17 Degrees

I just found myself getting excited that it’s going to be a whopping 17 degrees here tomorrow. How pathetic is that?

Happy New Year

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times… so was 2007 for the trans community, what with ENDA. Jacob Anderson-Minshall did a wrap-up of the year for The San Francisco Bay Times.

I’m looking forward to a long break from being quite so public; book tours are great fun, enabling you to meet tons of people who you wouldn’t normally meet, but they’re also exhausting because of all the travel. I’ll pass the torch to Jennifer Finney Boylan, whose new book I’m Looking Through You, comes out 1/15. (Jenny’s website was created by Betty.)

I’ll be traveling to Wisconsin to teach Gender Studies – and a course in Transgender Lives – at Lawrence University, while Betty stays in Brooklyn. This will be the first time in our decade together that we’ll have been separated for so long, but she is driving me there, probably visiting in February, and then coming to gather me again at the end of March. But I’m sure we’ll manage, but to answer the forthcoming questions: there is no reason for our separation other than employment.

All best to you all in 2008.

Good Riddance, 2007 – #21

Most Subtle Sexist Advertising:

Prefer-On, the bogus medicine to get rid of scars, has a woman applying the product where most women get stretch marks from pregancy, while the voiceover refers to “embarassing scars.”

(If men gave birth, there’d be awards for whose stretch marks were the largest & most noticeable, celebrating the effort & physical sacrifice it takes to carry & birth a child.)

In the Water

I went to high school with that one woman on Nancy Grace, Susan Moss.

& Her older brother really is named Pete. (Explains a lot, I think.)

I also went to high school with the actress Diane Farr, who pops up on tv shows here & again.

That said, I’m sure there are plenty of perfectly Ordinary Joes I went to high school with who have never been on TV.

Boxing Day

The British class system seems sometimes so forthrightly condescending, and today is the day when it all comes together. Boxing Day, as it’s celebrated in the U.K. as well in various places the Empire once governed (though of course not here in the U.S.), is the day when the upper classes give the lower classes – that’s the servants – the day off.

That said, I used to work in my sister’s bakery, where the day after a major holiday was a day of sleep, if it was Boxing Day or July 5th or June 1st. So, working classes & huddled masses, sleep in today, and let the rich folks take out their own garbage.