Practice (Resolution #7)

Just in case you thought I wasn't serious...

I'm watching (in HDTV) the 2007 World Series of Poker. I'm visualizing myself there, in the sea of people, on an island of ten. I'm watching the tells, I'm playing the game. I'm looking to see what the bets are in relation to the blinds, and how long it takes before people start to get impatient and bluff all-in. That won't be me. Not until I'm in the money anyway.

I've recorded every online tournament I've played this year and I've written software to help me analyze the games to correct my weaknesses and improve my strengths. I'm re-re-re-reading my books on the psychology of poker, and I'm reviewing my list of tells. I'm creating flash cards of win percentages for every hand situation I'll encounter so that I'll instantly know the odds, and hence, when it's right to chase, fold, or bet, mathematically speaking.

Basically, if the WSOP 2008 Main Event was a course in college, I'm studying for the final exam, and I expect to be a 4.0 student! But this is no final exam... it is my thesis defense! I'll be bringing to the table the sum of over a decade's worth experience playing (and hosting) home games in Atlanta. Adding to that the knowledge gained from playing in Casinos all over America (including Vegas several times), and Europe. I will bring with me the results of all the poker programs I have written to analyze the game, as well as every book I have read (already scanned) on poker, betting, and psychology.

WSOP 2008 will be my moment in time! At least for now. :) If I don't make the final table, I think I will be done with poker, but if I do make the final table and/or win endorsements, I'll play for one year in tournaments for the sole purpose of bringing my friends along for great vacations, but at the end of that year, it's bye-bye poker. There's just too many other things to get excited about in life!

But for now, I'm in training. Since the pace of online is so much faster than live game, I expect to instantly make my decisions, and then spend the rest of the time putting on a show, playing my persona and encouraging people to underestimate me. When they do, and the odds are right, I will pounce!

I'm planning my strategy! I've printed up how much it costs per hour to play (the blind structure) and last year's payouts for all the tournaments I'll be playing next week. In the main event, everyone starts with 20,000 chips and blinds start at 50/100 (about 450 chips/hour). I firmly believe that I can make the money simply by playing solid poker, not chasing, and never putting my life at risk until I have a winning hand.

If I don't get any cards, I probably won't make much higher than 600th (which pays $25,000) but if I *do* get some cards... enough to get me into 300th place or higher, well, then I'll start playing cards and play for the final table.

But on the first day, I'll be reluctant to risk more than 1/10th of my stack on a draw. In fact, I don't expect to put any money in unless I

• have the best hand, and am favored to win.
  
• have a favorable draw that stands to make me a mint.

Here's an example. Outside the blinds, I probably won't play but just a few hands: AA, AKs, KK, QQ, and maybe any A-paint suited, depending on how the other players play. However, if I'm in the big blind with say, 56o (five and six unsuited) and there's a raise with callers, there's a good chance I'll call hoping to catch a flop like 66A or 55A, or something that makes me a huge hidden favorite against a good hand. I'd even be leery of an all-in bet with a 56A flop! Of course, you can't always play premium hands, and you often win the most with rags, so, I'll play my non-premium hands while in the blinds, at least, until I'm in the money. (For this reason, I'll probably raise every pot I enter to try to push out the blinds, and if I don't, I'll be wary of calling an all-in bet with KK on a 479 flop.)

As another example, until the money, I'll fold hands like QQ to an all-in raise with a flops like J46. I'm going to give credit for 44 or 66 or even 46 (if they are in the blind). In a live game, I'd normally play back, assuming my opponent has something like AJ, but since you can't rebuy in the WSOP... I'm not going to take that risk. At least not until I'm well into the money.

As for the televised coverage... OMG, the opening sequence is as glitzy as Vegas! In HD, it's darn impressive! Check out the media coverage, and that's just a portion of it! You can see why I'm very concerned about my appearance! I need to be ready for that crowd, I need to exude confidence, I need to look like I belong in view of that camera, I need to shine when it is on me, and I need sparkle when it's not. I pray that if fortune shines on me, I can be a positive example to transgendered folks everywhere... poker is just a means to the end of helping people.

But... I could use help! What style? What clothes? What character to play and how to play her? How to practice, who will help keep it real? You see... you know all of my preparations... but no one else needs to. For this tournament, I get to re-invent myself, so if you've had experience doing that... please let me know!

And that's what the WSOP circuit event at Caesar's is about... there will not be any cameras there, so it's the perfect opportunity to practice for the main event. Unfortunately, since I'm now unemployed, I've had to dip into my WSOP buy-in, which means, in order to play in Vegas, I'll need to win some money here. But that's okay... if I can't win here, I'll be devastated, but I'll also accept defeat and cut short my losses.

However, every fiber in my being is telling me that Vegas is where I need to be. This year, this time, this event, as Clio. Just like Sammy, we're gonna do it our way!

And finally, here is my promise to my friends: if I make the final table, you have seats in the TV cheering section + hotel + airfare. Don't bother packing, just come! Together, we can make it happen; I hope you want me to be there and you know I want you there!

... back to studying!

The Beginning of Happy

Recently caught a show on HBO Family called, "I have Turrets, but Turrets doesn't have me," which profiles several young kids with Turrets. From the previews, I was amazed to see these very young kids talk and carry themselves better than most adults. I became curious to see they were able to cope with the social ridicule. In that regard, having Turrets and being transgendered are similar, so I thought I would take some time to learn some coping techniques from the masters (children).

On the surface, the twitches seemed to be the result of nervousness, and one is tempted to think that maybe, just maybe, Turrets could be managed with psychotherapy, or perhaps with anxiety drugs, but listening to their descriptions, the 'twitch' behavior is the final result of a total mental onslaught designed to overwhelm the person into doing whatever the twitch is. Like, you can't think about anything because every voice in your mind is yelling, "HEAD SPASM!!!"

Can you imagine what kind of hell must that be? I mean, here these kids are in class, they know they are about to twitch, and even if they can fight the urge (so as not to be ridiculed), it's at the cost of not being able to concentrate.

Maybe it's the estrogen, maybe it's my baggage, but I cried at their stories. One girl was videotaped during a bad fit, visibly frustrated with her damaged body, screaming over and over, "I hate my life!" We've all been there, huh? No? You mean you haven't tried to kill yourself? Not even seriously considered suicide? Maybe we all haven't, but I felt her pain.

Some kids couldn't control their bodies, but when playing piano or drums, they were flawless. Those moments of total absorption must be bliss for them. So if there was despair, there was also hope, determination, triumph, and joy.

And there once again is the similarity.

A Full Moon Prayer for Good Friday

I am grateful for the blessings in my life.
I am grateful I am my own wife.
I am grateful for friends who have places to stay,
I am grateful for the jobs that have come my way.
I am even grateful for the fella I confused,
But I am most grateful for friends I look up to:

One built from a dream, a home+ company
One has so much love of life, de la vie
One is the smartest man I've ever met.
One the most clever wherever, I'd bet!
One has talents that far exceed mine,
One has compassion, inspires divine!

Please bless them all, and all whom they touch,
Give them support, bless them so much!
And please Jesus, please bless all the rest,
Please save the world from this awful mess!
We need another like you or Lennon,
To spread forgiveness, the message of love.

PS- Please bless mother and father... I can't help them, I hope you can bother.

Clio on Clio (Ergo, Ego, 'Ere go?)

On My Family
My family, bless them, is one, ginormous redneck drama fest worthy of reality TV or Springer. That's not to say I don't love them, but theirs is not my world. Enter the father, currently in jail for not paying child support, but as it turns out, not for smoking pot (on school grounds) with his soon-to-be expelled 15-year old pregnant daughter. She just doesn't care about school because it's not her world. Trouble is, she's physically and verbally abusing her depressed, agoraphobic mother. Her seven- and nine-year old girls sleep and live on dirty floors and are lucky to change their underwear more than once a week. Imagine camping, but in a house and you might get an idea of their world. They don't seem to mind, although the oldest brother got as far away as he could, moving out at 15, and believe it or not... going to college on a football scholarship. He's the black sheep in an otherwise wholly uneducated family living in abject poverty, but refusing to work because the government will keep paying them to breed.

And that's just my mom's sister's family! But what about my family? I'm looking for a new word... maybe you can help?

They try my patience so. Estrogen is changing my body, I am going through puberty, I style my hair, wear makeup, heels, and pass more often as a genetic girl than boy. My parents know I am changing my name and my gender- have for over a year now. Last night, my parents watched me (as described above) create a similar female character on their Wii. They watched me name her Clio, and use her to bowl with them.

They still refuse to call me Clio or use feminine pronouns.
They don't even try.

They still want me to fix their computer though.

On My Research
The world of academia and business are very far removed. In academia, the sharing of ideas is encouraged, while in business, intellectual capital is to be guarded. I left academia because business took hold of university research. First labs, then entire schools were outfitted with hardware from IBM, Sun, Silicon Graphics, et. al., equipped with the latest software from Microsoft. In exchange, said companies were invited first-hand to come and steal all the brilliant work of the unsuspecting students. The students, lured by the promise of a research job at a big corporation, are all too willing to intellectually put out, so to speak.

I don't care who you are, as a grad student, you can't compete with someone like Microsoft once they grok your idea. You have classes to study for and a life to otherwise maintain. They have 100 people for everyone one of you. It's the opposite of Nike, it's Nikan't. Just can't do it. I've seen Microsoft Research, I've given talks there... once your idea is out, if it's good, you're out.

So I left academia, and recognizing the value in my ideas, stopped publishing. I started doing my own research on my own time, but you've heard about that. For those that think I just talk a lot of talk, here's a quote from a BBC article posted today about a Microsoft researcher's work:

For example Gordon Bell, a researcher at Microsoft, is working on a project called MyLifeBits which aims to digitally store "a lifetime's worth of articles, books, cards, CDs, letters, memos, papers, photos, pictures, presentations, home movies, videotaped lectures, and voice recordings"

The latest version of the project also allows him to capture phone calls, instant messenger transcripts, television, and radio to build up a virtual surrogate memory of his life.

Sound familiar? I gave a talk at MSR in 1998 where we were showing off our ability to mass preserve lectures (using software I wrote). Yes, I was whoring out my work, but then without the makeup and skirt. I said then that not only could we preserve every class one took, but also every correspondence and media stream. I said it because I believed it, and I believed it because I was doing it!

And you thought I was just crazy, scanning all my books and notes! You didn't realize I was doing the same work as top researchers at Microsoft, ay? Gordon went about it from the other direction though, digitizing first the stuff that wasn't ephemeral, i.e., current digital information. That's why I'm doing my books and paper notes after I was already capturing all things digital... a book's the same if I scan in now or then. Probably faster and higher quality if I wait, actually. Plus, I only recently gained access to my old notes and books.

The idea to digitally preserve a lifetime of memories wasn't mine. It wasn't Gordon's either. It wasn't my advisor's, it even wasn't Arthur C. Clarke's, but rather the idea belongs to a man named Vannevar Bush... from a time before computers! Google 'Vannevar Bush Memex' and you just might find a paper or two written by me or a former student of mine that cites Vannevar as inspiration! ;)

On Ego
I always have amazing drug trips in Vancouver. The last one was with this guy's posse where I was hallucinating (!) from smoking this guy's private stash (fer real!). I totally had a transcendental experience with Becky, who unwittingly was a guide in my vision quest.

Sometimes, with premature enlightenment, there is time of confusion where the mind reels from all that it has seen. The wise stay calm, but as I was then ungrounded, for a moment, I kinda lost it, which kinda freaked her out. Well, what freaked her out was this: I was looking into her soul at a spirit very dear to me which manifested itself as an old friend. Becky could have been her twin, but didn't appreciate my comment about this.

When I realized the connection was one-way, my tripping auto-pilot made a course correction, and all was well, and she understood, since she worked for people who smoked the best dope in the Western hemisphere. But still I felt ... compelled to express to her what I couldn't in my current condition, so later, I wrote her this song, and gave it to her as I drove out of Canada.

The ego resents it might not be unique,
"I am me, I am myself, I am no other,
It is an insult to deny me my mystique!"

But some people- some spirits- some consciousnesses
are so powerful, they are more than they appear.
Such a shame to not mind the coincidences!

God is everywhere at once, as are some sages.
Buddha, Moses, Jesus, Mohammad, some saints too.
Enlightenment of thought passed on through the ages.

We can't be everywhere, but some exist in twos
Threes, and even more material projections
Becky, perhaps such a spirit exists in you!

A connection once made exists throughout all space,
time, and life; have I met you before you met me?
Why could it be you did not recognize my face?

In the spirit within you, I see an old friend,
A welcome enchantment on this traveler's quest,
I bid you farewell, until we shall meet again.

I haven't yet recorded the music, and the lyrics needs some work, but this was before meeting Ms. Meltzer and learning how to better write for songs.

Growing Stronger

Read an awesome blog entry from Our Lady J (no relation) excerpted here:

a man is screaming

faggot

he gets closer

in my face

queer

he gears his fist back to take a swing

and i run.

as i’m running

i’m thinking that perhaps i deserve this.

perhaps when i’m in line at papa john’s, i deserve death threats.

perhaps when i’m in the parking lot of wal-mart, i deserve bottles being thrown at me.

perhaps when i’m visiting my family, i deserve being locked out of their car and left behind.

so much screaming. from strangers to family. so much hatred for what i was growing up to be.

because i was queer, because i defined my own happiness.

...

i learned to surround myself with love and to shut out the people who didn’t support me.

i learned to fight back when being attacked.

i learned that i didn’t deserve the chasing, the harassment, the day to day degradation.

Lady J, Muncie is not so different from Dallas... and I am learning. I am shutting out those who don't support me... but I will be there when I can support them. I am learning to fight back... but I am also learning how to avoid attacks altogether. I don't deserve the harassment... but their words can no longer hurt me. I don't deserve the day-to-day degradation, but it reflects their insecurity, not mine.

Finally, at last... I am enjoying confusing the normals! I am enjoying making men question their own sexuality because they find me sexy. I am enjoying women taking their beauty cues from me. I will enjoy confronting those small minds, and I will enjoy being a positive role model for trans-women and -men everywhere.

Dwight

Testing out my new theory of not being afraid, I engaged in conversation a passing local citizen with whom I'd normally avoid making contact through use of combination of chance looks in wrong directions and strategic body placement.

Dwight appeared to me to be homeless and quite down on his luck. But, as I was no stranger to this time of night, I soon noticed a fairly regular walking pattern from him. Turns out, tonight I was on his path.

Clio just thought she was enjoying a cigarette.

Looks, however, can be deceiving.

Dwight was in need of medical and dental care. He either was missing part of his tongue or most of his teeth for he spoke with a marked speech impediment, and I found it necessary to concentrate with all my effort to understand his words.

At first, it was easy; she had just looked into his soul and saw the good in him.

Clio just thought she was introducing herself.

Then, his words changed from the weather to troubles times and he started speaking in a language I could not understand. Not one word or one syllable. Dwight's demeanor now changed from cheerful and pleasant, as was still the night, to scared and stormy.

I tried to understand, but all I could say was, I'm sorry, I don't understand, and he would repeat it again exactly the same as the way he had said before. I was beginning to run out of nice ways to say, "I can't hear you" when finally he shortened his sentences to just one small phrase: In the Navy. "In the Navy," he kept saying louder and louder until I acknowledged my understanding by repeating back the words.

Then again, for a brief moment I could understand his next few words, but he was speaking very quickly and his words were becoming more and more affected. At first, it was just a word here, a word there, but soon it became hard to make sense of what my ears were sensing.

In the end, I could pick out a story about parents, and it wasn't happy. Whatever trouble it was, he appeared to be saying, "it has been a year."

But since I had followed along till the end, he expected me to act in a way I could not, since I could not understand his thoughts. I could tell this would upset him, so I did what Sandra taught her to do back in London: whenever someone was talking to her in words she couldn't understand, she agreed.

Then I let slip I was from here, not realizing I just earlier agreed that I just been here a year. Both were true statements, but this seemed to set off a large number of bells and whistles in the man's psychic alert system and he suddenly became eager to part. He eagerness to leave was matched only by desire to say just one more thing that he then repeated. The last half of what he said was:

Monday afternoon. Give me until Monday afternoon and I'll get it for ya.

As he left, the rain began to fall from the sky like tears from the faces of Angels.

Mandala Inverse

So the day begins as the last fifty:
I washed and I cleaned, made myself pretty.
The madness of March had not settled in,
My alma mater lost to Wisconsin.

Afternoon sushi, I love it so much!
Shopping required; perhaps after lunch?
Made music for friends down on the corner,
The mall this weekend? Oh no, the horror!

Public ridicule, giggles from curls,
What else to expect from all the girls?
For this is their turf; keep on walking through,
Let them have some fun; courtesy of you!

I wish they were not so vocal that way,
Can words from the young rain on my parade?
The smile is gone; the chin starts to fall,
All because we had to shop at the mall.

And at our lowest, a miracle comes,
But not one or two, here are three at once!
Strangers took your joy, but one fills to top...
He wants your digits, he thinks you are hot!

And then an old friend from days in the past
Calls on her birthday... an amazing chat!
And then from nowhere, a bolt from the Blue,
Aosaf connecting, reaching out to you!

It tickles me pink to get back in touch,
I'll try it in verse, it tickles so much!
Extending from here electrons to there,
My mind to your eyes, many thoughts to share.

Through air and wire I reach in the net,
I am almost there, can y'all feel me yet?
Please excuse this poem of quality fair,
It reflects my skill, not how much I care!

Rise Above Your Troubles

Rev Jeremiah Wright really pissed off a lot of people today for stuff he said five years ago. I'm going to defend him because it's revolting how the media has taken his words out of context.

He said that said that blacks should condemn the US for it's past actions toward Africans.

"God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human!"

I would hope Mr. Wright would preach forgiveness, but if you disagree about America's treatment toward blacks, what about native Americans? Now there's an interesting history. We took a page from the Europeans colonizing Latin America on that one.

But taken out of context, the words are shocking... but more so than what passes for entertainment these days on TV or Radio or in video games? Not really. I'm not going to vote for Obama for other reasons, but this seems to me like a tactic to play on the fears of the white man.

His comments from seven years ago, the Sunday after 9/11, if poorly timed, seem to echo my own which is this: You can be shocked, you can be angry, you can be afraid... but you can't be surprised. Here's how he said it:

"We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards.

"America's chickens are coming home to roost."

That's the whole quote, again, being taken out of context today. Lest you think I'm anti-Israel, I'm sure Jesus (and Mr. Wright) would have wanted Israel to exist from peaceful origins, even if it would have taken longer than our lifetimes to do that. Instead we created it from force so that we could have it in our lifetime... but wouldn't it be more likely to exist in the future if it was created from peace?

Finally, not everything Mr. Wright says is controversial. Some of it is downright uplifting and inspiring! Have a listen to this excerpt of his from a song I heard while clubbing in London. Give it a minute (literally) before the speech begins!

Riiiiise, above your troubles! Do I have a witness?

Xanecstasy?

In the beginning, I was angry because I was frustrated from gender dysphoria. To cope, I began self-medicating with natural products. Since it was difficult to get expert advice, I did what I always do in those situations... I read all the background research I could find, and I started my own experiments.

Although my efforts helped with the anger, (and taught me how to party) I was obviously only treating symptoms. That's why last year, I started self-medicating with hormones. When experimental evidence pointed toward long-term use, finding a medical doctor became a priority. At that time, the doctor suggested I take an anti-depressant, but because I've always felt my sadness was environmental, and because I'm not pro-drugs just for the sake of drugs, I declined.

So the hormones have started working, life was generally good, and for the first time in a long time, I was happy with my progress... yet as a result of living in Muncie, the sadness persisted. And then the universe provided for me 0.5 mg of Xanax.

Me likey. More experiementation needed.

Explore Your Mind

Who's Hero Am I?

While scanning in notes from a course in mythology, I chanced upon my answer to an exam question that gives me pause. (You can click on the image to read the question and my answer if you like, but pardon the sexist language... I wasn't yet conscious and hadn't yet overcome the products of my environment.)

It would seem to loneliness of the hero is also the loneliness of the transsexual. (Remember the lyrics to Wicked Little Town?)

Montmontre Musicals

Cole Porter is a musical genius. I've always loved his songs and his music. His ability to put together chords fascinated my ear from first listen, and his lyrics... he captures what it's like to be in the heights of love's passion, and too, in the depths of her longing. And I'm not the only one who thinks so! Quoting from the book of Wikipedia:

He was noted for his sophisticated (sometimes ribald) lyrics, clever rhymes, and complex forms. He was one of the greatest contributors to the Great American Songbook.

(He was from Indiana too!)

Such a joy it was to finally see the Hollywood version of his musical, Can-Can! The songs truly belong in a love story set in Paris! The dancing (esp. Shirley McClain) is uniquely superb and most entertaining (and I'm not talking about the can-cans!) And the singing... well, it is the Chairman, after all! Yay serendipity! I really must get to starting a collection of these musicals!

I wish there were more singing and dancing in American movies today and less horror and violence, but perhaps these are more indicative of our times than our tastes? Seems to me now more than ever, we could use more happiness, love, and joy in lieu of death, despair, and fear.

But regarding the Great American Songbook:

For its devotees, the GAS (as it is sometimes abbreviated) represents a level of musical and lyrical sophistication that has yet to be equaled.

Amen! But we're gonna try!

Mixed Feelings...

BBC is doing a show about a male-to-female transexual.

But...

Why do they always cast genetic women in those roles?

Same thing happened in this movie about a M2F!

Would you watch a movie about Martin Luther King, Jr. if the actor was a white guy in black paint?

Are there no transexual actresses? Where do I sign up?

A good friend told me nearly made him hurl when he found out about me (he was being honest about his physical reaction... mentally, he was accepting). Is that what would happen if the movie contained a real M2F (minus the accepting)?

I'm torn between being happy about a film about my people and insulted that we aren't in it.

Statistical Abuse

What's wrong with this picture?

Amazingly, Obama has 54% of the Texas vote... amazing because just 2% of the vote has been cast! In the picture above, he has 54% of 2% of the vote, which is just over 1%. Clinton has 45% of 2%, or just under 1%. It should read 1% to 1%, but that's not dramatic! That's not exciting! No, what we want to see a fierce competitive battle, with swings and come-from-behind, against-all-odds wins!

Not fair, you say, the 54%-45% is merely to show what percent of votes already cast are for whom. Okay, but that's useless information; it's not a sporting event, the only thing that matters is the percentages when all the votes are in; how they are counted makes no difference, so why create drama out of nothing? And, if that's the goal, why not count all the votes for one person first... now THAT would be drama!

With 45% of the votes counted, Obama leads leads Clinton 100% to 0%!!!

Imagine the water cooler surprise the next morning! Did you hear about Clinton's victory? She won the last 10 million votes in a row!

If showing the truth (1% to 1% just wouldn't do), let's at least have some fun with it!

See anything else? How about McCain being projected as the winner, with just 2% of the precincts reporting? Seems to me there's 20 million more votes to count, more or less, but McCain only leads by 100,000 votes.

I'm tired of (news) media deliberately misleading viewers just for the sake of drama.

In the news...

Italy's highest court of appeals rules women can lie about their infidelity. Even from the police, even under oath in a court of law! The ruling was passed down in an effort to allow dis-honorable women to maintain their honor in the face of legal investigations.

Previously, the same court ruled that women in tight jeans - by definition - can't be raped, because it would require their acceptance to remove them. After outcries by women everywhere, the court later rescinded the ruling, but said in their defense, we were talking about tight fitting, button-fly jeans!

Meanwhile, Russia's old president, Vladimir Putin, maintains that Russia's new president, Dmitry Medvedev will continue to give the West a hard time. In a similar story, US President Bush reaffirmed that he would continue to have a hard time locating Russia on a map.

Speaking of places he can't find on a map, Serbia's Prime Minister Kostunica is calling it quits after failing to get his cabinet to pick a fight with the EU over Kosovo's recent declaration of independence, a move backed by EU and America, but declared illegal by Serbia (who is in turn, backed by, you guessed it... Russia.)

The former Yugoslavia has been in a state of civil unrest ever since the dismal performance by their namesake car, the Yugo. By declaring independence, the mostly Albanian population hope to redeem themselves with the production of the Kosovolvo.

The Grand Canyon was recently flooded in an attempt to help restore the ecosystem. Perhaps they read our earlier report? Maybe someone was listening after all!

Europe is launching the stellar equivalent of a semi-truck, a space ship designed to haul up to nearly 8 tonnes of supplies to the International Space Station. It can even drive and park itself, with no human intervention, but you still have to get out and pay the meter.

Back home, despite the mortgage crisis, record oil prices, the weakest dollar in history, and new figures showing the highest number of layoffs in five years, Bush insisted the US is not in a recession. He said he hoped consumer spending would "spur job creation." I hope to wake up tomorrow looking like Angelina Jolie, but that ain't gonna happen either!

In celebrity news, comedian Bill Maher continues to whore himself out to HBO, seeking ratings, money, and fame over the chance to do some good and make a difference. Hey Bill, c'mon, you're smarter than that! Quit taking the easy road bitching about what everyone already knows and pretending to be brainwashed by the media like everyone else. Instead, why not bring to light the significant issues facing Americans today?

Such as the fact that the fall of American empire has started! With more and more Americans walking away from their inverted home loans, who owns the land/home? The bank. Who owns the bank? 'nuff said. Divide and conquer; it works for armies, computer science algorithms, and it will work on America too. Immigration from the south, foreign ownership from within, all on top of a complete collapse of the social structure because of 200 years of insular thinking, celebrity worship, and the exclusion of rational things like preservation and sustainability for abstract, meaningless concepts like money and the economy.

Look at pictures of Muncie from the 1800s and compare them to now: decline. You can do that for pretty much every city, except those bolstered by foreign money, and even there, no wealth is created; we build only to tear down, resettle, and build again. Like ants with no purpose, busily going through the motions. Most people are so out of touch with real life, they are out of balance with even the most basic of human needs.

Little wonder then, the family social structure has all but disintegrated. After so many generations of bad parents, we no longer seem to remember how to raise a family. Men refuse to pay child support and women are choosing to be uneducated, stay at home mothers because they can earn more from the government for having unprotected sex than they can from working at McDonald's. The government, admitting defeat in its public schools routinely allows for children to be home-schooled by these same uneducated parents. Like Keanu Reeves said in Ron Howard's film, "You have to have a license to drive a car or own a dog, you have to have a permit to catch a fish, but they'll let any old asshole be a father [parent]."

Meanwhile, the smartest citizens are fleeing the country like rats on a sinking ship while being replaced by our friends (perhaps smarter than us) from the south who promise to put the "Americas" back in "America." Brain drain aside, with no manufacturing base, and companies lured by billions of cheap labor working elsewhere, how can wealth be created? (I guess it doesn't matter because getting $600 each from Bush will create jobs.)

America was once alone as a (super)power, but she is about to be eclipsed- if not by technology or industry, then by the sheer volumes of people from the East, and her people are too fat, lazy, and uneducated to do a damn thing about it. (Pardon my French!) And the ones who are capable, who by some miracle haven't left, will be micro-managed by idiots who don't know the first thing about what it is they are managing. Maybe you've already noticed?

True, we are still before the rapid decline phase. Although children are routinely massacred while learning in school, we have not yet started the era of random McVey- and Madrid-style bombings, and even that will seem like a blessing when the suicide attacks start on random street corners. And in the land where anything is possible, who knows what some sick mind will dream up, only to be copied, improved, refined, and perfected by our discontented masses?

The good news is that by then, most people won't notice! Because of media conditioning, the average attention span will be little more than a goldfish. Shows like American Idol will have a presidential edition, and you will be able to bet on candidates and vote tallies while watching them 24/7 on Big Brother.

By then senseless violence mixed with misogynist sex will have permeated down to the very youngest media consumers (babies smacking moms saying, "Gimme that milk, beeotch!")... all in the name of free speech and artistic expression. Meanwhile, the government's ability to monitor every public and private communication channel for its citizens will grow, stifling free expression, but giving the illusion of having more. People will believe everything their puppet president says, despite being suffocated, face down in evidence to the contrary.

I love America, but her citizens smashed my rose-colored glasses when kicking me in the face for being different. I see my country through bloody eyes now, and though the hue is still red, the glitter has all but gone. What remains for me is to find a place in this world that will still be habitable in 50 years and move there to heal. What remains for America might be waiting on the moon, where we can build America 2.0. Still, one can't help but wonder if Douglas Adams had it right on that one too... build three ships, send the first two...

Tell me Fergie, where is the Love?

What's wrong with the world mama?
People living like aint got no mamas
I think the whole worlds addicted to the drama
Only attracted to the things that bring you trauma
Overseas yeah we tryin to stop terrorism
But we still got terrorists here livin
In the USA the big CIA the Bloodz and the Crips and the KKK
But if you only have love for your own race
Then you only leave space to discriminate
And to discriminate only generates hate
And if you hatin you're bound to get irate
Yeah madness is what you demonstrate
And that's exactly how anger works and operates
You gotta have love just to set it straight
Take control of your mind and meditate
Let your soul gravitate to the love y'all

People killing people dying
Children hurtin you hear them crying
Can you practice what you preach
Would you turn the other cheek?
Father Father Father help us
Send some guidance from above
Cause people got me got me questioning
Where is the love?

It just ain't the same all ways have changed
New days are strange is the world the insane?
If love and peace so strong
Why are there pieces of love that don't belong
Nations dropping bombs
Chemical gases filling lungs of little ones
With ongoing suffering
As the youth die young
So ask yourself is the loving really strong?
So I can ask myself really what is going wrong
With this world that we living in
People keep on giving in
Makin wrong decisions
Only visions of them livin and
Not respecting each other
Deny thy brother
The wars' going on but the reasons' undercover
The truth is kept secret
Swept under the rug
If you never know truth
Then you never know love
Where's the love y'all?(I don't know)
Where's the truth y'all?(I don't know)
Where's the love y'all?

People killing people dying
Children hurtin you hear them crying
Can practice what you preach
Would you turn the other cheek?
Father father father help us
Send some guidance from above
Cause people got me got me questioning
Where is the love?

I feel the weight of the world on my shoulder
As I'm getting older y'all people get colder
Most of us only care about money makin
Selfishness got us followin the wrong direction
Wrong information always shown by the media
Negative images is the main criteria
Infecting their young minds faster than bacteria
Kids wanna act like what the see in the cinema
Whatever happened to the values of humanity
Whatever happened to the fairness and equality
Instead of spreading love, we're spreading animosity
Lack of understanding, leading us away from unity
That's the reason why sometimes I'm feeling under
That's the reason why sometimes I'm feeling down
It's no wonder why sometimes I'm feeling under
I gotta keep my faith alive, until love is found

Cassandra out.

Getting The Austrian Town Out Of Dodge

A real photo of a real sign from a real Austrian city. The sign underneath, with the children says, "Please... not so fast!"

I'm sure they're nice people. If you think it's a fake, google it, or check here.

And so the countdown continues... < 60 days until I'm officially homeless and unemployed. One thing is for certain though, I won't be here in this town. But wherever shall I go? Whatever shall I do? And will there be a man named Rhett there when I arrive? With one option, that's actually a possibility, for once again, I might find myself in the southern charms of Georgia... stay tuned! Oh, just in case you can't get enough of the F-word, here's an educated presentation of it. Enjoy!

Passing Aural Exams

A recent show on transgendered persons told the story of one TG girl (genetic boy) who had her driver's license changed from M to F (apparently, you can just do that) and when she then later decided to change it back (as you do?) she had a hard time convincing them "she" was really a "he!" He-larious, because she was still pre-op with all original (male) equipment! Wouldn't that be a fun conversation with the DMV?

Well... I just had a similar conversation with Comcast. Seems only my male name is authorized to make changes to my account, and the CSR wanted me to put my husband on the phone to authorize me to make changes to my account. LOLLERCOPTERS! Rather than just dropping my voice and adding Clio's name, I just took the compliment and said thanks, but no thanks; he (my husband) could make all the changes from here on.

And why not a two-fer? The same thing happened while on the phone with the insurance company!

Teehee, I'm passing on the phone now! I always said I was my own wife, but apparently I am also my own husband!

I sure hope it's as easy to get the 'F' on my driver's license as it was for her! If I can get them to change to 'F' on my new birth certificate... that would be ideal, because then I know I could get the driver's license change, but more importantly, I could get my passport with an 'F'! That would enable me to live as a woman outside America without all those embarrassing border check moments!

Following Advice...

I was speaking to a very wise friend about the fact that I had no idea what I was going to do next with my life. I mean, not like in the looking for a new job kind of way- been there, done that- no, I mean as in, doing something different with my life.

She suggested that I should take the time to list my achievements, and see where I've been in order to see where I want to go. Well, since I just scanned in all of them, that wasn't so hard! Turns out, she was right. Not only did I feel better about what I have accomplished, but doing this also cleared the way for my mind to recognize new opportunities.

Funny enough, I never got an award for being a Royal Society Research Fellow, which is the one thing I'm most proud of... even more so than the Ph.D.! (Less than 1% of the population gets a Ph.D., but only ten- 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 Americans got a Royal Society Research Fellowship... that's less than 1% of 1%!) But no certificate. Oh well, it's not like I won a Nobel prize or anything! I guess living in London was its own reward!

So what's the new career path? Well... I'll just remain a woman of mystery about that! :)

Busy Work (Resolution #4)

Four solid days of scanning, photographing, and copying media! Here's the tally so far:

All 328 DVDs are on disk! That's 1.8TB, if you're curious. Add to that around 78 VHS tapes (mostly of dance instruction), 18 Hi-8 tapes (mostly of dancing in ATL clubs), and a slew of cassettes. (+10GB)

This may sound funny coming from me, but I do write on paper. A lot. A whole filing cabinet's worth in just over two years, actually. Well, that cabinet is scanned too!

I've also scanned in every letter from every friend, pen-pal, and ex-g/bf! Every greeting card I've ever received too! Also have scanned diplomas, transcripts, award certificates, and photographed trophies, medals, and trinkets. (+3Gb)

I've been busy!

Basically everything I ever kept in my life. My tangible memories are reduced down to one box, with everything in it transcoded to digital form... just in case I never see it again.

Phew! But we're not done yet!!! There's still to go 13 years of academic notes and every book that has been valued enough to keep for this long. We'll tackle the notes this week, hopefully finishing by the end of next, and I'm calling in reinforcements from BSU for the books, but more on that later.

So I'm very close to having everything of importance I've ever saved or created on one disk that fits in a shirt pocket!!! Going through those memories is pretty emotional, (especially when one is not in the best of places) but it seems I was fortunate enough to save the things that mattered most from my youth. Bittersweet memories.

And I'm delighted and proud that I can take them all with me and travel lightly at the same time! :) So here's a twist on Zen... dissolving the ego while using technology to preserving it digitally, effectively reducing one's life to electrons. Hey, that's pretty compact!

Hopefully, this kind of thing will become common in the future allow us to better deal with death and the destruction of the self-identity, since it will be preserved exactly as one wants it to be.

For what more can one ask?

Today's Tally

I wake up (literally) to the leasing agent showing my home to two strange guys; right out of bed, they think I'm a girl. 1-0.

As I'm walking to the courthouse, a fella turns my way from the corner ahead. He notices me, and stops in his tracks to pay me a compliment! I flash him a smile over my shoulder as I walk by. Later, at the end of the block, I notice he's still there, now smoking a cigarette, admiring me walk away. I recognize this behavior from watching people in London; he likes what he sees. 2-0.

A car filled with high-school (I hope) girls shout things at me as I walk back from the courthouse. Only heard, "Bitch" and judging from the tone, it wasn't nice. 2-1.

A nice older gentleman waiting in the salon for his wife chats me up. 3-1.

The teller at work knows as I'm cashing my last check in my old name. 3-1-1.

The pharmacist knows, but he put down my gender as female and already treats me as such. 4-1-1.

The teller at Target calls me young lady. 5-1-1.

There was a time when the harassment from the street would ruin my day. Well, it's not 7-0, but all in all, I'd say today was a pretty good day!

Fair Weather Friend

Part of composing is writing lyrics... so here's the poem du jour. Inspired by actual events!

Fair Weather Friend
by
Clio

When I ask you for lunch, you always say,
"It depends on the weather, depends on the day."
But the food tastes the same, no need to pretend
I know you're just a fair weather friend.

Party at ten, I ask when you will come?
I'm not sure, you say, I think it might storm!
The guests are the same, the fun never ends,
When I'm with my fair weather friends.

When the day is fine when the day is right,
That's when I'll find you.
But when the going is rough and life is tough,
I won't depend on you!

Some friends are forever and some for the night,
Some we let go, and some we hold tight.
With me, you see, no need to pretend,
To me you're just a fair weather friend.

Every Day Make Progress (Resolutions #4, 6 & 7)

In my efforts to simplify, I chanced upon a spare DVD drive when purging my technology. Whoo-hoo! As I type, DrEvil (my entertainment PC) is now digitizing two DVDs at a time. No matter how long it takes to do a task, you can't help but feel a great sense of achievement when you shorten by one-half the time required.

And if that feels great, imagine taking a task was going to take an infinitely long time and reducing it to a finite time. Yeah, that feels good too. I've started scanning! What was never going to be finished (cause I hadn't made any progress on it) is now started! Random Task (my printer/scanner/fax/etc) is busy scanning in my notes from high school. Yes... notes from high school. Mostly (typewritten!) reports and such. Also in this batch are all of my college essays (dot-matrix printouts from a Vax system that doesn't exist). I never had these documents in any lasting digital format (or lost the ones I did) so it feels good to scan them in. In fact, some of them were done on a Commodore 64! It will feel better to reduce this filing cabinet of papers down to a deck of cards.

Speaking of cards... making progress on that front too. I've started writing the program that will analyze all of my poker tournaments from this year. Problem is, I didn't have the tool written back in Jan, when I started recording them. I figured it was better to save them, even if it was in a format that I'd have to deal with later. Well... the tool I eventually used (I should have used mine from the start) creates Flash movies.

So, I've written a tool (in Flash) to view these movies and find what are my strengths, weaknesses, how I can win more chips and lose less. That means writing a Flash program to view/analyze flash recordings of my games, AND getting Flash to save JPEG images. Trivial for any real programming language, but in Flash, it requires (in the simplest case) running a Web server and communicating with a PHP script (which actually does the .jpg creation and saving.) Insane! Especially since I've nearly finished the real program written in Java ( should have used that from the start).

The insanity of Flash is also why I just quit my freelance job. (I got fired from my real job for being a transsexual, but this was a client I've freelanced for a few years now.) I just couldn't work they way they work. Which is to say, I couldn't continue to build high-quality kick-ass systems - on the fly - forever in the face of constantly changing requirements. And building them in Flash (for reasons discussed above) just made it worse. When I realized they couldn't build what they want using the technologies they insist on using, I tried to tell them, but they wouldn't listen to the to the only one with the degree in software engineering! LOL! Fine, but when I realized they didn't appreciate what work I was doing, I figured it was long past time to go. Darren, I made miracles for you; I hope you see it someday... so long, and thanks for all the fish!

Happy Leap Day!

Even a shop open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week is closed for 6 hours a year!

One of our earth years (a complete orbit around the sun) does not take an exact number of days (one complete spin of the earth on its axis). It takes 365.2422 days, give or take.

The leap year was introduced by Julius Caesar in 46BC, to make the calendar tidier. The extra day every fourth year made the average year 365.25 days long. This was still about 12 minutes longer than the solar year, which you can get away with on the short term, but in 1267 a monk called Roger Bacon noticed that the calendar had slipped nine days in the 13 intervening centuries.

It then took the church until 1582 to accept that it was celebrating Easter on the wrong week. That year Pope Gregory XIII adjusted the calendar, introducing the system we go by today: every fourth year is a leap year, unless it is divisible by 100 and not by 400. This makes the year 365.2425 days, which is still a little under 26 seconds too long, but nothing to fret about. (Unless you live more than 1,000 years, and even then, it's only about 10 hours.)

As a one off, Gregory's reform also skipped the 10 days they had gained since Caesar's time, jumping from 4 to 15 October 1582. It is said that this provoked demonstrations from people demanding their stolen days back.

This gives me pause... what would happen if the Pope said that tomorrow would really be April 1st... While people might not fear the time has been subtracted from their lives (I hope), they might protest wages lost from their bank account. Since life is real and money isn't, we might not have progressed so much after all.

Gets My Goat!

I'm disgusted to even show this. In fact, I'm not... you're just going to have to click to see this photo of Afghans playing Buzkashi in Kabul.

Buzkashi... doesn't sound that offensive...

Buzkashi, or "goat dragging", is played with two teams of horsemen competing to throw a decapitated goat into a scoring circle.

Wha-wha-what?

Get these people some Polo equipment, or at least a soccer ball! Good god, throwing headless goats... as a game?

I don't get American rodeo sport events either. In fact, I don't really get men at all. This is what too much testosterone will do! An otherwise sensible human being throwing dead goats for fun.

I suppose if you're a rancher this might be a useful skill... for those times when you have to gather and burn the dead from a nearby village slain by your local Taliban... oh, did I just say that out loud?

Stating the (not-so) Obvious

Apparently, to the eyes of the 'normals' there isn't much difference between the people in the above photos. At the risk of stating the obvious, please allow me to state the obvious.

Transsexuals: These are the transgendered ladies in the left column... you would not think of them as men. They look and act like normal women, and think of themselves as women.

Transvestites and Cross-Dressers: The are the straight men in the middle column. You would think of them as dudes in a dress. They don't look or act like women, and they don't think of themselves as women. For various reasons, they just like wearing women's clothes - often with a wig. (The top one is a famous comedian, Eddie Izzard, bonus cool points if you knew that - the man's a genius!)

Drag Queens: These are the gay men in the the right column, usually provocatively dressed, and in a wig. You might think of them as women, you might not. They might look like women, but even if they don't, they act as an exaggeration of an (their) ideal woman. They don't think of themselves as women, but as gay men.

What to make of all this?

Well, since only transsexuals think of themselves as women, they are the only ones who might elect to undergo SRS (Sexual Reassignment Surgery) and they all take hormones. Since they consider themselves woman, if they are into men, they don't think of themselves as gay (because they're a woman...women are into men.) Most people think I'm 'straight' because I've never been with a guy, but I would consider myself more like a gay woman than a straight man.

In reality... I no longer see 'gender' as a 'requirement' (or barrier) for a soul mate. In fact, the labels 'gay' and 'straight' are meaningless to me... I'm into minds and personalities.

If all the labels confuse you, why not check out my earlier post on the Four Dimensions of Gender?

The Psychology of Parasites

We have learned so much about humans and human behavior by studying the behavior of other animals like us (and unlike us). But I wonder, what can we learn by studying the behavior (and evolutionary traits) of the single-celled life forms, bacteria, and parasitic organisms of which we ourselves are comprised?

(You did know you are a compound life form, right? What you perceive as your body is really just a complex ecosystem sustaining many different and exotic forms of life. Cool, eh?)

So I've recently read Parasite Rex, a book given to me by my dear friend Aosof from the Royal Society. He gave it to me a while ago, after he met Mr. Zimmer (it's his job to do that sort of thing), but I've only just been able to read it. Meeting him must have been some experience! This book is a eukaryote's and prokaryote's eye view of life... and it is AMAZING!

Imagine this... you are a complete "animal," yet you are too small to be see with a human's unaided eye (click the book cover). In other words, a white blood cell could kick your ass. Yet, in your world, you could be drifting along in a ocean (really just a river) and follow a cloud of urine upstream and into the body of some animal where you'd get into the kidneys and then bloodstream where you are now free to completely roam around the body until you find a new place to call home, perhaps the intestines, where you could be assured of a steady supply of food with no competition or threats.

Yeah, there's life like that. Pretty amazing little creature, eh? In his book, Carl describes this and other more exotic life forms that can actually manipulate the behaviors of their hosts! Seriously, it's a script right out of an Alien movie, except it's real life.

Some of these creatures can build hard shells around them (cysts) for when then environment gets too rough... no water, food, wrong temperature, etc. These cysts can survive for many, many years, even through unprotected space travel. Really neat!

Whether human or microscopic creature, we both have the same basic needs... to find food and shelter. So my point is... what lessons can we learn from studying creatures like that and applying their successful strategies to the macro world? We are just now using this knowledge to create better cures for diseases, but are there non-medicinal lessons to be learned as well?

Gone, But Not Forgotten

Before I was conscious, I was communicating.
I knew not what I said, but said what I knew.
Now, remnants of those converstations are being preserved,
Scanning letters from pen-pals, and some men-pals,
Like an archeologist preserving old bones.

The ebb and flow of friends, reduced to just memories.
Emma, Tuomas, Severine, M. Columbier too,
Brian, Melissa, Jana, Holly, I remember you.
Though I was just a passing shadow on your screen of life,
Your words were kept, your friendship never dies.

Sometimes we're rich, and sometimes lean, but sometime inbetween we'll meet again.

Your daily inspiration...

In death, time ceases to have meaning; all laws of physics become irrelevant.

Death is the opposite of time.

What dies? Certainly not the body; it just falls into its constituent parts of water and chemicals. That's just mere transformation, not destruction. What of the mind though?

What dies is merely the identity of the collection of parts we call a person. We enter this world naked, we leave it naked; once we understand who that someone is, death no longer bothers us. Nor does time.

Over-educated, Over-worked, Under-paid and Under-appreciated

My niece is dropping out of school at 15. My friend has two kids- neither one with any high school education. How can I assure someone that an education is important?

That may sound silly coming from me, but consider I've taken 85 courses at three different universities, excelled at nearly all of them, and yet... what do I have to show for it? I can make more money selling my body than I can selling my mind. Not that my body is all that... but that's the point!

So how can I assure someone that an education is important when my own has failed to bear fruit? How can I defend the institution I'm from when I can make more money as a whore?

If not money, then what about culture? Well, I can't relate to my family because they watch network TV sitcoms instead of reading books; education didn't help there either.

The only reason I could come up with was because an education is required to do X. But... what if 23 years later, turns out X really isn't what you want to do?

Two Kinds of Violence...

Did you realize that not all violence is created equal?

The difference between watching violence in a movie and in the news is very subtle, but very, very significant.

Consider watching, say, an explosion, or a car crash...
In a movie, the violence is fake. No one really dies.
But watch the same thing on the news, and you're watching someone die.

There's a difference, and whether or not you can feel it, there's a difference on your soul!

Consider that next time they show an event where someone (or many people) dies over and over and over and over and over and over and over.

Your daily perspective...

You are what you eat... you know this right?

In the same way that the food you consume provides the building blocks your body needs to function (grow, fight germs, heal, etc.) so too does the media you consume provide the building blocks for your mind.

Seriously.

So what's you're media diet? As an example, consider music.

A person who consumes media content rich in classical music will have a different life outlook than one with a diet rich in pop, or rock, or rap, or heavy metal, or even jazz. (I love music; I'm not making value judgments here, just making facts.)

Works for video too. A person who watches too much violence not only becomes more desensitized to it (over-exposure to anything desensitizes) but they, over time, will develop violent tendencies.

Nonsense, you say... I watched Bugs and Daffy cause (and suffer) lots of violence, and it didn't effect me! Well, that wasn't violence, that was humor. Think about it... Pulp fiction is (supposed to be) violent... Bugs Bunny is (supposed to be) funny. When the bomb blows up Mr. Coyote, his face is all blackened and his hair blown back. That's funny. If it showed his guts flying through the air and blood everywhere, that's violent. Family Guy drives this point home in a spoof where Elmer shoots Bugs. Instead of the normal "cartoon violence, " we see graphic images of Bugs writhing in pain, disemboweled, with Elmer standing over him, delivering a final neck break.

I'm uneasy about making violence funny, too. There's just too damn much of it, especially to be used as a vehicle for entertainment. Shrug. Maybe it's just a symptom.

Well, hear me now, believe me later, but it's for the same reason why brainwashing works. Constant, repeated exposure alters behavior.
Constant, repeated exposure alters behavior.
Keep that in mind next time you pan through the TV guide!

Short Attention Span Theatre

I'm a bit shocked at the quickness in which Americans tend to forget, and at the same time (and for the same reasons), concerned about this election turning into Political Pop Idol.

Possible causes?

• Too much media prevents long term retention of any of it.
• The media is hyped (and hyping) uncontrollably
• Americans are so numb, they need actually need the hype to notice/care
• Americans are so hooked on drama, they need to interject it into everyday life

Well, don't forget, you are what you eat!

Plain Jane

Today marks a significant point during my transition: today, I went out with no makeup and plain clothes and was treated like a genetic girl! Yay!!!

To put it in other terms, when I first started trying, I hardly ever passed as genetic girl (GG)... I looked like a boy in girl's clothes. That was over a decade ago.

When I'm done transitioning, I expect to always pass as a GG.

So, today, I'm somewhere between 0% and 100%. Most people now see (and treat) me as a woman, but every now and then someones sees me as a boy (but even then, they still treat me as the woman they first saw! :)

This is new! Just within the past year, I finally started passing as a GG! Before that, if I was ignored, I'd pass, but when scrutinized... no. You can imagine how happy it made me to finally pass under a closer look!

Makeup (until recently) was essential, for I have pale skin and dark hair. But, after nearly two years of laser hair removal treatments, I finally have a 24 hour shelf life!

Also, learning to do my hair helped a lot! (Thanks Judith and the girls at Cortex!)

It honestly makes me as happy to pass as GG as it did finishing my Ph.D.! (It also felt just as traumatic getting there!)

So today I'm still not as confident as I want to be... I don't bring attention to myself yet, but after today, that seems closer than ever!

Music ... Food for the Geek

I'm so excited to have just rediscovered a large library of music (250+ hours) that I have not heard for nearly 20 years! Not just any music, mind you, but music that deeply inspired my own compositional style!

Wanna hear for yourself? Okay, check out the following two links, but don't worry about the graphics or what they are, I'll explain that later... for now, just listen to the music.

• Unreal
• Second Reality

Perhaps an explanation is in order? First some context on the music. Nearly 20 years ago, while in college, I was writing music for video games. This was a significant challenge for me because I was used to composing music using MIDI sequencers and synthesizers. In video games, the computer became the instrument.

Recall that this is before .mp3s and before the comparatively huge resources computers have now... back then, most computer programs were under 1.44Mb (they fit on a floppy disk) and most computers had, if you were lucky, 1/2 Mb of RAM available for everything... the operating system, the program, and the music. A typical mp3 is six times that large!

So, making music on a PC, or making a PC make music, was tricky business! When I started we only had four 'voices' where a voice could be a sampled recording. Again, there wasn't mp3 compression back then, so the samples had to be TINY (and recorded at awful quality) or you wouldn't have enough memory to play it. When I stopped (because grad school got too hard), we had 16-track editors, but again, you didn't have much memory to work with.

That first link above? Just four voices! The second one? Eight.

But what about the video? Have you ever heard of the PC Demo scene? The idea, back then, was to show off the processing power of the mighty 386. Again, this was waaay before today's quad and dual-core Pentiums. Your mobile phone is probably faster now. Amigas were doing it for a while, and they would have parties where groups of kids (programmers) would write these elaborate presentations filled with (then) mind-blowing graphics and animations ... you know ... things never before seen on a computer? That kind of stuff. As a young college student learning advanced math, computer architecture, and assembly programming, I was instantly hooked.

You had to be clued in to find them... this was before the Web. They were mostly European-based parties. And since it was a party, attended by people who were into real-life discos, the music had to rock as well.

It was all incredibly synergistic... listening to that music, watching the computer do animation tricks I'd never seen before, while at the same time gaining the knowledge needed to understand how they were built. It was also my first exposure to Rave/Trance/Dance/Electronica music, and I didn't know what to make of it. I couldn't break it down like songs on the radio because it was mostly effect-based, but I fell in love with it. I searched out every composer in the scene, every demo, and I saved those tiny music files. It was my first data-harvesting experience.

You know I save (and organize) everything digital, right?

So now, nearly 20 years later, imagine my surprise when I realized that the same mp3 player I've been using since that time (Winamp) plays all those files! With its help, I've now taken those 400 songs and turned them into mp3s! Listening to them is like a comforting reunion with an old friend... I'm filled with the energy and joy I once had... before the gender dysphoria set in... before life got complicated.

I can't wait to see the effect that consuming all this music will have on my composing! :)

Send me an email if you want a copy! (Oh, as an example of how tiny the sound files had to be... all 4,543 songs are less than 972 MB as originals; as mp3s, they are 16 GB! That's a 16-to-1 reduction over MP3s, which are themselves 10-to-1 reductions of CD-quality audio!)

Fast food, faster buildings...

I can't keep up! You've heard me complain that all Muncie has is fast-food restaurants, right?

Tell me if this makes sense.

TacoBell builds a new building, three blocks away from their old one. They then close the old one and leave the building decrepit.

Bob Evans does the same thing, but they build their building in the parking lot and then tear town their old one.

Then another TacoBell store on the other side of town does the same thing.

This is what you get if you believe in things like "the economy" ... madness!

And, just for fun...

There is a new restaurant opened up ... on the building it says, "Authentic Mexican," and on the same sign underneath, "We sell Gyros!"

Since when did the Mediterranean become a part of Mexico?

I thank God everyday the only sushi restaurant within 50 miles of me (itself just one mile away) is also the highest quality sushi restaurant I've seen. It's the only place I eat out at in this town.

Trans... not gender! Transcoding! (Resolution #4)

Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.” — Henry David Thoreau

Been going through a lot of old media lately, converting most of it to a common format. At this very second, there's one computer busy burning DVDs to disk (275 down, approx. 200 to go), one computer converting VHS tapes to mpg files (56 down, 18 to go), and one converting paper to jpg files. That's going to take a while. I mean, once the books are done, then there's the sheet music, and then all of the folders and papers from 10th grade through 23rd grade. (I'm not kidding!) That's the easy part... scanning the books is what I'm not looking forward to.

Fortunately, all CDs were converted long ago as was most video and photographs.

Why do this? If not just to simplify my environment and reduce entropy (dissolve it, actually), then think of space... right now what non-digital media I have occupies two bookshelves, a filing cabinet, and three boxes. I could reduce all of that down - with no loss in quality- to something the size of a deck of cards.

I don't even want to think of the work saved in moving just one more time.

It's all part of a larger plan for a happy life:

Step one, eliminate non-essential material goods. Toys, gadgets, knick-knacks, clothes, everything not needed, and everything which doesn't do something in the simplest way.

Step two, digitize personal media.

The result? Light living! It's scary at first, but is freeing at the same time.

In case you're curious, all together, everything will fit on three stackable, 1-terabyte drives, altogether about as large as a shoebox. Not bad for every photo, CD, DVD, book, notebook, VHS tape, cassette, and CD-ROM I've ever owned, ay? Still, I look forward to 10 terabytes in your pocket, or better yet, on a chip! :)

197 DVDs to go...
16 VHS tapes to go...
172 Books to go...
13 years of school notes to go...

My First Day In London; My First Protest

This day in herstory...
My first sightseeing day in London, February 15, 2003. I take the tube from the Queensbury area and alight at the Westminster exit and find myself immersed in the above... and below!

You remember the "Million Man" march on Washington? This was 5 times larger, and I unwittingly popped up from underground right in the middle of it!

My first day outside America, and already I'm an activist!