Pants Down Friend

A post whose component parts are entirely unrelated. Yup, I'm back from Wacken, and my face, pimply at the best of times, looks like someone has puked on it (from my living on grease and mud).

Just thought you might like to know that.

1) I'm supposed to be reading the archaeological reports on Christ Church, Spitalfields. They are quite comical* - it's one disaster after another: Active smallpox virus has been discovered! A coffin has fallen on someone's head! Someone has caught a skin disease whose variety we have been unable to ascertain!

2) I might email my department and suggest that, before next term, they send round a message detailing the differences between a compliment and sexual harrassment. I'm treated perfectly well by the Hooray Henrys in my year, because I happily don't register on their radar as "girl" - but the pretty GTA last term was decidedly *not*.

It wasn't just feminist me and the girls that were cringing at their behaviour - it was a few of the other boys, too - the ones who hadn't been educated privately, incidentally.

Now, do we see how it's a *bad* idea to shut pubescent heterosexual boys up in a building with nothing but themselves and FHM for company? Then to unleash them on a world containing real females? Boys from families so wealthy that they feel entitled to "own" whatever they wish?

3) Ladies, gentlemen, &c. I give you (as we saw at Wacken)...
Corvus Corax!



I thought they were Corpus Corax to start off with... which also translates nicely.

*Runs off to start a band called Corpus Corax*

4) I'm gonna be harsher about the new Nightwish this time. Anette Olzon appears to be the exact opposite of Tarja Turunen. Turunen had apparently no personality, and an amazing voice. Olzon takes pains to demonstrate that she has a personality...

But she's not my housemate, my girlfriend or even an acquaintance. She's the lead vocalist in a famous band - incidentally, a band whose older music requires A SOPRANO. Someone who can hit high notes, at least approximately. Not a special new definition of "soprano", meaning "someone I would quite like to boink" - looking at YOU, mister keyboard-face.

If they weren't going to have one, if any vocal range would do, they might as well have given Blaize Bailey some employment.

5) To *sort of* tie together my comments about continental Europeans putting us to shame, and sexual harrassment (in this case, a lack of), I present to you: the most adorable proposition ever made to anyone, EVER.

Man: Vould you be interested in being my pants-down friend?

David: No.

Man (with expression of bitter disappointment): Oh.

Man (wanders off in another direction, waves): Vish me luck!

If you don't acquiesce to that, you must have a heart of stone.



I might do a SRS POST OF SRSNZ later. OK, I'll do a baby trans one now, as people seem to be actually interested in my haphazard Trans 101.

1) You can be as nosy as you generally are about the identity and history of a trans person that you know and like (no, not a random one off the street). Ask all the questions you like - as long as you make sure that person understands that their answers will not alter your perception of their identity. The average woman wouldn't mind telling you that she had a ginger beard once, if she really knew that your only, brief, thought on the matter was "That's Susan. She used to have a long ginger beard".

2) However, don't talk loudly about a trans person's trans "issues" in public. Talk about trans stuff, yes, sing a song about it if you like, but don't suggest that it's connected at all to your acquaintance. If you are talking about hir own trans stuff, keep your voice very low.

This is simply a safety issue. If you were sitting in a "white" bus during any apartheid, you wouldn't say to your companion "Well GOSH! Shall we talk about how you're hiding your BLACK SKIN?"

(n.b. the analogy doesn't work in any other way - it's just a point about personal safety).


*Maybe my definition of "comical" differs from yours, then.