Quick thoughts on Roadhouse

So I just watched Roadhouse for the first time(? I might have seen part of the beginning several years ago).  I thought I had seen it before but as I got further and further into the movie I realized no I had not.

The rich guy extorting and controlling the town was not a plot I expected but it unfolded in an enjoyable manner.

The fist fights are almost painfully slow by modern standards with clearly telegraphed punches and kicks.  They are easy to watch since the camera isn’t constantly shaking or cutting to a new angle every second.

There is plenty of nude women as one would expect from a movie of this era.  Swayze also has his share of shirtless scenes and butt shots as well.

Overall I’d say it’s worth watching at least once for 80’s and Swayze nostalgia.

 

Gillian on Pokemon Go

Back when Pokemon Go was announced I thought I might give it a try.  I didn’t think it was going to be that big of a deal.  I figured I might get my roommate to play for a little while and maybe meet a few other players.  In the past few months I’ve barely heard anything about it’s upcoming launch.  I didn’t even hear about the beta test.

2016-07-10 07.37.49Then a couple of days ago someone posted a screenshot of the game.  Then my roommate came home a level two trainer.  Then I found the Facebook group for my city with just over two hundred members (there’s probably a couple times that many in the city).  Then a girl I work with walked into the break room and caught a Zubat before our shifts.

You obviously don’t need me to tell you game has exploded and I love it.  Well, I love the game but I hate the scorching Texas heat.  I’ve only gotten to level six because of app glitches.  I lose the ability to connect reliably to the servers in the afternoons.  It might partially by my phone because my roommate’s Iphone doesn’t have the same problems.

I especially love how it’s created a common activity for people to bond over in real life.

When I got off work tonight, I held a mini Pokemon Go seminar for a couple of the girls in parking lot.

Then later, I went to pass by the three pokestops, all located at churches, near my apartment to get more items.  As I got close to the first one, I noticed someone had put a lure on it to attract more pokemon.  I caught a bulbasaur as I walked up to it.  I said “Hi.” to the two 18-25 ish guys next to the parked pick-up.  One of them noticed I had my phone out and called out, a little uncertain, “Hey, are you playing a game?”  I smiled, flashed him my phone which was still on the pokestop and said, “Yep, Pokemon Go.”  They told me I could stay and take advantage of the lure but I wanted to hit the other pokestops first.

On the way back they were still there, along with another car full of Pokemon Go players, one of whom called out, “Hey Pokemon girl.”  I stopped and chatted with them about the pokemon in the immediate area (mostly Dodou and some others but mostly Dodou).

On a side note: I find it interesting that there are places where you find a lot of one kind of pokemon.  Our mall, for instance, is full of Zubats.

I really hope the server issues get fixed so my walk to work can at least count toward hatching eggs.  I missed out on a little more than a kilometer today.

LGBT Movie Night: “Do I Sound Gay?”

I went to a LGBT movie night hosted by the local Unitarian Universalist church.  Quite a few of the regular members are LGBT so it’s a pretty accepting church.  I went for a while but I’m not one for getting up early on my days off when I have Sundays off but I’m still friends with a lot of them and show up to events.

We watched “Do I Sound Gay?” which is about a gay man investigating why some gay men have what most people identify as a gay sounding voice.  Also, throughout the movie he is talking to speech therapists to try to change his voice to sound less “gay”.  I kind of didn’t like how the movie was framed around him not wanting to sound “gay”.  I wish it had just been about what sounding “gay” was and how gay men related to it, instead of framing it as a bad thing from the start.  Besides that it was an entertaining film.

As a trans woman I have a complex relationship with my own voice.  I’ve gone from not caring to hating it to accepting it.  I still have days when I don’t like my voice but I accept that it’s what I sound like.  I’m lucky to not have a super deep voice but I do get sired on the phone.  It’s too much to really unpack in this post.

I would love to see a film called “Do I Sound Like a Woman?” about trans women and how we relate to our own voices.  Not from the point of view of someone trying to change their voice though.  Just interviews or round table discussions about how we have or haven’t changed our voices.

Names and Work Schedules

So, a couple of years ago when I came out and transitioned at my job, my manager told me that the scheduling system could use a preferred name instead of my legal name.  This was good news because everyday the manager prints out a line-up sheet listing everyone working that day, where they’re working and when their breaks/lunches are.  Basically with out that feature of the system I would have to see my legal name every day that I worked as would everyone else who worked with me.  I was was overjoyed at this news and then my manager couldn’t get it to work.

So, he said the managers would just have to scratch out my legal name and write in Gillian when I worked.  That happened for about two weeks and then it fell to the wayside.  It wasn’t that big of a deal.  None of my co-workers called me by it and they switched pronouns pretty fast so it seemed like a non-issue.  Sometimes they would scratch off my legal name and write in Gillian and it felt nice like they cared, not enough to do it every day but still.

The obvious fix for this is to get my name legally changed but for several reasons I just haven’t done it.

Today I go into work, look at the line-up and it has Gillian printed on it.  I just stared at it for like a minute.  At first I thought I was misreading it but I looked at it again and it still read Gillian. I checked the new weekly schedule and it has Gillian on there too.  When I clock out it says Gillian as well.  Clocking in or out was a bit of a daily anxiety because your name stays on the screen for a few seconds so if someone was right behind me they could see my legal name before.

I honestly don’t know who or how or why the system is working now.  I’m not going to pretend it was done just for me.  There are a few other people, none trans, who go by names other than their legal names so this benefits them too.  I’m just really happy that it is finally working the way it’s supposed to.

 

1898 Quarter

1898 Quarter head 1898 Quarter tail

Today while I was working, I opened a roll of quarters to make change for a customer and saw this odd quarter.  When I got a better look at it, I saw the date on it was 1898.  After I got off work, I asked my manager if I could exchange a new quarter for it and he agreed. If I wanted to sell it, I could only get $5-$10 dollars for it according to the sites I found.  I don’t have any plans to sell it.  I think it’s neat to have a 118 year old sliver quarter, so I’m keeping it.

Thoughts on The Turman Show

I just got done watching it and it doesn’t quite hold up.  It’s still a great film but the tone is more comedic than I remember.  In my memory, there was a build up of things going wrong and Truman beginning to notice the patterns of the extras around him leading up to his ‘father’ returning.  At which point the backstory and setting are revealed in the interview with the director.  I know the idea of The Truman Show wasn’t really a reveal but it could have heightened the tension in the beginning if it wasn’t shown right away.

This probably less the movie not being what it could be and more my own views of reality changing over time.  I’m sure the first time I saw the movie I thought it was funny that Truman was living in a manufactured sitcom world.  Now I watch it and I can’t help but feel horror at his situation.  To discover that everyone he knows; his best friend, his wife, his neighbors, his mom, the guy he buys his newspaper from, the woman that passes him on the street; is lying to him is horrific to me.

The Truman Show is a good movie but I would like to a version of it that abandons the tv viewer pov and keeps to Truman’s pov.  The movie often switches to “hidden camera” shots to remind the viewer that Truman is always being watched but I feel like it distances me from Truman.  It’s another layer between me and Truman when I want to be right there next to him.  I want to see him find the cracks in his false world.  I want to see him question his reality. I want to see everyone around him insist he’s crazy.  I want to see him break out of his cage.  And I want to see him pull back the curtain and show us the man pulling the strings of his world.

 

Working on my first ebook

The first that I’ve made personally that is.

I spent yesterday working on turning my story Love and Comets into an ebook.  I did a lot of reading about how to format the text and how to put it into xhtml.  Some of the process I read seem a little overly complicated but I think I’ve gotten the gist of how it works.  I also spent time creating a single file of the story and cleaning it up, removing spaces at the end of paragraphs, fixing typos.  I am going to have to edit the versions on my website after I’m done.

Today I’m continuing learning and hopefully starting to work on the xhtml.  I’m honestly doing this in the wrong order because I know the text needs a few more passes to be as close to 100% as I can get it.  I should be doing that before even starting on the xhtml but yesterday and today are days off so I’m using the extra time and energy to learn how to do this.