Three videos of Alabaster Choad live in Oakland

(Comment on this)

I was on the radio!!!
Or rather, the band I'm in, ALABASTER CHOAD was on on the Bunnywhiskers show on 87.9 Radio Valencia, a local radio station. We got to DJ and tell crude stories and play a bunch of stuff from our forthcoming record: CRASH OF THE LIMBURGER ON BEBUSLAND

Click the May 11th link

Never been on the radio before. Looking back, we probably should have shut the fuck up and played more music, but, apparently, we like the sound of our own half-baked philosophies spake through our weird transsexual voices too much.

(Comment on this)

bitter duties
In all matters pertaining to the question: "Why is the floor all sticky?", I submit that I am at fault. My hand gently grazed the unopened bottle, as it would graze any other thing, and was imbued with a strange magnetism that brought the thing along with it until the shelf expired and all that remained was air and concrete. The actual break was too quick to perceive though I do recall foam. When all things came to rest, the hollow shell of the bottle sat quietly in a pool of sugar water and begged me to grasp it in my hand and squeeze to simulate the sensation of crushing a glass vessel like some barbarian who has finished a drink. But I abstained from such recreation. Instead I swept it into a dustpan with frustrated awkwardness, swatting carelessly at my surroundings with the end of the broom stick. I poured the whole burbling mess into a small box, taped it shut, and wrote "BROKEN GLASS" on all six faces. I then tossed it carefully into the dumpster and warned the people who were digging through the trash that there was nothing of value in the soggy box that read "BROKEN GLASS" on all six faces. Dissappointed, they returned to their digging.

Next, it was my charge to mop the area as the former contents of the broken vessel, when evaporated, left a substance that adhered to the soles of shoes. I filled the bucket with hot water but used no soap as there was plenty of residual soap residing presently therein. As I swam the grey mop head into the steam I remembered that, despite the dutiful credence with which I was righting my wrong, and despite the joy others would experience in not noticing that I had splattered some sticky substance all over the place, that did not change the fact that every human being on earth is expected to act out their entire lives as if they are not completely aware of the horrifying notion that they are utterly alone. And so for a moment I toy with the idea of leaving a few footprints unmopped. Partially out of laziness but also to inspire someone to ask why the fucking floor was all goddamned sticky as tears gathered in their eyes and for me to counter that it was me who broke the bottle and that I was the one to blame and that I was sorry and they would admire my honesty and I would admire their fortitude and we would connect for a brief moment and we would defy the sobering truth of our complete isolation for a brief moment and it would be grand.

But no, I simply mop it all up and rinse the mop and put everything back and walk away. I don't wish to defeat the omniscient truth of loneliness at this time, but rather roll it around in my mouth like a lozenge of bitterness. And so I simply submit that despite the lack of evidence, I am the one who broke the bottle of sugar water. But don't worry, everything is back to normal now.

(2 Comments |Comment on this)

semiannual confusion reorganization therapy -- solutions to wanderlust + hoarding
i just moved (in terms of my living situation) for the fifth time in 2 and a half years. moving is apparently becoming a semiannual therapeutic ritual for me. whenever i grow tired of my roommates' lifestyles, whenever i get off work and routinely look for any diversion from going home, whenever i just feel randomly depressed and drab, i take myself down to the nearest Uhaul (who, bizarrely, always lend vehicles to me, no questions asked, despite my fake looking arizona licence which bears a photo that looks nothing like me) and i rent me a moving van. i "get things moving" so to speak.

my mood ÷ the distance of the move = how much i take with me

maybe it's the romanticised asceticism plus stoner laziness talking, but an ideal move for me would be completely devoid of having to actually move anything other than my person. it's so easy to acquire the furnishings of domesticity in planned-obsolescence culture. i have never purchased a desk in my life, but i have a rich history with all manner of desk. within a week of finding a new spot, i have the place full of shit. cool shit too. i am one of those gifted scavengers that almost always finds exactly what she's looking for. sometimes people call that "manifesting" but i just kinda think that's stupid. if i must be cosmic about it, i prefer to say i have good obtainium karma. i moved to san francisco with a duffel bag, a bike and 2 guitars and the moment i got here, the torrent of worldlies began. cute clothes seemed to be raining from the sky. within a few weeks i had a nice mattress, a dresser, full length mirrors, a small bookcase quickly filling with books, a laptop and a fucking drumset. all acquired for basically nothing. it was as if i had never even moved. it looked like i'd been there for years.

this whole concept of obtainium karma rests on not only being a good scavenger, but, as the anglicanized Internationale instructs us, not clinging too hard to your possessions. everytime i move again, i give (almost all) of it back. i throw the furnishings, clothes, and bric-a-brac back into the furnishings-clothes-and-bric-a-brac pool and i leave a free sidewalk sale where a weird cackling stinky trans woman used to be. to this day the only thing i ever regret jettisoning is the pristine 1993 VHS copy of Diamanda Galas' Judgement Day. it was the only thing i ever said i'd never leave behind. i suppose the drive to possess something forever made me force myself to lose track of it.



then again, practically the whole fucking performance is on youtube, so i guess i'll survive.

the point here is that i've combined hoarding/cluttering (a condition that i am convinced is chiefly a twentieth century affliction) with wanderlust (which goes back pretty much to the beginning of humans) and turned it into a lifestyle that has imbued me with, however false, a sense of generosity, richness of life, and adulthood on my terms. i must admit that this is slightly troubling. eventually i'd like to start staying in one place and being a real person in the neighborhood somewhere. has being raised by television in disposable culture destroyed my ability to not reinvent myself every few weeks? is my ADD so bad that i am doomed rapidly vacillate between princess and tramp until i am found dead in a pile of ground scores? but then i realize that this problem is widespread among many in my age group. almost everyone i know is chasing that city that won't have any homophobes. looking for the place that will finally suit them perfectly. it's like being a bitter bachlorette, but in geographic terms.

i have been getting better at balancing this whole ritual. i have a cache of nicer clothes that i don't want to get rid of just yet. i have some nifty camping gear that i may just have to hang on too. and i've managed to continuously own a drumset for a while now. i've even gone a step further by distilling the entire obtain-possess-release cycle into a single moment by walking by trash piles without even digging through them, and simply reminding myself that it would just end up back there anyway.

still miss that video though.


EDIT: ahem....er.. semiannual

(6 Comments |Comment on this)

by the numbers
hows about an update.



as of june 17th, 2010, i'll have been:
- ALCOHOL FREE FOR ONE YEAR (minus two sips of carrot seed homebrew and one sip of homemade ginger mead that i tried because they sounded tasty and my friends made them. briefly, i proclaimed myself to be "homebrew edge," i.e. "i don't drink that store bought shit." it's a cute little smart-assed concept from which i teased a few laughs, but in the end i have decided i'm just plain old alcohol-free. quitting marijuana has been tabled for now.)
- ON HORMONE REPLACEMENT THERAPY, FULL TIME FOR TWO YEARS (minus forgetting to take my spiro here and there. i find i have reached something of a plateau in my transition. gone are the monthly revelations of my body morphing before my eyes. that's not to say i'm not pleased with the effects of hormone replacement. i have cute size B tits, a nice ass and set of thighs, 10% the body hair i used to farm, and a softer countenance in general. but the whole having a boy voice continues to derail just about every attempt at normality i undertake. i think more and more about visiting the local trans voice therapist person here, but, when i think too long and hard about the $180.00 consultation fee, and subsequent $120.00 voice lessons, for, mind you, something i may not even be able to do very well, i start remembering the several more immeadiate concerns that that money begs. but i know eventually i am going to just blow the money and see what happens. it wouldn't have been the first $180.00 i've ever wasted utterly.)
- "SINGLE" FOR NINE YEARS (minus a few very memorable hookups, and a promising new developement involving the first non-phallic partner i've had in about as long. i've heard the term "surprise lesbian" thrown around by trans women before and i am finding it more and more suitable for my situation. if i had my druthers i would only hook up with other pre/non-op trans women, but i've found being strict about that preference leaves me hooking up about twice a year, and i'm not gonna be in my late twenties forever, so i've decided to give persons of other constitutions a sporting try. i actually really like my fun new non-official girlfriendish lady a lot. i've still never had a boyfriend.)
- LIVING WITHOUT ELECTRICITY, IN A TOWER [PICTURED ABOVE] ON TOP OF A WAREHOUSE IN A SECRET LOCATION IN SAN FRANCISCO FOR A MONTH AND A HALF (minus an on-hand generator that i'm always too lazy to fire up. not that i ever really need it but for electrified carpentry. life in a room the size of two garden sheds stacked atop one another is actually quite peaceful and would be ruined by the intrusion of incandesant bulbs and cd players and whatnot. instead, i find myself keeping my room clean and doing art more than i ever had previously. i wash and shave with water boiled over a coleman gasoline stove. it's funny how giving up electricity has made me look much cleaner [except for my always filthy hands!]! i am reading at twice the rate i ever did before. this is probably due in no small part to the fact that reading by oil lamp imbues anything you are reading with a warm, comforting, intimacy inobtainable under those newfangled, energy-saving, whirly-gig, eco-friendly, light "bulbs" that contain mercury. wow, even my diction is regressing.)


enough for now.
thanks for reading.

(7 Comments |Comment on this)

(2 Comments |Comment on this)

(Comment on this)

how i'm kickin' the sauce
so i had my last alcoholic beverage on june 17th of this year, 2009 anno domini. i, a former dedicated liver-pickler, haven't so much as sipped a spritzer since. one thing i've learned over the years is that doing stuff that's hard requires strategy. how have i managed to teetotal totally, you ask? consider the following:

1. beverage vessel tactile replacement therapy

i used to love drinking me some tall boys. i loved cracking those chilly, wet 32 ouncers and watching 'em foam up and taking a long draw. the FEEL of it was part of the relaxation/obsession. luckily, lots of beverages are of the tall boy persuasion. amy & brians coconut juice for example:



don't i look like i'm about to piss on some yuppie's car and punch out some fire extinguisher glass and pass out on the sidewalk? i feel kinda like it too!! FTW, right? but instead i'm hydrating myself, and being nice to people. and as a bonus, taking a shit the next morning won't take 2 hours! holler!

( moreCollapse )

(9 Comments |Comment on this)

(2 Comments |Comment on this)

fuck failblog. enter thereifixedit.com!
i used to love failblog but it has seriously seriously become a homophobic douchebag pissing contest. take for example this "fail". anyone who defends that can't possibly care about making gay people feel like shit.

but i couldn't care less anymore because my dream mood-enhancing website has been realized: ThereIFixedIt.com

i think everyone ought to take a good long look, 'cause in 20 years, everything is going to look like the stuff on this site.

(3 Comments |Comment on this)

submitting
my roommate recently informed me that her friend is putting out a zine entitled "How to fuck a transwoman" and is accepting open submissions. i thought, what better thing to submit than an overwrought homage to virginia woolf? and so this is what i came up with. it's gaudy and overwrought.

***

Isn't it odd

Considering how striking transwomen are, how the mere sight of us inspires a bizarre array of emotions and behaviors, how we wear our fierce refusal to live easy lives writ large upon our breasts like martyrs before a kindled stake, how we dive face-first into a life of utter madness and inexhaustable hilarity, how we pick the locks to the venusian libraries after hours and study the forbidden grimoires therein, how we pierce and cut and mutilate our flesh and willfully break our bones, how we redraft and rebuild our bodies from tortured meats and grist shat out by the cosmos, animated by a hateful god, how we shapeshift and perform dazzling feats of thought control upon dumbstruck citizenry, how we don cunning disguises like espionage agents operating in the field, how we grow our hair long like the trelisses of a crumbling tower, how our eyes shine out of our skulls like deep black rivers, how we thrust ourselves shorn and naked before hoards of dogs who can fulfill only our stomachs, how we meet in underground passageways and alleys to circulate the strategies of our people, how we travel from town to town in search of rest before the inevitable hostility of tradition threatens to swallow us and forces us back into the underbrush, how we sever our family lines violently and unceremoniously for nothing more than the appeasement of phantasmic demons, how we speak in strange codes in strange voices of survival's grueling demands, how we revel in music and theatre and light and costume and frivolity and humor yet are so seldom participants, how we close our eyes when we laugh and the corners pool with tears, how we obscure those eyes behind dark glass like a funeral mother, how we embrace deeply and longingly with strong yet vulnerable arms, how time carves lines into our faces that reveal the deep concentration and agonizing stamina with which we must conduct our day-to-day business, how we force ourselves from blissful, dreamy slumber, out of beds and into a world that casts stones at us, how we stand for the union of opposites, how we are living metaphors for the balance of all extremity that is so longed for by humanity, how our bodies are like motherfucking double fudge rocky-road pistachio cherry mint banana spilts in a world of chocolate and vanilla, isn't it odd that so many of us have such a hard time getting proper fucked? It's simple, really. Beyond our bodies, beyond our clothes, beyond the politics, beyond the messageboards, beyond the surgery clinics, beyond Thailand, beyond the DSM, beyond therapy, beyond genderfucking, beyond passing, beyond our community, and beyond the dismal beauty pageant that we so often feel that we must endure, the truth is that each one of us is merely a human being with a soul that has been kicked around who is in need of deep, authentic, personal love. Give her love. That is how you fuck a transwoman.



Tit worship doesn't hurt either.

<3 crissy snail, 2009

***

gaudy? overwrought? yep..

that's just how i do it.

~crissy

(4 Comments |Comment on this)

dude, fuck my fuckin' voice, dude.
i haven't posted here in forever.

a close personal friend told me i should post more because i might have some interesting things to say about my gender transitioning and whatnot. funnily enough, i initially joined LJ to write about transgender shit, but ended up posting cute links to novel things, often in video form. see below for examples.

so here goes:

i've been on hormone replacement therapy full time for one year now. living and working for about that long with my friends and co-workers informed that my gender pronouns are she and her et al. but of course, people screw it up at least five times a day because despite the consensus that i look pretty much passably female now, as soon as i open my yap, out comes my sort of guyish surfery booming dude voice replete with all the nuances of guyspeak: i can't say one fucking sentence to save my life without inserting profanity, slang, crass jokes, or the word "dude." some combination of the three is common.

and so once someone becomes comfortably acquainted with me, they drop their guard and the "he"s and "him"s start slipping out. when this happens many people become visibly embarrassed at their completely unintended faux pas. and then they're fucked because what do you do? you want to be a good friend of a tranny and not further rake me over the coals by making a huge deal out of my impossible demands, but then i get all butt hurt yet squash it down anyway 'cause i know it was an accident and i don't want to alienate my friends further and we both just try to pretend like it didn't happen. like a raunchy fart, we wish it would just go away.

and so recently i started poking around to see if there's any substance to the idea that pretty much anyone can learn to speak with a convincing female voice if they practice and go to speech therapy and all this expensive sounding hassle. there's this one program, "finding your female voice" that has examples of how well it works and i guess you buy like a set of lessons on CD and a book that teach you these quacky breath techniques that you practice and practice until you start to sound like a woman and then no one fucks up your pronoun and you have more self esteem and then you blend in with society and you are no longer a freak anymore. yay.


i've heard some of the before and after testimonials for this program and they are truly remarkable. but wait a second...

i'm a fucking feminist, right? i'm kinda a dyke, right? this is all a lot of assimilationist baloney! i like being trans. i'm porud to be trans. i COULD do this but aren't we all trying to slash open the gender spectrum and make this a more accepting society and festoon the lampposts with the entrails of binary thinking?

to be sure, this is a minority opinion among transwomen.

and after a year, i get why. being a gender outcast starts to suck shit after a while. when i have a tough gender day, ie, lots of pronoun flubs or i feel like i look like a fucking dude in that dress or whatever i start thinking about buying this fucking voice changing system and seeing if i can't get a little fucking normalcy in my ridiculous fucking life.


***

i dated a pretty passable transwoman for about a month and she once posited that i was "afraid to pass." and despite the MANY things we differ on she was goddamn right. i'm afraid of sounding like a dude that's trying to sound like a woman. i'm afraid of looking like some assimilationist queer who just wants to do whatever is necessary to fit in. i am afraid of shedding this cocoon of otherness that i've built around myself that i've grown so fond of over the years of gender non-conformity.

but in the end, i may just get the damn dvds or whatever and try, really, to be more passably female. my sanity probably depends on it. i feel like a fucking sellout.

(3 Comments |Comment on this)

(Comment on this)

The Corpus Clock

(Comment on this)

Lisa Black




yes!

Current Mood: horny

(1 Comment |Comment on this)

(Comment on this)

li wei










i fucking love this guy

(3 Comments |Comment on this)

born to hole
wow. i haven't updated this in almost a year. i've been too busy trying to be a sorta real person in san francisco. here's a update. i'm living in a basement in the mission. thats the update. furthermore:

starting a trans/girl metal band called turducken

working at a super homo health food coop

my bangs are short

on estrogen for about 5 months now. growing boobs, losing body hair, crying a lot, and hungry AS FUCK ALL THE TIME.

sort of voluntarily kicked out of a house in sf's bayview district

relentlessly scouring my body for "new holes." i.e. searching my body for erogenous orifices that have been neglected by anatomists due to homophobia and pressure from binary gender lobbyists throughout the years in hopes of proving my theory that there are actually about 23 different sexes.

THAT'S IT!

much love and gravel
~me

(6 Comments |Comment on this)

OAKLAND BOUND
in 2 weeks i'm moving to oakland. i don't have much in the way of plans. do any of the 6 people who read this know any people who need a roommate?

today i went to chuck e. cheese and got barrettes and plastic jewelry with my tickets.

they no longer have wack-a-mole games. i still suck at skee ball.

(1 Comment |Comment on this)

World's Tallest Wooden House

(Comment on this)