2023-04-11

Revamping this page to be simple as fuck. Just a log of dated entries in a single text file. pandoc index.txt -o index.html --ascii to generate the page. echo -n $(date +%Y-%m-%d) to get the date in this format.

I might be a closeted trans woman. I cry in lgbtqia bookstores sometimes. I’m not that closeted to some folks. My partner’s parents are crazy trumpers. Her dad has an old cop motorcycle he bought when he was 19. I have a good relationship with them, but I’m not going to tell them I’m trans.

Trans Girl Suicide Museum is a hilarious book. The last time I cried in a bookstore I bought that book. The guy working the counter (Kyle) said he didn’t transition until after his mom died. Makes sense, I guess.

I bought a book of trans sci fi stories from Little Puss Press. It’s on the way.

I just got a 512G SD card for my new Ricoh GR IIIx. That’s right. Just because I’m a closeted trans woman doesn’t mean I can’t take nice photos. Thanks, Obama.

I’m white. I’m between computer programming jobs. I benefit so much from the white cishet oppressive structure. But also that’s why I’m closeted. Don’t want to wind up on some Florida or Texas list of folks receiving gender affirming care. My ex-boss was forced to pip someone and pip’d me. Tech layoff culture strikes again. It was stupid. I shouldn’t assume people will vouch for me. I need to maintain a good image.

I like to work in small diffs. I put up the 2nd most diffs of anyone on my dozen-ish person team, behind the tech lead on the team. Idk, maybe they were too small. I kind of worked in a complicated corner of the system. So many of the diffs were small, hard-to-notice corner case fixes. I guess that contributed to the sense that my work wasn’t valuable? Idk. My takeaway is that I need to maintain my image more proactively. I think I wrote enough code. But I guess my boss did not think so. He said he did not want to pip me. He said he still wanted me on the team. But… if he couldn’t / wouldn’t protect me from the pip, there’s no reason to work under him or his managers.

Anyway, I’m glad the job is over. I was getting kind of sick of it. 5 years same team. Working on something a bit different will be refreshing.

I’m going to Taiwan in two weeks. Going to bike south from Taipei to Kaohsiung. We might not make it in the 13 days we’re there. We’ll take a train back to Taipei and fly out from there. We’re renting bikes.

2023-04-12

Pog. Late night yammers. Elektron Machinedrum (MD) as a driver for a Juno 60 is sick. The juno is triggered by a voice on the MD. The Juno is plugged into the MD, so the MD can apply feedback / distortion / filters / etc to the juno. With odd time signatures laid on top of each other, it makes for some interesting textures.

Interested to see what other synths might pair nicely with the MD. I’ve been eyeing the Korg MS20 (or similar) as well as the Roland SH 101. Guess they are both somewhat popular (“basic”) synths, but eh. Mathew Jonson makes really sick stuff with the SH 101. I’m not really sure what result I’m looking for. Just some log of music, just like this log of words. The thing sort of existing in its own literal way. No higher concepts. Daido Moriyama style haha. But not in the do-drugs-and-drink-sake-and-dont-go-outside-much way.

2023-04-14

I shaved one of my legs last night. Inches of hair. Manhood clogging the drain. Or something. Going to wear a dress to a bar for a friend’s birthday. It’ll be a safe space. I wonder if I’ll start drunkenly introducing myself as Abby. There’s been so much anti trans legislation this year.

How much of an act of defiance is it really to wear a dress. I’m just sick of not wearing what I want. I want to spend like 5 thousand dollars on nice dresses. A Casey Casey Stephanie dress. Something reallly wide that gets even wider at the waist. Hide this body. Hide my shoulders. Collar with no collar stand. Prim and proper. With a hat and a mask on and shaved legs and some nice leather mary janes, no one would suspect me of being a tran from across the street, probably.

No makeup for me, please. Only pluck the center line of my unibrow.

What if I got laser hair removal on my legs. Would I be a real tran then. Once you’ve medicalized yourself, then you’re real. Except I don’t want to end up on some state list of people looking for gender affirming care. I wonder if you can buy T blockers on the dark web.

I’m almost done making a pair of linen shorts. The slit pockets turned out ok - there’s a little bit of bunching near the bottom of the opening. The fabric is a little bit thicker than I was expecting. Like, I’d handled the roll of fabric while cutting. But once I put the shorts on, I was like wow. Decently thick. I think they will be nice. Probably going to garment dye them with fermented persimmons. Can’t you hear the news story now? “Ohio man dyes fabric…” Except they don’t know I’m a tran.

I was named Abigail Kathleen Bergeron before I was born. “She’s a boy” the doc said as I escaped my mother’s womb. So I remained nameless for like a week and a half or something. My dad’s dad called me “ole what’s his name.” Imagine how awkward it would’ve been if there’d been a gender reveal party before my birth. Somewhere there’s a sign in my parents house “welcome to the world, abigail!” I saw it at one point.

Well anyway maybe I’ll be named that again. Maybe not legally. Maybe legally. Probably not while my parents are alive. Just like Kyle. Maybe.

I like to drink my coffee from a titanium double walled mug. It stays warm longer. I keep meaning to smoke weed right after I wake up, but I keep forgeting. What if this becomes a little book called “Diary of a unemployed white tranny programmer who likes japanese fabrics and titanium mugs.” It would be an accurate title. Except I don’t like the noun being my profession. I just learned how to make rich people richer in a very specific and often hard-to-understand way. Programming can be fun, but not when it polishes the gold man’s flesh of arbitrary value.

Well that was fun. Met a trans girl at the birthday party. Glad I wore a dress. She also wore a dress that she bought years ago but has only worn like 3-4 times. She said she’s not out at work. She lived in Amsterdam for a bit. I told her she can call me Abby.