Shiny Fresh Decade

There is apparently raging, foaming-at-the-mouth debate about what the now-past decade should be called. The name gaining steam seems to be "the aughts", which sounds needlessly pretentious to me, and, according to the New Yorker is based on a linguistic error in which "naught" meaning nothing, was corrupted to "aught". "The naughties" is much too cutesy, "the zeros" is boring, but functional, and "the nadas" just sounds ridiculous. Therefore, I propose we call the last decade "those ten years" and be done with it.

It seems pointless for me to here reflect on the last decade, in that at its beginning I was only 7. Most of the significant events of my life, therefore, have happened in the last decade. I suppose I could reflect on significant events from my life in the last ten years, but that seems maudlin and revisionist, in that my version of events vs. what actually happened will always be a little bit different. This is not to say I am a liar, but that my point of view is inherently subjective, as, I suppose, it should be.

Spent New Year's Eve with The Girlfriend and her family, which was fun. Her brother set off fireworks, and we watched The Two Towers. I forget what a good movie it is. Also long. Took BART home, which was an adventure, in that it was full of lunatic drunk people and my train got rerouted, so I had to get off at 12th street instead of Fruitvale. My step-father, who I've resolved to be nicer to, came to pick me up, saving me the trouble of finding a bus to Alameda at 1 in the morning. The resolution to be nicer to my step-father is my only one. Anything else I needed to do anyway, and the new year will not help me accomplish them.

Work is so much nicer when school doesn't precede it. I'm less tired, less cranky, and there's no homework hanging over my head. I do have homework, because the Educational Overlords dislike relaxation and spending time with family and friends, but I've still got two days to do it, and if I buckle down, it's six hours work at the very most.

An exception to the Educational Overlords is my Spanish teacher, Egg. (Yes, that is really what we call him. His name is Mr. Eggertson, shortened to Egg.) He told us on the last day before break that we should not think about Spanish at all, relax, spend time with our families, enjoy ourselves and come back ready to learn. He then gave us no homework at all. Other teachers gave the same spiel, and then gave two-hour assignments. Sometimes they do this because they have to, and they're trying to be nice, but sometimes I'd prefer they were just evil about it, so we could feel less lied to. It adds a level of hypocritical pretend mercy to an already unpleasant task.

I had coffee with a friend from preschool I re-met through the Internet. When we were in preschool, he was a girl. This makes him the third person I knew when I was little to be trans. There must be something in the water. He's turned out to be pretty cool, and it was nice to talk to someone my own age who gets the whole trans thing. It makes me feel less crazy to talk to someone else who worries about the things I worry about, and is having the same problems I've had. I'm beginning to think non-trans people really just don't get it the same way trans people do. It seems like you have to live it to understand it fully, and even then you probably won't. The Girlfriend and I had a conversation about theoretical children in the future (this being way, way in the future), and I said I refuse to contribute my genes to any child of any kind. On the off-chance that this is in some way genetic, that whatever's fucked up in my DNA could be transmitted to my kids, I refuse to risk it. Nobody should have to deal with this. Not even people I hate.

My production of No Exit has descended into a clusterfuck, floundered and been rescued in the last three weeks. My Garcin bailed on me for another production, and I spent weeks frantically scrambling to find a replacement. I found one, or rather Wendy/Estelle found one for me, and the day was saved. We resume rehearsals shortly, and, assuming everyone's actually off book like they say they are, all will be well. That said, I'm still waiting for my blood pressure to stabilize.

Experiments in the kitchen have yielded several variations on grilled cheese sandwiches, and no explosions.

Evil Tranny, off to grill some sandwiches.