A Dream Defined (Resolution #7)

I think I got fired today because I'm transgendered. No matter, I was going to quit anyway; they weren't good people. The bad news is that I now don't have a job in Canada, making it harder to get a Visa. (That's why I hadn't quit yet.)

I guess it's no big deal cause the job I had wouldn't have supported living the lifestyle in VC I wanted, and as fate would have it, I had just prior stumbled upon an alternative path that has the potential to realize my fullest dreams there while also capitalizing on all my previous endeavors.

Moreover, it's a path which could lead toward providing a positive role model, not just for other transgendered persons, but for straight folks as well!

Curious?

• Step one: attend the last WSOP circuit event - conveniently held in the state where I live.
• Step two: play in 4 or 5 events, possibly the main event too (if things go very well).
• Step two and 1/2: win enough money to comfortably buy in the WSOP main event + Rio lodging.
• Step three: play in the WSOP final event
  
• Step three point nine: make the final table
• Step four point one: square up debts
  
• Step four point two: help out friends and family
• Step five: move to Vancouver (after staying in Atlanta for a good spell)
• Step six: compose music, write lyrics, produce music
• Step seven: finish my big ideas.
  

Don't you think a transsexual at the 2008 WSOP final table (and therefore on ESPN2 for the next year) might go a long way toward providing a positive image toward alternative genders? At the very least, it would make people think, and that couldn't be all bad!

Quotes from Blaise Pascal

Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him?

In each action we must look beyond the action at our past, present, and future state, and at others whom it affects, and see the relations of all those things. And then we shall be very cautious.

Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness.

Too much and too little wine. Give him none, he cannot find truth; give him too much, the same.

There are some who speak well and write badly. For the place and the audience warm them, and draw from their minds more than they think of without that warmth.

Human beings must be known to be loved; but Divine beings must be loved to be known.

Words differently arranged have a different meaning, and meanings differently arranged have different effects.

A trifle consoles us, for a trifle distresses us.

All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.

All of our reasoning ends in surrender to feeling.

As men are not able to fight against death, misery, ignorance, they have taken it into their heads, in order to be happy, not to think of them at all.

Desire and force between them are responsible for all our actions; desire causes our voluntary acts, force our involuntary.

Do you wish people to think well of you? Don't speak well of yourself.

Earnestness is enthusiasm tempered by reason.

Eloquence is a painting of the thoughts.

It is not good to be too free. It is not good to have everything one wants.

Kind words do not cost much. Yet they accomplish much.
Our nature consists in motion; complete rest is death.

Our soul is cast into a body, where it finds number, time, dimension. Thereupon it reasons, and calls this nature necessity, and can believe nothing else.

Since we cannot know all that there is to be known about anything, we ought to know a little about everything.

The sensitivity of men to small matters, and their indifference to great ones, indicates a strange inversion.

The supreme function of reason is to show man that some things are beyond reason.

Time heals griefs and quarrels, for we change and are no longer the same persons. Neither the offender nor the offended are any more themselves.
Blaise Pascal

Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.

We run carelessly to the precipice, after we have put something before us to prevent us seeing it.

I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.

Airline Rates Rise 1000%

One used to be able to fly all over Europe for one pound ($2), sometimes just 49 pence ($1). Now though it seems, Ryan air has done what it wanted to do and has moved on to stage two of it's business: ten pound ($20) flights all over Europe.

Still, it's better than the $200 I have to pay to travel around my region in the US.

(Don't believe me? Visit http://ryanair.com!

Always a traveller...

I just read my old travel diary from when I was 17 and jetting solo to France to spend some time with people I never met. Seemed like a good idea at the time (and in retrospect), but I was too American... I couldn't appreciate where I was and what I was doing, and the effect of being immersed in history and culture while at the same time, not really knowing much about it... well, the effects (along with culture shock) blew away my little mind.

I didn't get on well with my friends (they were all older and did two things: go to the beach (in Normandy) or go to the bar. Sounds ideal, but I was allergic to the Sun, and back then, very, very square. I didn't smoke, drink, or do any drugs at all, (LOL, not that you'd know it now!) and I was so young and high on life, I didn't much care to be around that kind of scene.

So, I ended up staying alone in Paris in a one-star hotel until I ran out of money, then spent a few nights at the airport until I could get a flight home on standby. I nearly got arrested for - I kid you not - playing a synthesizer (through headphones) in the restrooms! Turns out, I was stealing electricity. Who knew?

Looking back on the diary, I now realize that I'm a traveler. I mean, 15 moves in 15 years? And so I begin to look forward to the next trip. As I am (once again) on the verge of being homeless and jobless, I can't help but wonder... where to next?

You know, Eastern thought affirms that we are all travelers, and that the path of constant self-cultivation is a lonely one; yet one that we all must inevitably take if we are to derive true meaning from this existence. The only constant is change, right?

To have come so far... to have so far to go... to still be alone... will I ever cease yearning for stability and companionship? If so, will it be because I've met my soulmate, or because I've found inner peace?

And what does that make me anyway... a traveler who brings with her (in her purse) every important memory of her life? Imagine that... only the clothes on your back, yet contained on a small chip, in vivid detail, every sight, sound, thought, event, award, movie, song you've ever wanted to keep.

Is that the exemplar case of not being held down by material possessions, or is it technology-enabled self delusion, substituting material possessions with digital ones, and if so... does that matter, since it all fits in your pocket?

And what then, if such chip were lost... wouldn't that feel like losing a large part of yourself? (Yes, it would! Imagine losing everything in your home to a fire!) But... I can help to wonder, which inhibits growth more... having possessions or being without? From my experience, the things you own end up owning you... but is that because of their physical mass, or the psychological addictions they create?

My guess is that the physical mass sucks you in, weighs you down like gravity. Since I'm converting everything physical to digital over the next month, I'll keep you posted on the progress!

Not So Perfect

Since Jr. High, I've gotten the highest grade in every class I've taken except for one in high school, two at Michigan State, and two at Georgia Tech. Most people are impressed with the perfect record during my undergraduate years at Ball State, but I want to talk about the imperfect classes.

I got a 'B' in highschool for gym class my senior year. My teacher was Bill Harrell, the head coach of the Men's basketball team... you know, the one immortialized in the movie Hoosiers? He took our school to it's eighth state championship the year before and had, in my view, a disdain toward all non-basketball sports. He lowered my grade because I was doing 'dangerous dives' during our week of swimming. (We played basketball the other 20 weeks.) Although a backward, 1-1/2 sommersault 1-1/2 twists might look like a dangerous dive, I was just practicing my list of dives for the upcoming sectionals.

At Michigan State, I took a class on computer vision that thumped me hard, partly because the class required a knowledge of mathematics that at the time, was beyond majik to me. The follow-up course was more managable, but the math was still just as majikal.

That same year, I took a course on algorithmic graph theory, a real beast of a class, for it taught how to think like a generalized mathematical proof. I was more proud of not failing that class than I was of acing the others!

At Georiga Tech, my first class was one on computer language design. I hadn't yet learned to think in language grammars (word math) and that class was downright painful. The 2nd most painful class ever.

The most painful was an advanced mathematics course at Tech. After two straight weeks of not understanding even 5 minutes of any lecture, I dropped that class like Little Boy. It was an entire course on just one part of one theorem of some mathematician from the 1800s! I must have been on crack when I signed up for it initially.

So what did I learn?

>twirling hair<

Math is hard!

Saved By Simcoe (Resolution #2)

Today was another HUGE milestone day! I'm so excited, for although I am only taking one step, it is a large leap forward on my path to womanhood! Taking hormones can be viewed as just another sign of my commitment, but for me, today, it's so much more. Not only does it provide my body with 'vitamins' that I have been missing, but it brings me closer to female and further from male. I'm going to grow breasts... my body fat will redistribute... my skin will become softer... my hair will become fuller! Moreover, just being able to get a prescription for hormones has been a difficult endeavor, and I'm now indebted to the tranny who came before me through Indy. Let me explain.

While visiting my trannie friends in the SF Bay Area, they gave me enough estrogen and testosterone blockers for 2 1/2 months. (In pill form, they had since moved on to patch form and no longer needed the pills.) The original plan was to take the pills (once I got my life stable and in at least a not unsupportive environment) for a month, and if after that time I still felt like I wanted them, that I still wanted to become female, then I would continue taking them and during the second month, find a doctor who would then prescribe me the proper meds/blood tests, etc.

Well, I started on Oct. 4, 2007, just over two months ago. Unfortunately, I was turned down for even a visit by every endocrinologist around town. Turns out a transgendered person can't just go to a doctor for things sie needs, sie has to first get a psychiatric evaluation FOR TWO YEARS that says you're not insane, because, evidently, you must be insane if you want to change your gender. Oh no! :-/

I was down to my last week's worth of pills and did NOT want to interrupt my transformation, so you can imagine it was a stressful time!

Well, I stumbled across a tranny support board where someone ahead of me on the path recommended a doctor down in Indy that was 'sympathetic' to transgendered needs. Figuring that I'd at least get a referral to a shrink (who also won't accept trans visits w/o a doctor referral) I was at least happy to be making some forward progress.

Imagine my surprise, relief, and and joy when, after consulting with me for nearly an hour, he decided to prescribe hormones! Oh blessed man! He even offered to prescribe anti-depressants (cause most in my position are depressed, and if you didn't notice by earlier posts, I was, but I declined for a few reasons. Why? Well, that's another post. :)

So, I went from despair at the though of regressing, to bliss with a bone-fide prescription (with blood work tests scheduled!) all in one day! YAY!

Funny enough, it turns out, once you have the papers, you can go to Wal-Mart to get the drugs. I didn't (boycotting since 2001), but I did go to Target. It's interesting that the meds for something so exotic (changing your sex) can be gotten at places so common, even in small town America! It's because menopausal women take the estrogen, and the testosterone blockers are useful for certain kinds of prostate cancer. Who knew?

But that's how I feel... like I'm finally freeing my body from the cancer of testosterone... and she feels GREAT!

A Legal Sense of Humour (Resolution #3)

I filled all the paperwork at the courthouse today to legally change my name. YAY! This was a huge milestone!!!

Turns out, there's a lot you have to do (and a lot you have to pay!) In addition to lots of paperwork for the court, you also have to put an ad in the local paper for three weeks announcing the change, and you have to get the fact that you did so certified by the newspaper. You also have to pay the paper for the honor.

But, I did, and I strutted myself down to the paper from the courthouse in my stiletto boots and back again, and I was given a court date to appear in court.

Previously, my longest supporting friend asked me what my new birthday would be, and I didn't know what she meant. I had only just recently picked a new name!

When I got my court date, it was obvious what my new birthday would be... April 1st, 2008!

It seems life (and the court system) is not without a sense of humor!

A Great Start to a Great Year

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

• Resolution #1: Full time Clio; all Clio, all the time.
• Resolution #2: Doctor+Meds (to complete transition)
• Resolution #3: Make it all legal (Birth Certificate, D/L, Passport)
• Resolution #4: Digitize all media (books, DVDs, CDs, VHS tapes, audio tapes, photos, papers)
• Resolution #5: Return to composing
• Resolution #6: Progress on private programs
• Resolution #7: Final table, WSOP
• Resolution #8: Forward progress on all previous resolutions

I didn't have a date this year, and I didn't want to go hang out in a smoky bar, but I did want to do something social so I played in a small (385 people) online poker tournament. The tourney started at 10pm and ended around 3am... I know cause I won! :)

I'll use the money to practice for the WSOP.

A promising start for the new year!

xoxo,
Clio

Worst Christmas Ever

Ever!

My family has a typical Midwestern approach to dealing with problems... ignore them and hope they go away.

Now, my family has gone from not talking about the white elephant in the room to actively insisting it isn't there.

After being obviously out to them for nearly two years, they refuse to call me she, or Clio, despite me looking like I do. Thanks mom! Thanks dad! (I pity them both.)

Worst Christmas Ever!

Swimming in the Gene Desert

Just found out today that I'm sterile. I went to the sperm bank a few days ago to make what I thought would be the first of a few deposits for after I'm on estrogen and no longer producing sperm. Too late. There will be no others like me. Genetically speaking, anyway.

At first, this caused me great pain. I mean, I didn't want kids now, but I did think of having them someday. I can't tell you how many people were insensitive to this by telling me that I can still adopt... I wasn't hurting because I thought I could never be a parent! There's a difference between being a parent and having a child.)

I didn't know if mom had given up on the idea of me having kids yet, so I was worried to tell her, but figured I should nonetheless. She's been pushing hard for nearly two decades so I figured knowing they would never come would be better than a futile hope.

When I told her how upset I was about this, she told me, more or less, to not worry about it because I would have probably made a lousy parent! LOL. I mean, literally, that's what she said, but in context, I took a deeper meaning from it, and in the end, her words did help.

You see, Ego was telling me that it was a waste for me not to have kids. If you knew me, that makes sense. However, I realized how little I connect or identify with the rest of my genetic family and that any kids I might have would have a much larger gene pool than just me to draw from... meaning my kids would probably be more like the rest of the family than me. Dunno if this is true or if my genes are more likely, but in any case, this seems very plausible, and if so, it is a pretty good reason to not feel sad!

Besides, we can change the world in many ways... we can have a child, pass along our genes and our knowledge... or, we could inspire a young mind with an idea... start a company that does world good... write a book that changes the outlook of millions, and so on.

And finally, I mused on the life of a spider family I've been living with. There's no food for a spider in my house, save one time a year when there are a few little wood bugs, but nonetheless, here comes one from a previous egg. I let it be, and watch it spin its web that will only collect dust. The life of this poor spider doesn't have much point (to me), and I'm forced to consider that maybe my own life is like that.

But even if it is, and I nonetheless desire to pass on my genes... there's always cloning!

On passing...

Okay, before reading any further, let's have some fun, shall we?

I want you to watch a video of two teams playing basketball, and I want you to count the number of times the team in the white shirts pass the ball.

Easy peasy, right? Here's the link, go on! You can do it!

Remember, count the # of passes by the white team!

http://viscog.beckman.uiuc.edu/grafs/demos/15.html

+++ SPOILER ALERT! +++

How many times did the white team pass the ball?

Did you notice anything odd about the video? Did you see the gorilla waltz in the middle of the group and thump his chest before waltzing off?

For real, watch again if you missed.

If you did miss it, don't feel bad... amazing as it sounds, around 50% of people do!

In another experiment, a person standing in the lobby is approached by some stranger asking for directions. During the explanation, two men carrying a door walk right between the person and the stranger. During that time, the stranger is replaced by another completely different looking stranger. When done giving directions, the stranger asks the person if sie noticed that he's not the first person sie originally was talking to. Again, about 50% of people never notice!!!

Amazing, isn't it? Well, when I first started trying to pass (as a woman, not a basketball), I noticed a similar phenomenon. If on first glance, I appeared as a genetic girl to strangers, I tended to remain that way... it seems they expect me to be female, so they just continue assuming I am. Unless of course, they think I'm pretty, then I get scrutinized.

My Cali trannie friends have suggested that breasts are the most important trait for "presenting as female," but I've found hair to be equally important. Although both can be overcome with gloss/lipstick, heels (esp. stilettos) and earrings. Then again, you could have all of that and not pass if you walk, strut, or otherwise carry yourself like a man. Of course, if you have the legs for it, a skirt helps, but that will generally get you more attention, and thus, more scrutiny.

There will come a day soon where I'll always pass as a genetic girl, even in a swimsuit; I just gotta give the hormones time to do their majik. And when that happens, I'll look back on posts like this and go, phew! I'm glad that's over! :)

Jahiliyya - being ignorant of guidance from God

The last few days have been filled hosting for my Kuwaiti family. Yes... my Arab, Muslim family is now in the Midwest America... I felt obligated to show them a little culture while they visit the place furthest from.

If you ever read the 9/11 Commission Report (google "9/11 pdf"), it says that the roots of the fundamental Islamic movement can be traced to one man, Sayyid Qutb, sent by Egypt to study in the US during the 1940s (p.51). He was appalled by Western culture, saying we were affected by barbarism, licentiousness, and unbelief (a condition known by Muslims as jahiliyya).

This was fine until he observed that jahiliyya was spreading, not just through the Western world, but also penetrating into Islam lands, thereby posing as a direct threat to Islam and her culture, caused by Western culture.

... there's more, but 60 years later, here we are, and simplistically, that's why 'they' hate 'us'... because our culture promotes god-lessness by worshiping money and actors, we advocate freedom but lack within ourselves the restraint needed to responsibly wield it, and we are barbaric; we don't care for our citizens and in some cases, even kill them, so how can we be civil to others?

Knowing that... I was in Kuwait 20 years ago and then, it looked like a middle-eastern city. Now they tell me with all of the corporations and media, it looks like an adjunct of America. Advertisements for Western companies are now peppered through the city. Western fashion with its emphasis on sexually evocative models line the store fronts. Etc., etc.

For what it's worth...

Of course, not all Muslims feel Western culture is undesirable, which causes further friction and fragmenting because that would appear to bolster Qutb's claims! (Now because of Westernism, Islam is being attacked from without and from within!)

I'm not sure we're entirely to blame for internal affairs within the Muslim world, but looking around at my America, I don't completely disagree with Qutb. I'm an ex-pat for precisely those reasons; I too feel the American people have lost their way. To me, it's self-evident in our apathy, obesity rates, drug use, materialism-as-substitute-for-love, and anger management issues.

Although I don't hate America for her decadence, it does cause me to blush.

Hello

We knew all along you can't keep a good girl down... but she's beginning to see the light!


And so the growth upward begins, not yet in favorable conditions, but with the knowledge that even in the worst... we always look for the best.

HRT starts today! (self-medicating)

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Goodbye

Reluctantly, and for health reasons, my consciousness has decided to implement an isolationist policy regarding my current circle of 'friends'. I am worn out from striving to be there and be helpful for my friends and, in return, always feeling let down and alone when I need help. In short, I'm fed up with being used, abused, and neglected. It all ends today. No more free information, no more free help, no more favors, no more meditation/prayers for them, no more no more.

We've officially hit bottom.

Signing off

A Pointless Debate...

I don't suffer fools well. I'm not sure if this is a virtue or a vice, but people must think me an opinionated, egotistical arse because of it.

Recently, I poo-pooed a slick-looking, HD-quality YouTube (oh sorry, GoogleTube) video of someone saying that Humans are not causing climate change. I was accused of having a closed, unenlightened mind because I refused to watch an hour+ long video on the grounds that I knew it was based on a scientifically invalid premise, yet it considered itself 'science'.

Here's some raw numbers in order to gain a perspective and to understand why I appear to be so dismissive.

But first, the summary.

=============================================
1- CO2 warms the planet
2- humans produced more CO2 in 50 years than found in the atmosphere over 400,000 years
3- humans are reducing plankton blooms, which 'eat' CO2
4- humans are reducing forests, which 'eat' CO2
=============================================

Humans are not only causing climate change but reducing the Earth's ability to self-regulate!!! Now comes the numbers and refs.

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**Fact #1: CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Uncontroversially, the more of it there is in the atmosphere, the warmer the Earth gets [1].

**Fact #2: There is around 750 billion tons of carbon in the atmosphere with 800 billion tons dissolved in the oceans [2].

**Fact #3: The US alone has been putting 5 billion tons of carbon in the atmosphere every year since 1990 [3]. That's 50 billion tons per decades, and I remind you, that this is long after America's peak industrial output. Looking at the rest of the world nations, the total annual output has gone from 10 billion tons (1960) to 25 billion tons (2000) PER YEAR [4]!

Very conservatively, that's 600 billions tons of CO2 produced in the past 50 years!!! Did you ever wonder why ice cores show we're at the highest concentrations of CO2 in the past 400,000 years [5]???

Now I'd be inclined to believe that despite this HUMAN influence, NATURE might self-balance, but HUMANS are also destroying the capability of NATURE to do this!

**Fact #4: Plankton convert CO2 from the air into Oxygen (supplying around 50% of the Oxygen in the atmosphere) while storing the CO2 in the ocean, but HUMANS are reducing this effect by destroying the ocean ecosystem by polluting the ocean with chemicals and by damming rivers which reduce sediment flow to the ocean. (Land sediment and the minerals in them are responsible for plankton blooms - it's what they 'eat'. Damn up the rivers, block the source of food for the bottom of the food chain [6] To put pesticides (things that kill living things) in the sediment is to put them in the base of the food chain.

While this seriously threatens our food supply, it is only one way human are causing/inducing/accelerating climate change by reducing the effect of the Earth to stabilize itself.

**Fact #5: Forests also convert C02 into Oxygen, the other major source of Oxygen in our atmosphere. HUMANS are reducing this natural conversion - causing a buildup of CO2 - by destroying forests. (For more forest facts, see [7] and [8])

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You can come to your own conclusions, but don't think I have a closed mind simply because I won't entertain YouTube/Google videos of professor/skeptics saying that humans are not affecting the environment.

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References:
[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]