"She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders" Review

I enjoy reading autobiographies and memoirs, so this book was a great fit for me. The author tells the story of her life as a female being stuck in the body of a male. She talks about her childhood, her family, even the gender reassignment surgery,

 I’ve met a handful of transgendered people in my life which I felt helped me to better understand the condition that the author, Jennifer Finney Boylan has. So the hardest part for me wasn’t relating to the main character as it may be for others. The hardest part for me was keeping track of what was going on in the story. In this book, it switches a handful of times from the present to the past and sometimes I got a little confused on what time the author was writing about.

The only book I’ve read that I can really compare She’s Not There to is Luna by Julie Anne Peters. Luna also tells the story of a transgendered male wanting to be female, although it is fiction. Luna is told from the point of view of the transgendered males sisters perspective. The sisters name is Reagan. Reagan is very protective of her transgendered brother in the book the point where she’s so busy taking care of him that she’s not even sure of her own identity.

Although the books chronicle the same condition, they are very different. Luna is seventeen in the book and at the end she leaves for her sexual reassignment surgery. Jennifer Finney Boylan is in her forties when she gets her sexual reassignment surgery. There is also the obvious difference that, She’s Not There is a first person narrative and Luna is told from the sisters point of view, although I’d love to read a nonfiction book about living with a transgendered person and watching their transformation, for example, a book from Jennifer Finney Boylan’s wife’s perspective or a book from one of his children’s perspective.  Boylan writes about his family in the book (he has a wife and two sons) but it would be interesting to really see his transition through their eyes.

I really enjoyed reading this book and I recommend it to anyone who is curious about being transgendered, any transgendered persons or anyone involved in the LGBT community. Being the president of my schools gay-straight alliance I’ve heard a lot about Transexuality and this taught me a lot more about it. I’d also recommend this book to anyone who enjoys autobiographies. It was very interesting.

The Mighty Boosh

On the IMDB website, the Mighty Boosh's genre is described with the words comedy, fantasy and musical, but it's pretty hard to explain this television show with so few words.

To start with, it's a British show that aired from 2003 - 2007. The first season of the show consisted of the two main characters, Vince Noir (played by Noel Fielding) and Howard Moon (played by Julian Barratt) working as Zoo Keepers for their overly eccentric boss, Bob Fossil (played by Rich Fulcher). They have various adventures in the first season ranging from the two main characters braving the arctic tundra and encountering the infamous Black Frost, even to Howard being mistaken for an ape and taken to monkey hell. Yeah, you read that right.

In the second and third season the main characters, Howard Moon and Vince Noir live with Naboo the Enigma and Bollo (who is a gorilla). In the second season, they all live in an apartment and in the third season, they help run Naboos shop and live above it. Many crazy adventures ensue in these seasons too. In the second season, the episodes range from Howard getting kidnapped by a hermaphrodite sea monster named Old Gregg, to the Howard and Vince passing out and having a nightmare about talking coconuts. The third season doesn't disappoint either. The episodes range from Vince swallowing a piece of a record and being possessed by a Jazz spirit and to the boys being robbed by a drug addicted talking fox.

So whether you are a fan of British television or are just looking for a quirky show to watch, I find this show extremely hilarious and entertaining. I would recommend it to just about anyone. Almost every episode features a song and a funky new character. A couple of my favorites include Old Gregg (the hermaphrodite sea monster I mentioned above) and Mr. Susan who lives in the mirror world and is in the episode entitled Bollo (it’s the episode about monkey hell I also mentioned earlier.)

It is hard to write about this show and really truly do it justice. You just need to check it out. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone under the age of thirteen because a handful of the episodes do feature some mature themes, but for any teenagers or adults looking for a new show to watch, this is great. I highly recommend it.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0416394/

Traffic

I used to live in a neighborhood. I lived in it for a short time – maybe three years before we couldn’t afford to live in that house any longer and when I lived in that neighborhood, in that brown split foyer house with the salmon colored doors, I would walk up to the grocery store. I would have to walk down the hill, past the apartments we lived behind, and across the bridge to get to that grocery store.

On my way, I would never been able to resist the temptation to stop at the bridge and look down. I would stare at all of the cars that passed underneath me and wonder who the people were inside them. That woman in the red convertible - was she a free spirit? Where did she work? Did she have kids and a family back home? Did she have a home?

The man in the red truck – where was he going? Was he on the way to his job? Was he a hardworking man? Was he a man with a troubled past?

I'd get lost in the traffic below me. I felt different up there. I listened to the sounds of car horns honking and music blaring; I felt the vibrations of big semis going underneath the bridge. The wind whipped through my hair as I watch the small people below me in their toy cars. I wondered if God watched us like this, stationed high somewhere, just observing the people below.

I wondered if someday when I traveled beneath this bridge if someone would watch me. If someone would wonder about me. Where is she going? Is she going home? Does she have a home?

Eventually, I would have to stop wondering, I'd have to stop watching the scene below me. I would have to divert my eyes from the traffic and pull myself away from the bridge. I'd finally make my way to the grocery store, back across the bridge, past the apartments, and up the hill, back to the brown split foyer house with the salmon doors. My dad would stare at me strangely when I made my way back inside, as if wondering where I'd been for so long but he'd never ask. I wonder if he knew how I’d watched I’d been perched on top of the world and watched the people below me. I wonder if he knew how I’d spent my time playing God.

Grandma's Fridge

Cleaning my grandma's fridge is task I dread every month. Almost once every month, my grandma will call me over to help her with this. Let me tell you, it is awful. Smells emanate from containers with unknown substances inside. Some food even has mold growing on it. It's a frightening experience.

Just last night I was called upon to clean my grandmas fridge. I wanted to decline, but I love my grandma and I owe it to her. She's been like a mother to me. Even then, it's not something I look forward to.

So I sat at the floor of her white tiled kitchen and pulled things out of the fridge, working on one shelf at a time, as she sat in chair and set everything on the counter. Then, we went through each container. I cautiously opened each lid, almost afraid of what could be inside. Oh the smells I smelt yesterday!

Some of the stuff in her fridge was easy to identify, there was month old desert pizza, soup that had gone bad, but some of it was just plain terrifying! I'm almost beginning to think my grandma is taking part in strange experiments at her house. There could have been lizard brains in one of those containers! I'm not sure what a lizard brain smells like, but I know most of those containers did not smell pleasant.

It's hard for my grandmother to get around and even harder for her to reach a lot of things in her fridge (or even remember what's in her fridge) so I can't blame her for letting the food in her fridge go bad. And it's my job, as her grateful grandchild to help her with these tasks. But when I come over to her house to clean that fridge, gosh I just wish I didn't have a sense of smell.

I guess cleaning out the fridge, no matter how smelly it is, is worth the time I get to spend with my grandmother.

Years down the road, I’ll look back on this and realize I wouldn’t have traded that time in for anything, but right now, I’m dreading the next time I have to clean Grandma’s refrigerator.

One Night

This friday I'll performing in One Night. It's not neccessarily a large variety show like the talent show my highschool does later in the year. It's more of a concert. All of the music is live and there's usually a wide varity of music played. Last year, there was a band that did a Green Day cover, there was a band that played a tribute to the Beatles and also plenty of musicians who played originals.

Even though it's this upcoming friday, I'm not completely prepared. I'll be doing a couple of songs in the show, at most three songs. But that depends on how many people sign up for the show. I still don't have the songs picked out I want to do. I know I'll do at least one original (I just have to pick one that I've already written - it's just so hard to choose!) and one cover. I might learn how to play a new song. It doesn't take me very long to learn something new. I'm thinking about trying to do a cover of "Bad, Bad, Leroy Brown" by Jim Croce. It's one of my favorite musicians and that song is very upbeat and fun - the perfect song to play at a show like this.

The show will be in what we call, the Black Box . It's the school second auditorium. It's not as big and fancy as the actual auditorium, but it's a nice space to perform in. It's a black room where we place fold out chairs and a stage in front of it all. I actually like playing in it better than the auditorium. I peroformed in the actual auditorium last year for the talent show and it wasn't very fun. There was too much distance between myself and the audience. In the Black Box that distance is smaller. It may make others nervous, but it makes me more comfortable.

I'm not too nervous about getting up in front of people, the thing I'm most worried about is picking the right song(s) to play. This is my last year and my last chance to perform in One Night so I want to make the best out of it and do my absolute best.

My father also makes me nervous. Last year when he came to see me perform in One Night, he left halfway through the show and barely congratulated me or anything. When he came to see me at the Talent Show that year, he also made it clear that he was less than proud of me. When I told him about being in One Night again this year, he wasn't happy for me at all. He just lectured me about what I shouldn't play like he expects me fail. I'm surprized he's even coming to the show at all this year. I'd like to do a really great job at whatever songs I decide to play, so I can prove to him how good I really am. So, I can make him proud this time. But even if I don't, I'll be proud of myself. I'm learning how to be proud of myself, even when my mom's not here to see my perform and my father isn't happy to see me perform.

It takes a lot of preparation and a lot of practice, but if I work hard this week to learn a new song and work on an old one too, I think I'll be very satisfied with the product in the end. I'm a little nervous about making my father proud, but in the end it's about the show. It's about contributing something brilliant to the show and I'm just proud to be a part of it.

High School (Complex classification)

You see the cliques in those cheesy highschool movies and I think we all like to think that our high school isn't like that. I will say that those movies do grossly overexaggeratte the cliquies at my highschool but I won't deny that they do exist.

It's not as easy as just classifying my peers into groups like "preps", "jocks", and "geeks". It's more than that.

Let's start with the cheerleaders and the athletes. They don't hold as much distinction here as they do in the stupid movies, but trust me they don't go unnoticed. Of course the football players are the most pretigious where bowlers and golfers often go underappreciated. A handful of the cheerleaders I've met have an attitude problem, but most of them are friendly though they won't go out of their way to talk to me. They stay out of my way and I'm perfectly fine with that. There is also the dance team, but I don't hear too much about them.

There are the actors. This category includes the improv. team. They aren't looked at as nerds. It seems like many kids look up to the hilarious improvers. I'm sure the improvers are nice, but I've never really talked to any of them.

There are the members of the show choir groups. At the assemblies where they perform, they appear to go underappreciated. But in truth, many people enjoy watching them perform and respect them. You often notice them because they wear bright yellow jackets with buttons on them. Most of them are nice, though I've met a few snooty ones.

There are the smart kids who take all of the college level courses and get A's in all of them. They aren't really looked down upon in this school, to my knowledge. I envy them, I look up to them. I wish I had their dedication. I've met a few pretentious smart kids, but overall I have a few friends in this category and they are awesome.

I don't want to call this last category the "average" kids because I don't like to use words like "average" or "normal". But these kids are the ones who may be involved in a couple of extracurricular activites, get "average" grades but they don't do anything outstanding. They have friends, they're extremely friendly but they don't neccessarily stand out in a crowd. But that's definetely not a bad thing.

There's the trouble makers, though I don't know much about them. They hang out on the school campus skateboarding and get into fights with the supervisers when they try to kick them out. They argue with teachers and get sent to the hall. I saw a lot more kids like this in middle school, but I don't see as many here.

Then there's me. I don't know where I stand here. I guess I'm just here. I'm not an athlete or a cheerleader and I don't get average grades (my grades are probably considered a little less than average and I'm definetely not proud of that fact). I'm the president of my schools gay-straight alliance. There are a lot of people who know me at this school but I wouldn't neccesarily say I'm popular. I perform in talent shows but I'm not a part of the show choir or the dance team. I guess I'm just a part of this highschool. I'm just another piece to the puzzle. Another kid trying to be themselves when we're in a place where the easiest thing to do is to place everyone into groups - to classify them like they are soups cans on the shelf at a grocery store. Many of us run from it, but as far as we run or as much as we try to deny it, it's here. Here we all are just cans of soup at Walmart.

Valetta (First try at description!)

Valetta is what they call a Mackerel tabby because the patterns on her fur look like fish bones. She is almost all grey but the stripes that cover her are black. Her stomach and chest are a tan color. She has white fur around her mouth that makes it look like she just dipped her chin in a bowl of milk. Her nose is dark tan color and the same dark stripes that cover her body are also on her face. She looks like a little bob cat.

She has these piercing yellow eyes. When she looks at me I feel like she's looking into me. At night, when she's prowling around my room, the pupils of her eyes are so big that they almost consume the yellow in her eyes. During the day, her pupils are tiny little slits. They remind me of snake eyes.

Her fur is so soft, it feels like silk. The fur on her stomach is the most soft, though the pads on her feet are pink and very tough. Her tough is a light pink almost the color of bubble gum. It’s rough and it feels very similar to sandpaper when she licks my hand.

When she meows, she meows at the top of her lungs. Whether she’s begging for food or attention, she makes herself heard. Often at night, she’ll keep me up with her loud meowing or even worse, I’ll hear the sound of the things on my dresser crashing to the floor. Late at night, when I’m trying to sleep she likes to get up on my dresser and push everything off of it. She just sits there, and paws at what sits on my dresser, whether it’s a Cd or a necklace of mine, she paws at it with playful abandon until it comes crashing to the floor. She repeats this process until I lock eyes with her.

Sometimes she doesn’t even meow – she whines and she screams. So loudly, that I swear the people in the apartment next to ours must hear her. She does this when she’s away from me. She’ll paw at the door, she’ll cry until I come in and hold her. It’s similar to the sound of a baby crying or a scared defenseless little animal. When I come and get her, she calms down so rapidly, it’s almost like she’s melting in my hands. She rests her paws on my shoulder and I feel the warmth of the love of a pet and her purring reverberating in her throat.