From now on, inane and occasional wittering will appear at:

 

 

 

Click here - transvestite

 

Happy Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanzaa... or just happy overindulgence, regret, remorse and reflection.

 

 

As posted by Miss K , it's end of year list time. (I particularly like Miss K's "Don't Get" list - my own contribution would be commercial television in Australia, which continually serves up purile US trash and lifestyle garbage).

 

On a positive note though:

 

Book - A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby. Pretty funny and sharp book about four strangers who meet on New YEars Eve, whilst trying to end it all.

 

CD - Demon Days by Gorillaz. Believe the hype. Notable big ups to Roots Manuva and Ian Brown's greatest hits.

 

Live Gig - Beastie Boys at the Horden Pavilion. Two hours of top- notch hip hop and no filler. The suitably bananas crowd helped as well.

 

Event - Good Vibrations in Centennial Park. The heavens opened, the crowd got soaked and the music kept flowing. Ben Watt played the best set of house I've heard in ages and Layo & Bushwacka in the gloom soaked to the skin was something else.

 

Film - Downfall. The end in Nazi Germany, painstakingly re-created. Compelling. You almost feel sympathy for the inhabitants of the bunker in Berlin, but never quite 100%.

 

Trip - Las Vegas. Eleven go mad in Vegas for four days, on a stag do. Unbeatable. The sights, the sounds, the scale of the place are something to behold.

 

Sport - Either the Ashes or the Socceroos reversing the curse and finally qualifying for the World Cup. The Ashes was a long time coming, but the vagries of the international time zones meant I missed many of the final pieces of drama. Whereas standing at the Olympic Stadium and watching it all unfold was something else.

 

News - Well the riots of late in Cronulla and Sydney take some beating, although the natural disasters occuring do really put things in stark perspective. As per usual, the antics of George W would normally be hilarious if they weren't actually real and impacting on people's lives, both in the US and abroad.

 

Transport - Toyota Yaris. So the old Peugeot died. And the new one rocks. Nuff said.

 

Prediction 2006 - Houses will feature I think. Scary. As will Erskineville. And Bush, Blair and Howard will continue to play out a macarbre game of International Politics for Dummies. Pfft.

 

 

 

From today's Graudian, and as an appendix to Becky's rambling

 

"There is something particularly masochistic about the British approach to Christmas - we get drunk and make berks of ourselves, we spend time with people we loathe, we enjoy moaning about it afterwards more than the event itself."

 

Yup, that's about the short and tall of it.

Don't die from it...*

 

http://www.worldaidsday.org/default.asp and http://www.unaids.org/en/default.asp

 

All the hullabaloo about bird flu. Less than 100 people have died from it since it appeared on the radar. And yet the resources being thrown at the problem are quite staggering, from both a financial and resource perspective.

 

Meanwhile, 40 million+ people globally are infected with HIV and millions die every year. And that's just from figures that can be verified. Heaven knows the magnitude of the crisis facing India and China.

 

So buy a red ribbon, show you care and spare a thought for what is happening around the world.

 

(I note that The Bill's Phil Hunter is on the front page of the website linked above. Nice one.)

 

* - UK readers will remember the Government ads from the 1980's.

 

 

Thought I'd forgotten about this place? Me too. I've neglected the blog, well, because I've not really had too much of note to scribble about Trans* wise since Sleaze. I could wax lyrical about other stuff, but the purpose of this place is for the Trans* stuff to get aired. And whining about plebs, as pointed out by Miss C, comes over a little grumpy.

 

I suppose it's fair to say it has been a fallow period of late, where other considerations (study, work, boisterous chap social life) have meant that the Trans* stuff hasn't really cropped up all that often. And there has been no overbearing urge to do anything about it. I suppose that is something which Becky & I were talking about the other day... 

 

When you have the environment around you to express your Trans* aspects when you want, there is less necessity to do so. Whereas, from experience, when its been in the closet or under wraps, the restrictions heighten the frustration and the issue becomes quite consuming.

 

That's not to say that the Trans* aspect of the whole personality are absent when fallow periods occur, rather the Trans* bits are not quite so to the fore.

 

That said, I've just got back from attending a wedding in Perth with Miss C. Our hotel was walking distance from a newish outlet village. So whilst Miss C was having her nails done, I thought I'd have a wander around and see what was on offer. Several shoe shops, with big sizes. Doing "buy one pair,  get another one half price" offers.

 

That was even before we saw knee high, spike heeled boots by Tommy Hilfiger for sale at $70. Needless to say, shopping occured. Now all we have to do is:

 

a) organise some nights out to utilise the purchases

b) promise not to get pissed on the way home from work on a Friday, when we're meant to be going out later that night, with the Trans* mob

 

Amateurs? Certainly.

Without wishing to turn this enclave into a grumpfest, another thing that has bugged me of late is the lazy use of the English language.

 

Words like basically being used willy nilly in conversation, as link words, without adding anything to the comment being made. Throw in like, at the end of every statement or phrase, and often you're waiting an eternity for the speaker to get to the bloody point.

 

"So basically, I was, like, waiting for him to call, like and like, he just never rang, so like, I'm like, basically, what do I do now, like".

 

Muppets.

 

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And elsewhere, Siobhan is back on board and making some fantastic points. Not least the magic of standing in the middle of nowhere, away from the sodium glare and marvelling at the sky and the stars. Quite easy to do over here, away from the metropolitan areas. Very soothing and calming.

 

Oh and she also makes some great observations about the motivations for online spaces for Trans * people (validation, vanity, assurances) and how that evolves over time.

 

Oh and what's a Galaxy dress? Made of chocolate?

 

 

Right, it's October and pissing down. Nothing unusual there, spring showers and all that.

 

But walking to work this morning a few things struck me:

 

Umbrellas - The fact that a person holds an umbrella appears to directly impact upon their ability to navigate crowded pavements. Not only do people appear to find their feet fascinating, thus not looking where they are going, the humble brolly appears to cause people to veer wildly and wave the object around like a jousting lance.

 

Woe betide the humble pedestrian if they are over 6ft. Unless protective eyewear is donned, there is a likelihood that one can either:

 

a) take a trip to the nearest A&E department as the dwarf in front jabs a frond of the brolly into your eye; or

b) appear as though you've taken salsa/ samba classes as you pirouette and swerve along the pavement, dodging lethal brollies at varying heights.

 

In fact, there maybe a Nintendo or Playstation game in there somewhere, along the lines of Mario Bros or Donkey Kong.

 

Jackets - Should you find yourself without a brolly or overcoat, simply draw your minging, cheap suit jacket over your head to form an inpenetrable barrier to the rain. Doofus.

 

Kerbs - Rain collects in the gutter. It's a sad fact of modern life that the concrete jungles we inhabit are designed to funnel all rain runoff, into the sewers and out into the harbour. And to reach the sewers it must run into the gutter. So when a bus zooms through and splashes 300 gallons of water all over your beige suit (beige on a wet day - hello?), when you're stood on the edge of the kerb, trying to save precious milliseconds by not waiting for the traffic to stop and darting across the road, what's with the utter surprise? Or do you have some kind of force field protecting you normally? 

 

Australian weather forecasters - Just how exactly do you justify your salary?

The dust has settled after the latest Sleaze Ball.

 

For those unaware of the Sleaze Ball, it's a dance party held by Sydney New Mardi Gras over the long weekend. Its primary function is to raise funds for the Mardi Gras festival, held in the following February and ending with the Mardi Gras parade and party. The party is sight to behold, with all corners of the GLBT family on show in some shape or form. Usually.

 

This year, well - there was a furore. One of the very popular private parties, Toybox had scheduled their event for the Sunday. The day after Sleaze. And as tickets for both parties would have set back revellers $200, many folks were forced to choose. Additionally the long weekends in Sydney are a smogasbord of choice for those with and alternative bent, aside from Sleaze and Toybox.

 

Sleaze had declined in sleaziness over the last few years and numbers had reduced a bit. Maybe fatigue with the big dance parties also. The end result was NMG pleading for people to attend to support the organisation. It almost reached the levels of emotional blackmail, stating MG would cease to exist if we didn't, as a community, attend. Plus other enterprises such as Toybox got a hammering for their (lack of) timing. Sleaze itself was confined to two of the venues at Fox Studios - Mardi Gras has used up to 5 of the venues there in the past.

 

So we went. And the whole thing was odd. Turnout was lower than expected. The crowds seemed to be less male - not necessarily bad thing. The dancefloors a little roomier. There was certainly less visual production/ decoration. The shows we saw were great and went down well. But it did feel like an end of an era, personally. Maybe as Miss C has pointed out, we're a little over the big parties. Or maybe the event just didn't do it? Sveta, Mandy and Feisty rocked the decks, though.

 

The future for NMG is intriguing though as funds for next season will be way down due to the fact the Sleaze party was nowhere near its target attendance. And maybe it's time for NMG to re-evaluate both its role and also its activities. A watershed?

 

 

 

 

So, over here (http://www.beckysweb.co.uk/beckysblog/) Becky has come up with a rather intriguing way to idle away a lunchtime, before plunging back into a rather hectic period of work.

 

1. Austin Powers In Goldmember - Bombshell first up. Aside from the video for Madonna's "Beautiful Stranger" and some clips on the idiot box, I've yet to see either of the Austin Powers movies. And I really don't feel that disenfranchised. I mean, for a while, you didn't even have to go to the cinema to know every bloody ctach phrase. trips to fancy dress parties filled you in on the costume design. And as for being a parody of James Bond, Never Say Never Again did that handsomely thank you.

 

2. Sword of Fargoal - Apparently a computer game, back in the day when BBC computers seemed exotic and debate raged between which was better out of the VIC 20's and ZX Spectrum (clue - I got a VIC 20 and wished I got a ZX). Meh! I had a Playstation v.01 for a while and saved a fortune by staying in and getting stoned, whilst mastering Cool Boarders and Tomb Raiders 1-4. but really, my reality is often quite fantasical, why do i need a computer game to enliven it?

 

3. Zhao - A family name from a region of China, also named Zhao. Suppose it's like some of my distant relations, whose surname is Derbyshire. And those folk who have the delightful Ramsbottom as their surnames. I've been to Hong Kong once (aside from waiting for connections to and from Ozbiza). Mad place, this was before the control went back to the People's Republic. We stayed in Kowloon too, the 'real' part of HK. Loved it, even the challenging cuisine.

 

4. Yvonne Minton - Apparently an opera singer from Australia. Opera? Nope, you've lost me. Cultural bumpkin maybe, but pffft!

 

5. Martini Cocktail - Now we're talking. I'm with the purists on this one. A classic martini uses gin and vermouth. A vodka martini is a different drink altogether. Gin = mother's ruin. That said, nothing quite as refreshing as a gin and tonic, slice of lemon, ice in a tall class on a hot  afternoon. All very colonial, what? Oh and mixology? That's being able to serve properly in my book, you're a barman not a mixologist, ok?

 

Right, carry on. Lunchtime over.

 

 

So, I've tidied up the photo albums and tried to streamline them, so that there are fewer folders and the better pictures.

 

Vanity strikes again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So anyhoo, enough of the political rantings for a day or two. Although there are masses of opportunities as they days pass.

 

I was just thinking about the trip to the US I went on and some of the more memorable moments. I made it to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (http://www.sfmoma.org) and happened upon a fabulous exhibition by a New York based artist named Marilyn Minter. On first cursory glance the exhibits seemed to be close ups of gender obscure subjects.

 

However reading the name plates alongside the pieces it became clear that the works were in fact paintings on metal. The clarity and detail is astonishing and the subject matter allied with the style blew me away.

 

 

 

So Hurricane Katrina was all the fault of the GLBTQ communities and God's vengeful response. Oh well, that's alright then. Repent and you'll all be fine.

 

More pertinent is this from my favourite blog, Bob Harris. It would appear that the finger for the scale of the disaster can pointed north east from New Orleans. Suspect lives in a big white house, on a big road, near some monuments and a 5 sided building. When he's not on holiday, naturally.

 

 

Oh and its a veritable fiesta of sport this weekend, with the Swans over in the west, SydneyFC and the Wallies in Un Zud. I hear the couch calling.

 

How very Trans*!

 

PS. More on the Shrub and his reaction to the disaster in New Orleans can be found here:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The world is going insane. If it's not old George Shrub banging on about Intelligent Design, as opposed to evolution,

 

 

it's fcuknuts like Pat Robertson carrying on, advocating foreign policy akin to that of Joseph Stalin.

 

 

The premise of knocking off Chavez in Venezuela is bonkers enough, as if nation states can take out anyone that doesn't play ball. Isn't there an international instrument under which such incitement can be brought to book? The Hague anyone?

 

What beggared belief was the implication that Chavez was creating "the launching pad for communist infiltration and  Muslim extremism". Because those two ideologies go hand in hand don't they? Marx and the Koran? No, me neither. See the former central Asian republics of the CCCP for details.

 

Thankfully this turnip has been widely condemned, both in the US and abroad. Shame he allegedly gets 1 million viewers to his shows in the US. One glance at the website for the 700 Club (http://www.cbn.com/700club/) should give you an idea of its manifesto...

 

Sometimes you do wonder.

Now that's funky. Courtesy of those crazy kids at Flickr and someone with too much time on their hands (thanks Jo for the link).

 

Have a go here http://metaatem.net/words/

 

 

Well, it's the day after the day after and things are back on an even keel, sort of.

 

If you scroll down the front page you'll find the newly added pics from the last week. First up were a couple of pictures taken out and about on Oxford St of late. Last Thursday Peta, Angie and Julia joined Cyanne & I for a few drinks, a nice meal at Battuta and a nightcap at Gilligans. It was cool to just head out and have a relaxed evening and do 'normal' stuff. We also cooked up some plans for our next STG nights out. Julia and I did descend into Philospher's Corner for a bit though, which was entertaining. Good, evil, progress etc.

 

More on the evening can be found here http://spaces.msn.com/members/AngieDemaskau/ on Angie's site which details her traumatic journey to meet us.

 

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And then rolled on the weekend, which involved attending the second Rubber Ball to be held in Sydney. Again we were joined by Nicole & Ness, who came down from Queensland along with Taylor & Mel. As per usual Miss C & I were utterly useless in organising something suitable to wear. Cue Saturday afternoon shopping, which actually unearthed a great purchase - at Route 66 - a waitress style 50's shirt. The idea was to match it with some vinyl shorts but Nicole kindly lent me one of her spare latex skirts. And guess what? I think I need to invest in a latex skirt now. There must have been something in the air as Miss C borrowed one of Angie's fabulous latex dresses and looked spectacular (when doesn't she?).

 

Now, as a change from last time, the weather was brass monkeys. Like really cold. And the Manning Bar at the Uni isn't the cosiest venue. Still we had a splendid evening, with loads of people we know there and just generally watching the crowd wander by in all manner of finery. Topped off by a lift back to The Phoenix (thanks Angie) for the after party knees up, music supplied by the excellent Ben Drayton. Home at dawn and some skilled stone throwing to wake up our guests who'd gone home with the keys. Don't know what the neighbours thought, mind.

 

Football the next afternoon was a struggle, I'm sure you can imagine. Oh and the picture with the wide eyes - I was trying not to blink, honest.

 

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So a hectic weekend, but thoroughly enjoyable and all good fun. As it should be.