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...or 'graphic novels', yada yada.
I picked up a copy of 'Kick Ass' in the bookshop today and read it this afternoon. It was good, yeah. Very violent and funny and clever. It's a kind of meta-comic - the young guy in it wonders at the beginning why people in real life never try to become superheroes. Then he decides to actually become one, in real life. Except it's not real life - it IS a comic book.
There's lot of little references in there like when he says 'this is Kick Ass no fucking more' - referring to that Spider Man story where he famously chucked his costume in the bin.
I have been tentatively exploring the world of 'graphic novels' in recent years. I loved comics when I was a kid - especially Marvel. Not so much DC - I hated all that parallel world shit that went on - it was far too confusing.
I suppose it's a cliche but superheroes really do appeal to weak, weedy little nerdy kids. It's obvious why. Take Spider Man for example - he really IS a weedy nerdy kid, but his secret powers make us feel more powerful somehow, like we might just be the same.
I often get picked on by teenagers in the street - of course part of me would love to do some awesome karate moves and kick the shit out of them. That post-orgasmic moment when the hero stands over the bloodied bodies, panting. I could be 'Tran Girl' or something. This actually does sound like a post-modern graphic novel doesn't it?
You can't really understand the 20th Century mentality without Superheroes. They represent the ultimate fulfilment of egoism and self-realisation. When Nietzsche spoke of 'The Superman' he was referring to a perfect philosophical being, one who is ultimately self aware - not a guy with his underpants on the outside. But maybe there is a connection. Just a vague notion of being more than human. Certainly 'becoming' is an important element. Realising.
Anything you love when you're a child you love when you're an adult - no matter what else happens. It's a wonderful thing to give in to that and never be ashamed - to revel in the things that made you who you are.
So, you will see me reading Proust and you will see me discussing my latest handbag purchase (grape, lots of compartments, elegant) - but you might ALSO see me discussing superheroes with the nerds... and you might also count me among their number.
After I read the graphic novel 'Watchmen' I went to see the film ON MY OWN because I couldn't find anyone else to go with - how sad is that?
Er... not sad at all actually because I fucking loved it and I was very, very happy.
OK, I finally had my Decapeptyl injection this morning - in my slightly enlarged arse (I never used to have one - now, after three months of oestrogen I am rather proud of my booty development).
The needle was like the one pictured, so seeing the doctor lifting that up was rather worrying. Actually it hurt a bit when it went in but the real problem comes when you stand up afterwards and find your leg has gone all wobbly. It's like you fell on your arse basically, it feels all bruised and numb.
Anyway, this injection will now tell the bit of my brain that communicates with my...well.. testes that they are producing too much testosterone, when in fact they're producing the normal amount. So my brain will shut them down and that will be that - my testosterone level will drop radically. To normal female levels in fact.
But rather oddly the brain gets a bit confused when it first gets that signal and starts producing too much testosterone, so to combat this I have to take something called cyproterone for two weeks. This does the same job of lowering the testosterone level but they don't use it long term as it can make you depressed and mad.
Because I will be having these injections every three months till I have surgery (the big surgery) that's it for testosterone, if all goes according to plan. So that will mean the hair growth I experience, which has slowed down a bit already, will slow down much more. I am hugely looking forward to that.
Years of aggressive waxing have left my legs marked and not looking very good. At first the itchy growth back was unbearable - now this should be helped as the hair will find it harder to come back. Also on my face it will slow down, so I'll get even more benefit from my electrolysis.
I may go a bit doo-lally because my body now has to get used to an entirely new sex hormone regime after twenty plus years of testosterone only. So I expect all the mood swings and tearful stuff to kick in now - although you just don't know till you get there.
They seemed rather surprised at the clinic that I was getting some boob development on the low dose of oestrogen I was on. Now that has doubled I should find things get even more exciting - hopefully. I can see a difference every day - and my weight is creeping up gradually to the ten stone mark. GRADUALLY.
So, here we go. Let's see what life is like without that pesky male sex hormone...
This gentleman was called Ludwig Wittgenstein.
I can't pretend I understand his philosophy but, as I do understand it, he was responsible for bringing linguistic analysis to philosophical problems. A fascinating subject area.
Basically, if you define the terms of a problem correctly you may find the problem (the philosophical problem) disappears in what Douglas Adams called a 'puff of logic'.
Like 'What's the meaning of life?'. A spurious question as it happens - philosophers have generally been more interested in the question 'how can I be happy?'
But take it as an example. What do we mean by 'meaning'? What do we mean by 'life' ? Is there a chance we can tease apart the problem and find it's actually a misunderstanding, a lack of clarity?
We have to understand, or at least think about, what language is and what it does. This is something that greatly interests philosophers. Language labels things - 'a chair', 'a dog'. And a raft of associations come with the label. So the label becomes more than the thing, perhaps?
Language makes sense unto itself. Like if we say 'the divorced man who lives next door with his wife' - that's what we call a category mistake. There is no internal logic so the statement is not valid.
You can see how the demands of language can limit thought then - because statements have to have internal logic to be valid - but is life always like that?
This is why Wittgenstein said things like this :
'whereof one cannot speak one must be silent'
I think we can all feel that.
I experience problems of language daily, as a trans-woman. There's a label right there. Transsexual is another one - and it's not a label I like.
The main problem is, of course, the 'she' thing. Language is a label - and people naturally feel it's right to call me 'he' sometimes. They can become very uncomfortable with having to change - to make, as they perceive it, a 'category mistake'.
A woman doesn't have a penis. A man has a penis. If you have a penis, you must be a man. See - the limitations of language and logic?
What if the chair turns round and says it doesn't feel like a chair - it feels like a coffee table? Objects don't usually reject their labels. You don't usually have to take into account the thing's feelings when you give it, not just a label, but a common sense label. An instinctive label.
I wonder what Wittgenstein would have made of it?
I don't think I'd have made it this far without Bruce Springsteen.
His words have saved me and uplifted me and bought me back to life.
Some people don't understand what an overly girly trans lady can see in a macho, posturing, air-punching male singer.
Well I don't see him as that - I see him as a poet more in the Bob Dylan mold. He's seen as a macho twat by some - I don't think they've really listened to what he has to say.
His world view has always been, pretty much, that life is tough. It's a struggle to get out there and work and live every day. But there's something noble in that - and there is hope. Hope for a better life and hope for redemption.
That's pretty much my world view too.
'I believe in the love that you gave me - I believe in the faith that can save me - I believe in the hope and I pray that some day it may save me'
Not complicated words - maybe not clever - but from the heart.
And so tender, sometimes.
'Now I just act like I don't remember and Mary acts like she don't care'
That line always gets me because I think that's what a lot of people do in life.
'Some day girl I don't know when, we're gonna get to that place where we really wanna go and we'll walk in the sun, but till then tramps like us, baby we were born to run'
I suppose it's corny but I don't care - love is corny isn't it? It's sentimental.
'Put your make up on, fix your hair up pretty, and meet me tonight in Atlantic City'.
I will Bruce. And I would love to wrap my legs round your velvet rims and strap my hands cross your engines.
But then there's also the anger and the passion - like in the massively misunderstood anthem of defiance : 'Born in the USA'.
It's a song of anger and protest about Vietnam and the American Dream gone wrong.
'Born down in a dead man's town, first kick I had was when I hit the ground, you end up like a dog that's been beat too much, till you spend your whole life trying to cover it up...'
His world view runs right through that song - I've been beat down, but I'm defiant - but with a shot of darkness.
So many of his lines get me right there - maybe you can't see why. Maybe you need the music. Maybe it just all seems kitschy.
But a line like : 'At night I hear the blood in my veins, just as black and whispering as the rain'.
It's redolent, it's beautiful, it's crystal.
He's The Boss, sure. But I call him The Poet.
'I had skin like leather and the diamond-hard look of a cobra
I was born blue and weathered but I burst just like a supernova'
'The ghosts in your eyes of all the boys that went away, they haunt this dusty beach road in the skeleton frames of burned out chevrolets'
'In the summer all the lights would shine, there'd be music playin' people laughin' all the time, me and my sister we'd hide out in the tall corn fields,
Sit and listen to the mansion on the hill'
I could go on and on...
The other day I was telling Freddie about Rod Hull and Emu and trying to describe what 'they' used to do. Today I showed him some vids on You Tube of the great man and that tinselly bird beating the crap out of Michael Parkinson et al and Freddie of course laughed like a drain.
You just wouldn't get it now would you - it was of its time. No way would someone basically jump on someone else and throttle them on TV - the security guards would come on and break it up. Funny how there are actually things you could do then which you can't do now - when we think everything is more relaxed.
Those old vids are still hilarious. Rod Hull was so gentle and apologetic about the whole thing, it just seemed unbelievable that this sweet man was responsible for the mayhem. That's how the trick worked - nothing to do with a fake arm.
Children will always love the wildness - the naughtiness of that bird. And the cruelty - the essence of comedy.
Of course Rod Hull met an ignoble end by falling off his roof, but I bet he'd be glad to hear a child still laughing at his act. What more fitting tribute than the laughter of children ringing through the ages?
I don't talk much about my passion for Doctor Who because it gets shoved to the periphery sometimes by other more dramatic things like having a sex change.
However, I was thinking the other day that I really should set the record straight on this one.
Doctor Who is one of my favourite things in the world. There you go, I've said it.
When I was a lonely little boy I was obsessed with it - absolutely obsessed. And in a good way - I needed that escape to cope with the bewilderment.
It was a place to go.
I think it appeals to people who are different, to outsiders, because the Doctor himself is an outsider. And he doesn't use weapons or violence - he gets out of scrapes using his imagination and his intelligence. It's a wonderful thing.
But there's more to it than that. It's a very personal glow of nostalgia, it's Proust's madelaine, it's a cuddle from childhood. Every frame of it fills me with happiness - even though I watch some of the classic episodes and know, really, that it's crap. The crap special effects, the crap acting, the crap stories with endless running down corridors and companions twisting their ankle... the crapness is all part of the joy.
Like you don't not love your Dad because he's a crap dancer do you? Because he's embarrassing at wedding receptions. That's all part of why you love your Dad. Doctor Who is like that.
I'm not geeky in my behaviour with Doctor Who - I don't have all the DVDs in alphabetical order or anything - in fact I've only got a few DVDs of it. But I do hire out the DVDs from Lovefilm and watch them as a secret, personal, quiet little piece of joy.
I may however seem geeky - if for example you were to hear me and my friend Chris discussing the intricacies of Cyberman design or the merits and flaws of the JNT era you'd probably think I was a geek. But me and Chris became friends because of Who and we still talk about it in the same way we did when we were little kids. It's a special connection. And I don't think he'd be that interested in talking about how wonderful patterned tights are (aren't they though?!)
And the new series? I love it. I think they've done such a fantastic job of keeping the spirit of the old series alive while making it... well... better. Just unarguably good.
When it came back and was so popular again it was vindication for us geeks -
I think we all wore our anoraks with renewed pride (mine is pink with embroidered blue flowers and I wear it with blue, sparkly heels).
I think The Doctor is now a character like Sherlock Holmes - part of our mythology, part of our culture. He will always be there in some form.
It's been a special part of my life and no matter how much I change there'll always be a place for it.
As the very first Doctor, William Hartnell, once said :
'go forward in all your beliefs... and prove to me that I am not mistaken in mine...'
