, and I didn't really give myself the chance to wind down.

...and there's not really going to be the opportunity to wind down in the near future either.

True, I have tomorrow off — but I have work to do. And then it's a non-stop rollercoaster of activity until the end of the month.

Nottingham on Friday (I am so looking forward to that — but someone tell me, please, what do you buy a forty-something poof for his birthday?), a secret surprise appearance on Saturday, MY birthday on Sunday, Week Of Teaching™, thrills spills and motorbikes as Siobhan takes her CBT again the following Friday, excitement and drama in Salford watching Tony Robinson perform extracts from his latest book: "My life in a muddy crack" (kidding).

...

This is not the point I was trying to make when I started typing this. What I was trying to say was that, at the moment, life is full of fun, excitement, dresses, drink, joy, and general happiness.

But, underneath all of that, behind the ecstasy of finally finding myself on a living wage, and finally reaching the point that I can say "I am an artist", and finally feeling sorted and good, and respected about the things that I do outside of my professional life...

...underneath all that, I feel empty.

...

That'll teach me to accidentally link to the page in my diary where I'm writing about being excited about my (ex)girlfriend moving in with me.

Won't it?