I know that the below Houston financial supporters of Prop 8 are likely proud of helping take away GLBT civil rights, so I’ve decided to acknowledge them for their efforts. Listed are their names, zip codes, the amount they gave and the date they gave in support of prop 8.

I’ve been a member of Audible.com for more than a year now. I’ve been very happy with the service until today. Now I think I’ll close my account.

For those of you that don’t know, Audible is an audio book retailer. Since I’m busy, I like to listen to books while I drive, clean, etc.

Recently, my computer crashed and I had to reinstall everything. Today I purchased a book and since I had not yet installed the Audible downloader program, I streamed the book directly from the audible site this morning while I went about my routine. Tonight I downloaded the Audible program download and itunes for my ipod and reinstalled them.

Tonight I thought I’d do some cleaning, so I try to listen to the book I bought. Upon trying to listen to my book, I got an error message that basically read, “To cut down on piracy, we only authorize 3 devices to pay your purchases. If you are seeing this message, you must unauthorized one of your devices.” I thought, “Well that’s fucked.” So, I went to the Audible.com site to unauthorized a device. After mucking through the support site, I found that they require that I have access to the offending machine… which is across town. The instructions tell me to call customer service if I don’t have access to machine I wish to unauthorized. So I call… Only to find out that their customer service office is already closed and won’t be open again until Monday. I go back to their site and find their help desk. So I fill out a ticket and submit it. I get an email saying that they will get back to me on Monday.

Since I couldn’t play the download file, I decided to go back to simply streaming it like I did this morning. I download the steaming file and… I get the same goddamn message telling me that the corporation will not allow me access to the content I own because they don’t want me to listen to it using this computer.

At this point I’m calling bullshit.

If I purchase a CD, I can listen to it on any player, computer or in my car. If I purchase the exact same content in a digital download format, I apparently have to deal with Big Corporate Brother telling me what device I can and can’t use. Furthermore, to use the particular device I want, it seems that I have to beg Big Corporate Brother to let me do it… when it’s convenient for them.

This is why people use pirated content. Apparently the way it works is, if I dish out money to buy things the right way, I get to deal with a corporation telling me when, where and how I can use the content I own. If I elect to use pirated content, it’s free and I get to use it wherever and however I like. At this point I’m pissed enough to start looking for copyright busting programs so that I can bust the copyright “protection” on the files I bought so that I can listen to the damn things instead of waiting until Monday morning so that I can call a corporation to get their blessing to listen to the book I paid for.

So, what’s the best program to convert aax files to MP3?

I just finished this one:

]]> http://www.cristanwilliams.com/b/2010/05/18/painting-11/feed/ 0 http://www.cristanwilliams.com/b/2010/05/18/a-hempstead-highway-ghost-scales/ http://www.cristanwilliams.com/b/2010/05/18/a-hempstead-highway-ghost-scales/#comments Wed, 19 May 2010 01:31:34 +0000 admin http://www.cristanwilliams.com/b/?p=306

On my way home, I decided to stop at an abandoned industrial scale that looked interesting to me:

Front of Building

Rear of Building

Overgrowth

Inside: "Scales Closed Forever! Thank You For 9 yrs.
Joe, Rose"

A Nearby Train

So, I recently bought some things for the TG archive. I chipped in to get the original Michel Marie Poulain painting, but I also picked up a few things that I wanted to donate to the community’s knowledge-base.

First of all, I like understanding pop-culture since it seems to serve as a explicit breakpoint in the culture, defining it from previous generations. In other words, pop-culture is, IMHO, a strong indicator of where the zeitgeist was during the evolution of culture.

A strong indicator seems of where the zeitgeist is heading can, I think, be found in teen pop-culture. I think this is the subconscious drive behind all the so-called "Save the children" BS. What do the fringe groups want to save the children from? Well, that’d be the removal of toxic-shame stigma from the GLBT community. They want to preserve heterosexism.

Anyway, I digress… I was interested in adding some of these TG zeitgeist indicators to the archive:

Mantra #1 – 23
	Mantra was published by Malibu Comics in the mid 1990s, until it was purchased by Marvel Comics which promptly killed the publication of Mantra. The story is that a guy (wizard) was killed and reincarnated into the body of a woman with mystical powers. Gender, sexuality and social norms are all explored in the context of this comic. http://www.geocities.com/~mantraverse/

Victor y Victoria, 1957
	Presumably, this is a Spanish remake of the German film, Viktor und Viktoria (1933) which later became the 1982 film, Victor Victoria.

Let Me Die a Woman, 1977
	This is a fake(ish) documentary (kinda like faces of death) exploitation film. The film interviews Dr. Leo Wollman (an actual Dr that worked with TGs) as well as TG people. The film mixes the real interviews with fake surgical scenes that hooked people into gawking at the film.

Ranma 1/2 Cell
	This is an actual production cell from the Ranma 1/2 anime.

Basara # 4 and 6
	FTM manga – deals with themes of gender, sexuality, social norms and the trauma of pretending to be the gender that’s opposite to one’s real gender.

Penguin Revolution # 1- 7
	MTF manga – About a boy (who’s actually famous) who goes to school dressed as a girl. The series deals with questions of truth, boundaries, trust and the personas.

Princess Princess #4
	MTF manga – Another manga about boys who are put into a situation where they learn about cultural gender stratifications. I was only able to find this copy.

Nephilim # 1 – 2
	MTF/FTM manga – This is about someone from a mystical tribe of people who live as male by day and female by night. A hunter of these people falls in love with the female version of this person. The manga explores assumptions about gender, sexuality and homo-transphobia

After finishing the other painting that’s been sitting unfinished for months, I was inspired to do another one… which I churned out in only 10 hours:

I’ve noticed something about taking pictures of my paintings: I doesn’t work. The above photo just does not catch what the real painting looks like. The top and bottom panels look more red in this painting because the way that I did it, the farther away you are from the painting, the more tan it looks. If you look at the same panels from a different angle, they take on a pastel greenish tone and when looked at at another angel, it takes on a more redish hue. Also, the luminosity of the paint is entirely missing. You don’t get that, “OMG! This is really cool” feeling from a photo… which sucks.

Another thing that sucks: I’ve run out of walls to hang my paintings and now I’m just stuffing them into my closet.

This is a personal request. Below is an item I’d love to see belong to the community instead of an ebay dealer’s collection. This is a painting by a famous transgender artist and, much like the Lilly Elbe painting currently displayed in the TG Center, I believe that preserving and making the significant art of our community accessible is a worthy endeavor.

I’m writing to see if some of you would be willing to join with me in purchasing this item. I believe that this is something the that should rest in the hands of the trans community. Because I believe this, I’m willing to give $100 towards obtaining this painting. This is on top of the $200 I’ve already given this week to the TG Center in support of the good work it does (as noted in the TG Center email I sent out yesterday). As many of you know, I’m not rich. I live in an efficiency apartment and drive a 16 year-old car. I greatly value the various work the transgender center does and I want to support it to the very best of my ability. If you would like to join with me in saving this piece of transgender art history, please email me at my personal email address: gypsyrose1972@gmail.com and let me know.

You need not donate today. All I’m asking for is your pledge of support. Send me an email with your contact info and let me know how much you’d like to pledge to support the acquisition of this piece of transgender history:

Please send me your pledge of support now since the auction ends at 6 PM today.

Research this famous trans artist:

http://www.artnet.com/artist/654063/michel-marie-poulain.html

http://zagria.blogspot.com/2009/09/michel-marie-poulain-1906-1991.html

For the Ebay listing, info and various photos, please click here.

If instead of contacting me, you’d like to make a donation online, you can donate via the following special paypal link: Click here to donate Thank you!

Cristan

I just got done with a painting that I’ve been struggling with for many months now. Last night, in a flash of inspiration, I finished it up in one sitting:

The piece is around 5 feet tall and 2 1/2 feet wide.

Since I’m supposed to be off today, I only worked half a day. So, with a few hours to kill, I decided to take a drive down old Hempstead Highway. I noticed the highway has a lot of rundown buildings that looked like they were left over from the 70s and 80s and thought I’d check them out:

At the Car Wash

Car Ash

The Machine

Waiting room looks like it’s waiting for customers

The BBQ Place

Interesting abandoned structure

Menu is intact; trays sit just inside of the window

The Barber’s Strip

Barbershop on the corner. Note the intact Barber pole

Inside the Barber Shop. Note the filled spray-bottle

Whatever this used to be, it’s now a fern garden

At the End of the Road

Hempstead Highway ends just after Beltway 8. At the end of the road the highway becomes particularly junky. However, the wisteria vines add just a hint of color to an otherwise dreary scene. To me, it looked like nature was feebly trying to rebel against the litter:

The use of the word stealth has lost it’s meaning in the last decade. I here people who go to TG support group meetings, activities and who run TG websites claim to be “stealth” now. When I came out, going to TG support group meetings, activities and running TG forums was the definition of being out in a big way! Some now say that “stealth” means one thing and “woodworking” another. I call BS. You can’t woodwork without being stealth. It’s like saying that the word “hide” and “conceal” are fundamentally different. If you’re going to conceal something, you have to hide it; if you’re going to woodwork, you’ve got to be stealth. Some say “stealth” means privacy. Privacy is not telling my sex partner that I had my appendix removed; stealth is not telling my sex partner that I had my penis removed.

Pretending that being “out” now means telling the everyone you meet you’re TG is BS. Associating with others in the TG community while claiming to be stealth is a mischaracterization of what stealth is.

Stealth is pretending to everyone that you’re a biological female. It means living in fear that the husband you lied to will find out that you didn’t actually have a hysterectomy. It means always wondering if your friends would really like you if they knew the truth. Stealth is running away from or verbally running down your trans brothers and sisters so that others won’t make the connection. Stealth means that you hide being trans.

Stealth is about shame and nothing more. Not telling the grocery sacker that you’re trans is not stealth. Trying to get your parents to lie to your new boyfriend is being stealth. Not telling every co-worker in the building that you’re trans is not being stealth. Not telling your best friend is being stealth.

If you associate with other trans people, you’re not in stealth because your putting yourself in a position of allowing more and more people to know the truth about your past. Isolating and hiding your past is what it means to live in stealth.

Stealth people say things like “I just want to get on with my life as the woman I am” – a sentiment that sounds rational enough. The problem is that it’s also a delusion. Stealth people rationalize their lies by believing that being trans was just a medical problem that was fixed. If you believe that, remember that I said that you’re delusional when your best friend, your husband, your boyfriend, your adopted child, etc finds out that you lied.

Anyway… pretending to be a biological female is stupid and never works. You can never destroy every piece of history documenting your true past and you certainly can’t kill everyone how knows the truth. Choosing stealth is a shame-based way to live because it supports the belief that being trans is bad and should be hidden. Being a transwoman is just another way of being a woman. If you want to save yourself a lot of misery, be truthful about the history that made you into the wonderful person you are today to the people who matter to you. You don’t need to tell the gas station attendant, but the point of transitioning is that you get to live authentically. Don’t put yourself into a position that you have to go back to living a lie; don’t go from one closet to another.