Friday, 24th November, 2006

Laziness Is...

sshing into your Mac upstairs in order to quit and restart Mail.app (because it's doing that "Erin rejected your password" thing again and has missed filtering out 200 pieces of spam), rather than going upstairs — because quite frankly, you're very comfy on the sofa thankyouverymuch, and you could doing with lying here for a few more moments because you didn't sleep at all well last night.

I'm Not Sure It Was Really His Fault

Pay Days (for me) are like when you've been running your laptop off its battery for the past week, keeping the screen dimmed and sending it to sleep every chance you get to eek the last bit of juice from it, then plugging it in once you've found your adapter, and breathing a sigh of relief as the warm orange gloe tells you it's pushing electrons back into place.

Or something.

There's a different atmosphere in this house when the fridge is full, the coffee jar bursting, and the water in the toilet is blue¹.

But this isn't about my inability to budget properly, and my once-a-month trip to Sainsburys where I go around every aisle, spend a fortune, and manage to get back to the house and discover I've not actually bought any food.

It's about a tiny little incident that happened in front of me on the way home — something which if I don't externalise it, it'll stay in my head for weeks.

...

There are many little back-streets and rat-runs in Lancaster, and, if you know them, you can avoid sitting for hours in the one-way system, watching the temperature guage on your car go over the red bit.

One such rat-run is Dallas Road — perfect for getting to my side of the city without having to do the "Penny Street Shuffle" at the lights near The Alex Revolution.

I was sitting behind a car at the top end of Dallas Road, waiting to pull out onto Westbourne road, when two people started to cross the road — an old lady and a young man.

They were right beside each other, so initially I thought they were together, but it soon became obvious that they weren't.

The old lady — through a combination of some age-induced lack of hand-eye coordination, and the hesitation of the car in front — managed to bump into the car. Not seriously, just one of those "Whoops" moments. And the guy behind her managed to bump into her.

Poor guy — she totally laid into him

"Where's your manners? Shout shout shout. How dare you bump into me like that. Shout shout shout. Bah bah bah" — all the time, her finger wagging at him, as the guy tried to ignore her and continue walking.

But, of course, they were walking in the same direction, so I bet he got an earful all the way to Waterstones.

...

Having said that, I'm guessing that if he'd just said "Sorry", he could have saved himself an ear-bashing, regardless of whether it was his fault or not

¹ It's the small luxuries that make life worthwhile I feel. One of them, for me, is blue toilet water. The other, of course, is wine.

Pointed Sticks

photo

Scavenger Mode: There were loads of these dumped on a bin out the back of Uni yesterday. I'm sure someone could use them to make a pretty garden thing, or a tent or something.

Me though, I'm going to burn them.

Free fuel. Oh yes

"Sooner or later, your mom will find your blog."

There's a really interesting article in Wired by Regina Lynn that's just popped into my RSS reader — Check Your Judgments, Eh? — which touches on the familiar theme of online anonymity, online sexuality, and online identity.

Well, I say "familiar" — what I mean is that it's something very close to heart for (I bet) the vast majority of TG/TV/TSes that spend a large amount of their 'contact time' expressing themselves through this medium.

It's also something I've written about before (she said, breaking her normal habit and actually finding where whe wrote about it before...)

Now, I don't want to repeat everything I wrote back then — nor do I want to start exploring ideas surrounding "online identities" (because I need to do that in a much more formal way, seeing as that's what my PhD proposal is based around), but I just thought I'd slip into the conversation whereabouts I am in regards to being "out" — as it were.

Remember this diagram I made of how my 'personalities' work together?. I'm starting to find that all three 'aspects' of what I do are converging more and more these days — mainly because the words "Kisa Naumova" are starting to appear in more and more places that a while back I wouldn't have felt comfortable introducing the 'girl' side of me into.

It's odd — in an "I'm not sure how I feel about it" kind of way

For example, I was talking to a couple of students about what I get out of Second Life, and how far I identify with my avatar yesterday evening, and it struck me that pretty soon — considering that I've made the decision to be Kisa when dealing with Uni stuff in SL (and not making an alt), and that my inworld name is plastered all over the bid we just made for funding — my sexuality is going to be common knowledge, not just within our school (where all my colleagues are 'in on it') and our students, but higher up as well.

Ack, I dunno Basically, I've enjoyed five years of a cavelier attitude to online anonymity — not once in all that time, despite me revealing my real name and almost blatantly giving away exactly where I live, have I had one bit of hassle.

I guess I'm just wondering if all of it is about to come back and bite me in the arse — or whether I've actually got the prescence of mind to deal with the almost inevitable consequence that the barrier I've taken for granted between my personal transvestic expressions of myself, and the remote, distinct male incarnation of 'me' within academia is about to crumble.

And what the hell am I going to do when everyone knows, and it's "no big deal"?

Perhaps that's what I'm scared about, most of all

To be honest I was daring [them] to find out — and a little disappointed that they didn't.

I have to confess, I totally relate to that. It's what I was hinting at in the last sentence I wrote earlier — that all this "coming out" bollocks is more to do with satisfying my own ego than it is some kind of heroic 'cause'.

Perhaps

Ack, I dunno — maybe I think about things too much

Mini-Manifesto

Hugh MacLeod is after people to write 500 word manifestoes (for some reason). I figured I could do it in just ten.

"Don't laugh at me — I actually believe in this shit"

Dear Hugh. Please send me wine.

I Should...

...set up another domain for all the things I write whilst drunk

It would be great — http://drunk.tranniefesto.co.uk, or http://cunted.eyefood.co.uk, or http://ive-had-a-little-too-much-to-drink-and-I-feel like-telling-all.siobhansplace.co.uk or something

I might just do that. I'm rapidly coming to the point were I need to let off some steam