My life as a ten year old boy

As most of you will hopefully know, I spend a lot of time raising awareness of Trans people and have done for quite some time. I think yesterday has to be the most bizarre place I've ever done that though, and that's because it was at a so-called 'National Transgender Festival', otherwise known as Sparkle which has got to be one of the worst names ever for such an event. On the other hand, it does rather give you a bit of an idea as to which part of the Trans community it caters to. It was set up 5 years ago by an MTF who decided that the UK needed a Trans festival. However, Sparkle is now a bit of a contentious issue, mainly because it's primary focus is those Trans people who are in the female spectrum, e.g. MTFs, TVs and CDs. There is nothing really for anyone who identifies as anything outside of that which has not pleased the FTM contigent as I'm sure you can imagine. On top of that, there's their Tranny of the Year event. Basically, this is a beauty contest where the contestants are rated on their costumes, their style, deportment and femininity. So not only are they utilitising an extremely outdated definition of what female/woman is, they're also perpetrating the stereotype of what a Transperson is, all under a term which is a huge bone of contention in itself.

A couple of weeks ago, one of my colleagues at work e-mailed to ask if we were getting involved in Sparkle and I explained the issues about it but, bearing all that in mind, I did think it would be a good idea to have a presence there. We'd be able to not only fight their outdated ideas, but also raise awareness of the rest of the Trans community. My boss agreed which is why I ended up doing Trans awareness at a Trans event.

I tried my hardest to do it anyway, but I'm not sure we were overly successful. We had a stall with lots of information and resources for Trans people on it, and a quiz that I had made up myself. It had multiple choice questions on Trans history and also pictures of well-known Trans people to identify. I was quite disappointed by the amount of people who wanted to take part but then I don't know if TVs/CDs see themselves as being part of that Trans history and whether they have any knowledge of it or of the notable Trans people there are. Certainly the majority of people that I mentioned it to said that they had no idea of who any of the people were and I'd purposely picked very well-known people. The one that most people seemed to know was Eddie Izzard which could be quite telling really.

At one point, I had a look round the other stalls to see if there was anything interesting but most of it was either female clothing or hair/beauty stuff. There were two Trans magazines represented but again, both of them were aimed at the MTF/TV/CD side of things. Although I did stop at each stall to see if they had any information that might be of use, none of them took a blind bit of notice of me which I presume was due to the fact that my gender presentation was masculine and therefore I wasn't seen as being Trans or part of their designated audience. Amusingly the only stall who did actually speak to me was the one for Northern Concord, a Trans support group in Manchester. One of the people staffing it gave me one of their leaflets, told me when their meetings were, said something about being welcoming of everyone and that ze hoped to see me there. I kind of got the impressing that ze thought I was in 'male mode' or something like that.

Apart from all of that, it was a nice day because the weather was good - which for Manchester means that it didn't rain - and it was nice to be involved in something, even if it was so blatantly disregarding part of the community it was supposed to be for. It was really busy; I was surprised by the amount of people that turned up and by the complete mix of people too. Lots of people were dressed up which made me feel extremely underdressed in my cargo pants and work T-shirt. Although I spent about 7 hours on my feet, I did get to help some people which is always a good thing. I did manage to give resources and information to three people who came to the stall; one was a student who was writing a paper on 'this sort of thing', another was a counsellor who was a crossdresser hirself but who also did Trans101 type stuff and the last was a primary school teacher who wanted to bring more LGBT things into her classroom but had no information on what was available. And I also got to hang out with Ryan for a bit because he turned up just as I was going to go and get something to eat so we went to Eden in Canal Street. All in all, not a bad day and hopefully, over time, we can change the focus of Sparkle to something a bit more representative of the whole Trans community.

I had booked my car in for an MOT and service yesterday and as I had to go to work, I'd arranged to have a courtesy car. As it's a Nissan garage, their main choice of car for that purpose is usually a Micra and they have at least half a dozen of them. I don't like Micras but at least it's a small car which is good as I only have a small car myself. Actually, the Micra seems to be quite a bit bigger than my Matiz somehow. So anyway, when the bloke gave me the key to the courtesy car yesterday, that's what I was expecting. But then he said it was a blue Nissan Note, and I was like 'a what now?' because although I'd heard of the model, I couldn't picture it. So I went out to look for it and just to the left of the door was a huge big huge blue thing that looked not unlike a Hummer or something, and I thought it couldn't be that because it was just ... well, bloody huge! And yes, I'm sure you've worked it out by now, but yeah, that was what I'd been given. I was just like 'oh my god... I am so going to crash this thing the first time I attempt to reverse it which will be any minute now'. Thankfully, I didn't crash it at all - at least not until I took it back and misjudged how close it was to the block thing at the front of the parking space because I couldn't see where the bonnet ended. Oops. I was only going Captain Slow speed so it didn't even scratch it. It just sounded really bad.

I took some photos so you can judge for yourself the sheer size of the Nissan Hummer Note and what a monstrosity it is.

( Just four pictures under here )
It wasn't bad to drive, but I was really conscious of the size of it. It felt incredibly spacious inside - I could have fit two of my car in it, if they'd hutched up a bit and didn't mind being v friendly. I was glad that I was able to bring the seat forward enough to reach the pedals without having to impale myself on the steering wheel, and still be able to see clearly out the windscreen. It had air conditioning which is such a luxury and it even had volume controls for the radio on the steering wheel which was really cool. I did like that and the hidden glove compartment which was also a cool box because of the air conditioning or something. That was a nifty idea. I felt like it stuck out like a sore thumb though, and rather than having people not notice it because it was yet another Micra or go 'oooo, how cool and stylish that car is, the person driving it must also be cool and stylish and I would like to have sex with him', it was far too big and brash and ugly and just got people going 'omgwtf' instead. Not quite the reception I want to have for a car I'm driving! Although I've gone off my car in the past few years, I'm definitely glad it's not a Nissan Hummer Note.

It looks like Pigwidgeon needs a new battery. I just had it running off battery power for about 5 minutes and then I got a warning that it only had 1 minute of battery power left. WTF? I know I constantly run it off the mains but I wouldn't have thought the battery would die that quickly. Bah.

My car insurance is due on Saturday so I sorted that out yesterday. Thankfully my renewal quote was only £7 more than last year and I managed to get them to knock £5 off that so that was a bonus. My car also needs an MOT and service which I've booked for Thursday. It's only a small service thankfully according to Mr Man at the garage but still, that's more money.

Good job I'm off to work tomorrow then, innit? I think I'm all sorted. I've made my butties, got the directions and name of person to ask for, and my shirts ironed. I don't need to be in till 9.30 so I get a bit of a lie-in which is nice. Just unfortunate that I've got used to working at home so much over these past few months, I don't want to go out to work now!

So, anyone else see it? Any thoughts?

My initial thoughts are whether they can keep this up for four more days or if it's going to feel dragged out. I do feel like I'm missing a lot of bits though, I don't know who half the people are or what they're supposed to be doing.

Oh, and was it just me or did anyone else keep expecting/hoping there was going to be mention of the Doctor any minute?

So who is going to be watching the first episode of Torchwood: Children of Earth in just under two hours?

If you need an incentive, according to the Pink Paper John Barrowman gets completely starkers in one episode. He reckons they had to paint out his balls because they were too prominent. Make of that what you will!

I've finally managed to transfer over all of my book reviews from my Vox reading journal. It's taken a while because there were 52 reviews over there! I've also got all up to date with posting reviews of the books I've read recently in here. They're all tagged with book review if you're interested in looking back over the books I've read. I've also put a link to that tag in the sidebar under the header My Top Tags, along with tags for my photo posts, my trips to America and all my writing too. I know, I'm too organised for my own good sometimes.

What a morning I've had. Let me go back a bit because it's in response to the events of last night. I'd been reading a bit before going to sleep and just as I was about to turn off my bedside light, I noticed two moths hanging out on my curtain. They hadn't been there earlier on and I'd not seen them appear so I was a bit dumbfounded by their presence. I sighed a bit before setting about making them history with a rolled up copy of the Guardian's G2 magazine. One of them flew off in the direction of my rubbish bin which is down by the side of my bed so I gingerly pulled stuff out to see if I could find it. There was no sign of it but I did find something else. On the floor was a tiny little insecty thing; I had no idea what it was but I'd been finding them in my room for the past few months. Then I had a sudden thought. A few days ago, I pulled back my quilt prior to getting in bed and discovered what looked like a huge moth hiding underneath it. A second glance revealed it to be two moths who were sort of stuck end to end. I'm no expert on the sex lives of moths but it did appear as though they'd been having rather a bit of a bump n grind session. So, that made me suspect that these tiny little furry insect things were probably baby moth caterpillars and the reason why I was getting so many moths in my room was because the damn things were shagging the day away under my bed!!! Suffice to say, I did not feel overly comfortable about sleeping in said bed last night.

As soon as possible this morning, I dragged my bed out from the corner of the room and set to cleaning underneath it. I keep a couple of boxes under there, but I think I'd been a bit lax with keeping it tidy and so there was quite a lot of crap. Picture me gingerly picking up one item at a time to make sure there were no creepy crawlies under it. Every time I moved something, I expected it to reveal a seething mass of the little tiny furry things and as I'd started at the foot of the bed working towards the head, the closer I got to the wall without finding a nest of caterpillars, the more apprehensive I was about picking up boxes. Thankfully, there was no moth nursery hiding anywhere although I did find several of the furry things, one soon-to-be-ex-moth and quite a few things that looked like empty furry caterpillar coats. Oh, and a dead bee. Once I'd sorted out all the boxes, it was a case of cleaning the floor and then putting everything back.

Hopefully that has sorted out all the moths I've been getting in my room and so I won't get any more, or at least not on the scale I have been doing. I suppose it was overdue a good clean but it wasn't quite how I wanted to spend my morning. I am glad that the weather has cooled down a hell of a lot today. I don't fancy the thought of doing that in 30°C weather.

I've had an e-mail from my boss offering to extend my contract till the end of March 2010 AND to increase my hours! I get a whole other hour a week to do stuffs. Crikey. What will I do with all that extra time?

ETA @ 3.45pm: I've just got off the phone with Adecco. They called me about 6 weeks ago because they needed someone for an assignment with the police. It was dragging on and on without any kind of resolution so I'd kind of given up hope of hearing anything from it. Of course, now they ring up and tell me I've got that post and I start on Monday. I'm glad that I'll get the money because I really need it, but now I've got to fit my extended hours of my part-time support work job round the full-time hours of this post!

Book #22: 27 June, 2009 to 30 June, 2009

Wetworld ~ Mark Michalowski

This is another Doctor Who novelisation, this time with Martha as the companion. In this one, the TARDIS lands on a planet called Sunday which is quite amusing considering the Doctor's later comment to Donna that he never lands on Sundays because he finds them boring. Not so this Sunday! The TARDIS ends up in a swamp where there's a creature who is extremely interested in the human colonists on the planet, but that's not all.

I found this book to be quite a good read and certainly kept me engrossed. I managed to finish it in three days flat which is some indication of how much I enjoyed it, I think. The characterisations of the Doctor and Martha are pretty good; this book has more of the manic Doctor but it's not overdone and does seem to capture him quite well. The supporting characters are possibly a little less rounded but still well-written and I think the character of Ty came out better than the rest. I do think the show book was stolen by the otters though. When they're introduced, it's pointed out that they're similar to Earth otters but with some marked differences. It's only discovered much later on exactly how marked these differences are and I certainly wasn't expecting them to be quite so different. I'm not sure whether it was just a tad too far-fetched but if it was, it didn't bother me or put me off. They were still very cute and it was such a shame that the only image of them was in my head.

The plot is typical Doctor Who fare - mysterious creature attacking the population and the companion gets captured within two seconds of the opening - but I think it's got a little twist in the way it's handled here. The creature in the swamp is particularly gruesome and there are some moments that made me think I probably should not be reading it before going to bed! I did wonder how Martha felt about spending a good portion of the book running around in nothing more than a hospital gown and badly fitting pair of slippers but it didn't seem to bother her. I think this was a pretty decent book, and a nice revist to Classic Who albeit in a New Who way.

Not so long ago I did a post about Twitter clients and my struggles with finding one that didn't break after two weeks or start to take up all Pigwidgeon's resources. I'd just found Gwibber and started to use that, so I'm happy to report that it's still working fine, isn't a resource hog and still looks clean and pretty.

I'd ended the post saying that a new LJ client would be nice too. I've been using Logjam since I switched to Ubuntu which is really nice but it's not been updated since 2007 so the new features that LJ has added haven't been included in the client. I'm fed up of writing my post in Logjam and then having to edit it in LJ in order to add tags and the location field. (Logjam doesn't pull through the tags you've already set up so it's just an empty field which results in me either forgetting the tags I have or inadvertently creating new ones.) The things I really liked with Logjam was the ability to add different accounts on different journals as well as the keyboard shortcuts. It's very nice to be able to hit Ctrl+Alt+B for bold as I'm typing and have it automatically put the tags in for me. I'd had a bit of a look for other clients but most of them hadn't been updated since 2007 either. I even tried running Semagic through Wine which according to the developer is possible, but I couldn't even get it to open.

Then, thanks to a post in ubuntu_users from someone who'd had the same issue with Semagic, I found Benzaiten. It's very incredibly new but it's pretty good already. It looks very much like Logjam but at the same time, it also looks very clean. I like how it has little thumbnails of your icons in case you have so many that you can't remember from the keyword what they are. It also pulls through all your filters and tags, and presents them in dropdown boxes. The really good thing is how eager the creator is to get feedback and to implement it. For example, I commented to suggest adding shortcuts for text formatting and the like, and within 2 days, ze'd added a toolbar with them in and released the updated version. Bonus points for that!

The other thing I'd been looking for was a webcomic aggregator. I found Comic Alert nearly 3 years ago when I wanted to keep up with the comics I'd been reading in the Boston Globe. It had a wide choice of comics which you could add to a favourites list and it would also e-mail you a daily list of all the ones that had updated with links to the new comic. In July last year, I began to notice that the list of links I was getting in my e-mail was getting slowly shorter and shorter. The comics were still updating but for some reason, that information wasn't reaching Comic Alert so I wasn't getting notifications. I tried reporting the fault on the site and also e-mailed them with the address listed. The e-mail bounced back so that was useless, and more of my comics began to disappear from my e-mail until I was down to an e-mail every other day with just two links in. Annoyingly, there's no way to delete my account although I can stop the daily e-mails.

I'd tried to find an alternate when the problem first started and found a very nice gadget for iGoogle which actually showed the comics and not just a link but a couple of weeks ago, they got a letter from UClick/GoComics.com telling them to stop it. So I had to search again for another alternative. This time I found Comic Aggregator. It's still in beta so it doesn't have an extensive list of comics yet but it looks very nice. You create a list of your favourites and then it gives you a reading page which shows all of the actual comics and not just a link to them. It also has the option for you to mark each strip as read so that they can be hidden and next time when you visit, you'll see all the ones you've not read. If you leave it a few days, it will show a list of the strips from each comic that you missed, so you don't have to scroll back to find where you left off or anything like that. I really like that feature, it's very nifty. The reading page is very clean and all the strips are a decent size too so it's nice looking. If you're the kind of person who reads lots of webcomics from various places, it's definitely worth looking at.

So those are my current geekgasms. Anyone got any recommendations of other new or hidden treats that people really should know about?

Book #21: 5 June, 2009 to 28 June, 2009

City of Ashes ~ Cassandra Clare

This is the sequel to City of Bones that I finished recently. I'd been assured by Blue, who'd read both of the books before me, that the second one was much better than the first. I tried to bear that in mind as I started to read but it is much easier said than done.

Spoiler alert - if you've not read this book and you want to, there are some spoilers in the following review.
( Here be spoilers )

Sometimes I wonder about the mentality of people. Or I would, if I had the time and the strength and the inclination to make my head explode on an almost daily basis.

It turns out that the 17/18 year old Trans girl murdered in New York the other week was a complete and utter fabrication from some well-know writer type who claims she made up the entire persona under the influence of MPD/DID. Not sure what to think about that to be honest.

Now there's news of a website which is encouraging people to take photos of any Trans people they see and submit them to the site to be uploaded and presumably made fun of. So far the only come back from the site has been along the lines of, "Where's your sense of humour?" Kind of hard to see the funny side of a site which is identifying Trans people, compromising their privacy and safety, and then claims that GLAAD is attacking them for no reason. There's just no word strong enough for the imbeciles who do this kind of thing.

And now I need to go and get some food, and then go to work which involves spending the afternoon being a judge for a young people's talent show. When my boss asked me to do it, I thought it sounded like it might be fun. I'm really not sure where I got that idea from! At least I might get an LJ post out of it get paid for it. Ho hum.

Why I like Bookmooch:

Thursday at 1.30pm: Check e-mail and find a notification from Bookmooch to say that The Testosterone Files which is on my wishlist has been listed on the site.

1.34pm: Mooch book and get e-mail confirmation of same.

3.07pm: Get an e-mail notification that my mooch has been accepted.

4.53pm: Get an e-mail notification that the book has been sent out.

Friday at 10.00am: Book arrives in the post.

I've only mooched books from that site once before; I've tended more to give mine away than receive them, but this has been a really positive experience. Especially as the book would cost about £11 new from Amazon. It does rather make me wonder who it was who had this book and why ze decided to get rid of it. Still, I'm happy enough to take it off hir hands!

The BBC is reporting that Michael Jackson has just died in Los Angeles. There's a live video feed which is being extremely slow and refreshing itself a lot. Apparently the LA Times was the first to report it and of course, that website is being super slow to load too. And at the same time, LJ is up and down like no one's business and Twitter is over capacity. Conclusion = Michael Jackson broke the internets.

Copied from hobbitblue because memes are fun! Also, I didn't think the stuff I'd been up to recently was worthy of a post but this lets me post about them in an interesting way.

What is your current obsession?
Guitar Hero, especially as I had a go at modding my guitar controller a few days ago to see if that would make the keys more responsive and stop sticking; also updating my website which I've rather neglected recently. I've been working on updating a website for work for the past few months and I suppose that spending so much time and effort on that has made me less inclined to put all that time and effort into updating another website. Even if it is my own.

What’s for dinner?
Tea was several hours ago and I had sausages, a fried egg and baked beans with bread-and-butter. And afterwards, I had a pear with some creme fraiche. Oh, and a big mug of tea.

What’s the last thing you bought?
On Tuesday I bought a purple Frixion pen for my filofax and a two-pack of black Sharpies because the ones I had were running out.

What are you listening to right now?
( Click to find out more stuff about me! )

I wanted to document the moment this morning but I didn't feel like tapping out a long post on my phone. It would have taken forever and I didn't have that long. So, hence the little one line post from earlier.

My appointment was at 9.30am and I had two shots: the last of my Sustanon in one side and then the first of the Nebido in the other. The Nebido didn't hurt at all going in but I could feel my nurse's hand shaking as she was trying to push the stuff through the needle and because it was in for such a long time, my hip area was starting to ache something chronic. In comparison, the last Sustanon shot was a breeze and I didn't feel a thing. After my shot I had to do some errands in the village so I think walking round helped ease off the initial ache. It's still quite tender if I lie on that side though which is going to be annoying when I go to bed tonight.

For those of you who aren't aware, Nebido is a longer lasting form of testosterone; it lasts for 12 weeks so there's less injections which means less scar tissue (and therefore less painful injections over time) and also it has less peaks and troughs than Sustanon so it cuts down on things like mood swings. Sustanon is a blend of four different types of testosterone that last four different amounts of time, from 24 hours up to two weeks which is why it's very up and down.

It's actually taken some time to get to this point. Dr Seal said he wanted me to go onto Nebido way back in February to see if it got rid of the mood swings and other undesirable effects from the Sustanon. I thought I'd have to wait ages for my doctor to give me the go-ahead, but actually my nurse saw the letter from Dr Seal first and got the ball rolling otherwise I'd probably still be waiting. Then my nurse went off sick, when she got back I realised I had loads of Sustanon left over so I tried to get rid of some of that and then finally I tried to get the start date right so that the next few shots didn't fall on holidays for either me or my nurse!

I am glad that Nebido is given less frequently, I certainly won't miss the schlep to the doctor's every fortnight, or having to try and schedule the appointments for a convenient time - not easy with the ridiculous opening hours the surgery has. I'm definitely hopeful that it will be better for me; the Sustanon has not been an overly pleasant experience. So, after about 3½ years on that, let's see what Nebido does for me. In the words of the wonderful John Lennon, it can't get no worse.

First Nebido shot this morning. Ow ow ow ow ow.

Edit @ 8.00pm to add more detail: extended version

I'm putting together a list of Trans-related books and films to go on the website I'm putting together for work.  I don't mind whether they're fiction or non-fiction, just as long as they're easily available and suitable for young people.  So, probably not porn then :-P

So, suggestions please!

I've been thinking a bit today about this recent Trans murder. For those of you who aren't aware of it, the basic details are that a 17 or 18 year old post-op Transperson was brutally murdered somewhere in New York on June 17th. I was first aware of it yesterday, when snakey posted about it and gave a link to this post at blogspot. The way the post is laid out seems to suggest it's quoting another source but doesn't say what it is or where the information has come from. The contents are as follows: ( Cut for possible triggers )
I Googled for more details, but all I could find was this post on Laura's Playground which is done by Laura herself. I don't know much about Laura's Playground other than it exists and is quite a big Trans forum. There's since been a YouTube video done by someone who claims to have known Raychel.

However, that's all the information that there is. No news report and no official source for it. The reason being given for this is that the family have asked for no press release for their own privacy and safety which if you bear in mind that this murder happened because Raychel was outed does make sense, but it also starts to raise some questions about the legitimacy of the whole thing. People are saying that Raychel sounds like a bit of a Mary Sue for want of a better term: post-op at 17/18, had recent terrible experiences, was an amazing dancer and going to Juilard until she was brutally murdered in a most horrific manner by persons unknown. Then there are questions about how the story got out so quickly and with so much detail. Well, detail about the event, although no details about the person concerned or where it actually took place. Is it New York state or New York city? There's been other comments about the speed of the court case that set this whole thing off, and how likely it is that the family would have been given police protection. There are people coming forward who say they knew Raychel but they only knew her online, through the forum at Laura's Playground which isn't the best of proof. Even Googling for her name doesn't really bring up any results that fit, no other online locations such as Facebook or a blog. So a lot of people are calling the entire thing a hoax.

I really don't know what to think one way or the other. It's not unknown for crimes against Transpeople to go unreported and unnoticed by the mainstream press so why should this one be any different? It is possible for Transpeople to transition a lot younger now and so someone being post-op at such a young age is not unheard of. Not all Transpeople spread themselves across the internet either. Yes, her recent experiences had been horrible, but not unusual. And although her murder was horrific, it's not at all unusual for a Transperson's life to be ended in such a brutal way.

I saw a comment that said that Raychel had been part of Laura's Playground for a year and I presume as a teen mentor, she would have been very active. It certainly seems that a lot of the comments on the post there are from people who knew her, knew of her or had contact with her in some way. If this is a hoax, for someone to create a persona and continue it for that length of time in such a position and without making any mistakes is incredible, but then to do it with this end in mind is ... well, it's mind-boggling. And what sort of person would do such a thing? I don't know whether this whole thing is true or whether it is just someone's idea of a sick joke but I do think it comes down to the same thing in the end: it's an attack on the Trans community.

ETA @ 5.00pm: Another post by Laura on the forum saying that ze's pulled the original post as the story can't be verified. Possible hoax then?

When I've been going to meetings for work, I've been using this notebook that Michael gave me last time I was in Boston. I think his mother originally gave it to him but he didn't want it and so passed it on to me. It's come in really handy for work because it comes in a fake leather binder-type thing that's got slots for business cards and little pockets. It's also got a strap with a press-stud to keep it closed. Recently however, the press-stud broke and it wouldn't stay fastened. I didn't really want to have to throw it away just because it didn't fasten, so I wondered if I could possibly fix it somehow. Then I had an idea which resulted in me spending several hours in the garage this afternoon.



Outside of notebook cover before.
( Method )