Random Stuff 2.

My boyfriend got a new job. And by luck, he'll even be making more than he did before. Our schedules are identical, and will be so for the next couple of months, and our job locations are close to each other, meaning we can commute together.

The problem is the two hours of total driving time a day. It was costing us a fortune in gas for his truck, so i decided to stop delaying the inevitable and go buy a car. After several headache-inducing experiences in the past, i knew i couldn't afford to go down the path of buying cheap old cars and hoping for the best.

i needed something new and under warranty. Since i won't drive anything but a Honda anymore, i went online and built one. A couple of weeks later, by blind luck i stumbled across the same car downtown, and ended up getting it for about 5k less. The payment is low, and the savings in gas alone covers most of it.

Bad economy equals win for girl who knows the haggle game.


After applying for the loan, some time passed before the dealership manager came back, and with a very uncertain air about him, informed me that i had triggered an identity theft alert....through a homeland security network.

Yay, transition.

i couldn't answer one of the many questions i was supposed to pass on the spot, to keep them from detaining me long enough for law enforcement to show up. How i'm supposed to remember the monthly amount of my auto payment, if any, eleven years ago, i don't know.

Eventually it was straightened out, but outing myself (and then having groups of salesmen check me out from a distance for the next couple of days each time i showed up) wasn't the greatest. Ultimately, it was resolved and they treated me fairly.

Just...curiously. i can't blame them. They were nice guys, and i would recommend them to others.

Also by coincidence, the credit union that wouldn't give me my surgery loan because i don't owe anyone any money* financed the car, which has now opened the door to having them work with me in the future on said surgery. i'm going to find out what can happen.

Maybe things will actually work themselves out after all.

We saw the movie 2012. It turns out the movie title is also the running time in minutes.

There were actors in it. They delivered lines. The sound was there and the image was in focus. That's about the only endorsement i can summon up.



*This country is so fucked up.

Household Chemicals.

i don't do 'public service announcements'. But sometimes something comes along i can't resist.

From the activist website People Against Dirty.

"This bill would require that household cleaning products bear labels that state complete and accurate ingredients, giving consumers the right to know what is in the household products they use in their homes and around their families (just like personal care products and food labels are required to do)."

Watch the video, laugh, or get creeped out (or both at once), then visit the site for a chance to voice your opinion.

L4D 2 (Updated).

i *love* the thrill of a good scare.

And very few things have delivered a scare to me better and more interactively than the original Left 4 Dead. Unfortunately, the fun isn't for everyone this time around.

From Kotaku.

"High impact violence, says the Classification Board. That’s the reason why you won’t be playing Left 4 Dead 2 when it’s released in November throughout the world…except in Australia."

* The game contains violence that is high in impact and is therefore unsuitable for persons aged under 18 to play."

* It notes that this violence is “inflicted upon ‘the Infected’ who are living humans infected with a rabies-like virus that causes them to act violently."

* The report singles out the use of melee weapons as those that “inflict the most damage” and cause “copious amounts of blood spray and splatter (sic), decapitations and limb dismemberment, or even cause intestines to spill from the wounds."

lol.

* In conclusion, the Board finds that the “interactive nature of the game increases the overall impact of the frequent and intense depictions of violence. This coupled with the graphic depictions of blood and gore combine to create a playing impact which is high."

* Interestingly, the report also reveals that it wasn’t a unanimous decision and that “a minority of the Board is of the opinion that the violence is strong in playing impact and therefore warrants an MA15+ classification” instead. However, the majority voted to refuse classification."

So stupid.

i feel for those who have been denied a fun experience in Australia by their Mommy and Daddy. Several of my X-Box friends are in Australia, and we've had some great times online.

Too bad we'll be separated for the sequel.

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This game is fucking impossible. Seriously.

'Easy' feels like 'advanced' on the original. And i have yet to make it to the end of the Dark Carnival, with all the nightmare-inducing demonic zombie clowns and such. Much less make it through with the damn gnome.

That gnome will be the end of my sanity, i swear. But i must press on. The X-Box version of me MUST have a Depeche Mode t-shirt!

i stumbled across this online. At least somebody's having an easy time of it.

More. More. More.

What do we do now? Laugh? Scream? Cry?

Gaze expressionless into the heart of it all ? Any possible emotions you may have summoned up now dead and gone?

Watch it to the end, and then decide for yourself.

i'm going to throw myself off a cliff now.

Sarah Palin.

A lot of people develop a bleeding headache when confronted with this waking american-made nightmare. But getting a sense of this woman is done best at the source.


From David Brooks:

'Speaking the day before Palin's new book, "Going Rogue," is slated to be officially released, Brooks scoffed at the notion that the ex-governor was somehow ready to be the face of the GOP.'

"She's a joke," he told ABC's "This Week." "I mean, I just can't take her seriously. We have got serious problems in the country. Barack Obama is trying to handle war. We just had a guy elected Virginia governor who is probably the model for future of the Republican Party, Bob McDonnell: Pretty serious guy, pragmatic, calm, kind of boring. The idea that this potential talk show host is considered seriously for the Republican nomination, believe me, it will never happen. Republican primary voters are just not going to elect a talk show host."


From Geoffrey Dunn:

'To read Sarah Palin's shockingly shallow Going Rogue, one is immediately struck by how nasty and vindictive Palin is, and that her book is little more than a veiled mechanism for settling scores with old foes who have triumphed over her throughout Palin's lifetime.'

'Is Palin really going rogue? Hardly. Getting even is more like it.'

'Palin's biggest score to settle is with those senior advisers--Republicans all--in the John McCain campaign, on whose shoulders Palin lays the blame for her failed and tortured debut on the American political stage last fall.'

'McCain aides are shocked-- though not entirely surprised--by Palin's allegations. They caught enough of her act during the 60-plus days of her campaign sojourn to know that she plays "fast and loose with the truth."


From Sam Stein:

'Sarah Palin's much-discussed book, "Going Rogue," hasn't even been officially released yet and already its accuracy is in question.'

'The Huffington Post has obtained internal McCain campaign emails -- addressed to and by the former vice presidential candidate -- that directly contradict or cast serious doubt on several of Palin's assertions. The emails were passed along by a mid-level staffer who called early excerpts of "Going Rogue", a serious mixing of truth and imagination."


From Sarah Palin:

"But your dad's a science teacher," Schmidt objected. "Yes." "Then you know that science proves evolution," added Schmidt. "Parts of evolution," I said. "But I believe that God created us and also that He can create an evolutionary process that allows species to change and adapt." Schmidt winced and raised his eyebrows. In the dim light, his sunglasses shifted atop his hear (sic). I had just dared to mention the C-word: creationism. But I felt I was on solid factual ground.'


From Colin Robinson:

"Sarah Palin isn't going away. That's clear," Robinson says. "She's going to be an important force for some time to come in American politics and we think she's a dangerous force. So we wanted to take the fight up against her."


From Sean Hannity:

'Sarah Palin took a beating from the mainstream media. From the second she arrived on the national scene, vicious lies were spread about her. And of course, the Anointed One's fans in the press, they never bothered to correct any of it.'

2012.

When you don't know where to start, fall back on reality by consensus.

'Mainstream Mayanist scholars argue that the idea that the Long Count calendar "ends" in 2012 misrepresents Maya history. To the modern Maya, 2012 is largely irrelevant, and classic Maya sources on the subject are scarce and contradictory, suggesting that there was little if any universal agreement among them about what, if anything, the date might mean.'

'Certain predictions about how the world could end in 2012 (alignment with a black hole, collision with a rogue planet, polar shifts) have been rejected as pseudoscience by the scientific community.'

And laughed at by much of the public at large. But start babbling about fantasy fiction from Revelations, and see just how irrational otherwise sane people can get.

'Mayan elder Apolinario Chile Pixtun and Mexican archaeologist Guillermo Bernal both note that "apocalypse" is a Western concept that has little or nothing to do with Mayan beliefs. Bernal believes that such ideas have been foisted on the Maya by Westerners because their own myths are "exhausted".'

*LOL*.

i have such a fondness for reclusive, justifiably-irritated pagans.

'Mayan archaeologist Jose Huchm complains that "If I went to some Mayan-speaking communities and asked people what is going to happen in 2012, they wouldn't have any idea. That the world is going to end? They wouldn't believe you. We have real concerns these days, like rain".'

Because unlike fundamentalist christians, they have common sense, and don't dictate policy decisions of everyday life out of a fairy tale book.

And now those relative few get the hot light treatment thanks to a bad popcorn movie. One which the director made a careful choice to destroy, well, almost everything.

'In his previous movies, Emmerich has destroyed many landmark buildings. The Empire State Building in Independence Day, The Chrysler Building and Madison Square Gardens in Godzilla and The Hollywood Sign and The Capitol Records building in The Day After Tomorrow. In 2012, he destroyed The Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican, Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro, the Argentine Congress building in Buenos Aires, the Washington Monument and The White House.'

'However he refused to destroy the Kaaba, the Islamic holy site, for fear of fatwa by Islamic extremists.'

Chickenshit.

i'd make a 'let freedom ring' joke, but the nationalities are wrong.

And how bad is this movie?

'To fully understand what went wrong here we have to go back 11 years to the summer of 1998'.

'One film chronicled the end of the world and the race to save our species from extinction. DEEP IMPACT was a science fiction drama about coming to grips with our own fragile nature and our inability to save ourselves.'

'The other movie, ARMAGEDDON, was distinctly more ‘Merican, in which the USA’s best and brightest realize the only way to save the Earth is to strap a rocket to the ass of a bunch of surly, drunken rednecks and blast them into space with a shit ton of nookular weapons so they can blow that shit up real good.'

'Watching Roland Emmerich try to remake DEEP IMPACT is kind of like watching a monkey try to fuck a football. He just can’t figure it out. And fumble and twist and turn though he might, the end result is always the same, with everyone involved leaving frustrated and ultimately disappointed. It’s not a movie, it’s the proof of concept for a shitty videogame destined for the $14.99 shelf. There is nothing remotely movie-like about this film except that it was projected on a very large screen and no one was handed a controller.'

'It is a rapid fire staccato of carnage that you become completely inured to within the first five minutes of it happening. He even goes so far as to steal a few Titanic gags, trying to make amusing light of the terrible things happening to people. You might giggle when someone plummets from a building to their death. But that’s the extent of your emotional attachment.'

'Seriously, by the third time John Cusack tries to outrun something you’ve seen pretty much everything this movie has to offer.'

Sometimes, pure, unbridled negativity in a movie review is exactly what's called for. Because if you've wasted your money on it, the only satisfaction you have left is, in the words of one poster, 'reading a review that puts it's foot in the movie's ass'.

And, *sigh*.

Because my boyfriend and i will be in line tomorrow to see this orgiastic, monolithic-budgeted pile of a celluloid train wreck, like good and obedient little mouth-breathers.

'Cause after all, the 'splosions an' such.

If i'm lucky, it'll disorient and detach me from my own life just long enough to not know what's going on in the real world. At least for a bladder-bursting 2 hours and 40 minutes.

i already spend a lot of time asking 'what in the hell is going on' in my life.

At least for once it'll be directed at something harmless.

First Anniversary.

My boyfriend and i went on our first date together in the middle of October last year. We saw Frank Sinatra Jr and his show, and it was wonderful. i was both excited and terrified of how the night would go, because it was a culmination of events that i thought would never happen.

You see, my boyfriend and i were aquaintances before we became close friends. And then we were best friends for about ten years, among a small group of men i would have done anything for. i had individual crushes on each of them in my own way, as i had grown to know them over years.

But in all that time they never really knew me, or my past.

They could never figure out why i was so depressed and angry much of the time, or why my behavior was so erratic and unstable. When i started to transition, it seemed like tentative acceptance at first, but then that quickly collapsed. Too much negative behavior on my part, and they decided that it had become barely worth it before--certainly not worth it now.

Which i could deal with. i couldn't expect them to understand, or forgive me for lying about who i was for so long. By then i had very quickly begun making new female friends, and working three jobs at once to inch my way toward surgery.

But losing my former best friend hurt the most, because i was in love with him. And he could not handle the transition. He 'freaked out' in his own way, and we effectively dropped contact with each other for a year and went our seperate ways.

With everything dead and gone that was before, i heard that he would be moving to the same city i live for better job opportunities. i jumped at the chance to reconnect with him, and offered him to stay at my house until he got established. He was very weary and uncomfortable with it, but eventually accepted.

Week after week we would spend time together just talking. And i told him everything. And he rapidly understood who i was and what really made me tick. And he gradually became comfortable with it. He said it was like meeting and getting to know a completely different person, who just happens to share identical memories from someone he knew before.

In his words, it was as if his best friend sunk into a vortex of angry despair and then died. Then after the grief was healed and gone, a happy and healthy twin sister showed up.

So i worked on him in my own way. And one thing led to another. Which led to our first date. Which proceeded through the next few weeks, until we were finally together. Something i thought would never happen, and always wanted.

i have dated many men before. They were the kind of men many lesser women would jump at the chance to have. For their looks, or their money, or their power. Some of these men went crazy when i ultimately refused them, and their entitlements. One of them asked me with frustration 'what did it take to get inside my mind and own my heart'? i told them all that whatever it was, they didn't have it.

My will is made of solid steel. Noble to some. Idiotic to others.

And i want *this* man. The one i have now. He is all i ever wanted.

My boyfriend was a happy, healthy, sports-active young man throughout school (his football jersey is one of my favorite thing to wear at night). But for the second half of his life, he has suffered a medical condition that has had a dramatic impact on his weight, and has nothing to do with diet. It's a condition that could be brought under control with medical intervention, if he only had the money. Or the insurance to cover it.

Kind of like me.

Someone once asked him how, as a straight guy, how he could be with a woman like me before her operation.

My boyfriend said he completely understood the hell of being trapped inside a body that you didn't belong. And that i'm one procedure short of being the perfect woman for him. And he's patient.

And that's one of the many countless reasons i love this man.

Sometimes, every once and awhile, he'll take a look at my blog to see what i'm up to. And so i made this video for him as a sort of card, and because he likes making fun of a good, cheesy montage! My music drives him crazy, even though he politely tolerates it. Since this is for him, i went through his mp3 player and picked out something i know he likes.

Although we've been together a year, we've only had the camera for six months. Not much footage to use, so it's a little slow. For our first anniversary, we went to see the Rat Pack is Back, and it was very fun! They were passing through on their way to Vegas. But we left the camera behind on that one. Some things are just for us. Nothing in here is new. Consider this viewable for only a limited time. Somebody out there has developed a hate for me, and is now flagging my posts and replies everywhere at random.



He is the kindest, most intelligent and warm-hearted man i have ever known. The way he reacts with the same nervous, male concern when i start crying over absolutely nothing every week. Or never complains when i put my cold feet under his shirt when we're on the couch each night. When he patiently waits out my ability to change my mind about something fifty times before i've finally made a decision...maybe. How flowers are there for me when i need them the most. Tolerating the dozen times a day i'll ask him what he's thinking, or describing how i'm feeling in excruciating detail.

And how it feels when we make plans for now or the future, as if we're plotting against the world together.

i love him.