Episode 14 - Browncoats and Second Life, Oh my!

[sabrinatalk]

Thoughts on Long Awaited Ep 14?

Also, I mention in the show that I made a post about That news article on my Livejournal -- here's the text of that post and associated posts/comments.

The boogeyman is real.

April 20, 1999, and for years after that, the boogeyman wore black trenchcoats.

April 18, 2007, the boogeyman wears a wig, skirt, and high heels.

(Looking back, I guess there's been other boogeymen.. ones with pink triangles, or yellow stars, or painted faces or darker skin. And yet, we've learned nothing apparently.)


http://www.theoaklandpress.com/stories/041807/loc_2007041877.shtml

Man in wig, skirt spurs Cranbrook lockdown

Web-posted Apr 18, 2007

By CAROL HOPKINS
Of The Oakland Press

Only a day after students at Virginia Tech were locked in classrooms
as a gunman killed 32 of their classmates, Cranbrook Schools in
Bloomfield Hills went into lockdown Monday morning after parents
reported seeing a suspicious man dressed as a woman near a campus bus
stop.

Police described a white male about 6 feet tall, wearing a gray or
blond wig, lipstick, a flowered skirt, a dark coat and high heels.

Parents first spotted the man standing near the Kingswood School
parking lot around 7:50 a.m., school officials said.

"He was walking up the lot toward Kingswood School," said Lt. Paul
Myszenski with the Bloomfield Hills Department of Public Safety.

While he was not observed doing anything illegal, authorities decided
to lock down schools after 8 a.m. Students were told to sit in their
classrooms with lights off as police did a room-byroom search.

I don't even know -where- to begin with the fear and anger I feel over this. I still remember the fury and rage I felt after the Columbine Massacre.. and I was one of those afore-mentioned "Trenchcoat" wearers. Will I have to be afraid of gender identity now?

So this person was suspicious? Why? For being there? Or for being dressed in women's clothing? What made this person suspicious? They specifically point out that the person was doing -nothing- wrong or illegal, yet somehow this person is suspicious and dangerous? And WTF does this have to do with Virginia Tech???

Some people over on CD.com (notably, one of the argumentative GG admins) posed the question "Why was this person hanging out at a school?" And while I can understand that that appearance the article spins is that this person may have been "loitering" or that the focus was being by the school, I still don't necessarily by it. The quote from the police officer says the person was walking towards the school.

So, in the interest of not getting -too- righteously indignant without looking at both sides, I will add a few things:

1) We don't know if this was a true trans-person or just "a guy in a dress."
2) We don't know if they were loitering by the school or just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

There's still the possibility it was a prudent decision. However, my reaction is still that this person may have been out for a walk, waiting for a bus, or one of any number of reasons to be out in the daytime, near a school, walking through a parking lot that have -nothing- to do with any suspicious activity. I still feel it was a huge overreaction. No where in the article does it say the police approached the person to talk to them, or ask them what they were doing, which, hey, might have given them more indication about the person's motives. If the person runs, okay, you have your suspicions validated. If not, then maybe it's just someone out enjoying the day? Instead, they went to lockdown and buried their heads in the sand.

-Sabbie
_________________
Sabrina Talk podcast --
http://sabrinageek.podomatic.com

[Maya]

heya Sabrina, I haven't been around here for a while, but I'm always listening to your podcasts of course. I am happy to hear that you have started some hormones, but I am worried about how you are talking them. Hormones are very strong and dangerous and should be monitored with blood work with an Endocrinologist. I strongly advise you to seek professional help for hormone treatment. I admire your bravery to be a test subject for gender, but you put yourself in serious harm.

Sorry to keep being worried, but my other concern is about how you talk about your own gender. You say a lot of the time that you don't feel you are a true transsexual "yet" and that you are still working those things out. Now, obviously everyone needs time to find themselves and their identity, but sometimes the way you say it, it is like you are trying to become transsexual. It isn't something you become, just like you don't become gay. Maybe you are just a crossdresser, but there isn't anything wrong with that either. I'm not one for labels or saying someone isn't a "true" transsexual or whatever, but it would really suck if you made a mistake and transitioned for the wrong reasons.

I love your show a lot and I think you are doing awesome work...I just get concerned with some of the stuff you talk about sometimes. You are really brave to put your heart on the line and open up like you do, and that is what makes your show so special. I just want you to be safe and happy.

All the best,

Maya.

[jessica]

* strange days - wow, I totally forgot about this movie. I loved that
scene! Now I have to add that to my netflix queue.. Maybe I'll use my 10 hours to stream it now.

* second life - As with anything popular (see myspace, see cheating in
WOW), this world is quickly becoming hacked by people writing scripts,
and causing havoc (ejecting hundreds of thousands of objects
simultaneously makes the server slow down big time). Of course I don't
know if this is bad or good, perhaps this is only a reflection of the
real world, where people cause chaos. My only comment on second life is
that it needs to be more optimized. If you look at the playstation's
version of second life (home), it's very polished and more real
looking.. but I would never bother with it because ps3 is too expensive,
and it doesn't appear that you can really create anything, you have to
buy objects so your nothing more than a puppet living inside sony's
universe, limited to what sony will allow you to do. Personally I think
I would enjoy second life more if it were more affordable to buy land
(perhaps I just need to find friends to share land with?), and I wish it
were easier to create objects. Granted I know they're intention was to
make it simple, I find it very limiting on what I can create. My career
revolves around making realistic models in CAD software, which I'm very
comfortable with. The only thing I could find on importing was creating
objects in Maya or 3d studio max (perhaps I can export from my software
into the same format).

There really needs to be a new version of SL, one that's more open. In
second life you basically walk around, talk to people, possibly
role play, create objects, change clothes... But you can't steal, kill,
do anything to really affect other players, which doesn't make it very
interactive. I guess what I really want is a modern version of WOW (not
medieval), with the ability to create objects, weapons, and spells.
Imagine being able to walk around, and cast a spell (possibly only
temporary, maybe only lasts while your logged in). Turn a human into an
animal, or the opposite gender, shrink someone. Really the only fun thing in second life is to find someone away from their keyboard and build a cage around them, forcing them to teleport to another location. SL also might be fun if there were VR glasses compatible with it.

Have you heard about augmented reality? it's like meshing the real world with computer graphics. It was originally intended as heads-up display (think terminator), but there's a multitude of applications, including changing your appearance:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7Gn2TyEyHw

r/c vehicles:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1L6ee0KAdXA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umbTreYhidM
_________________
gender is just another label

[Vikky]

Good show this week Sabrina.

Nice to hear you talking about Firefly and Browncoats. I've been a fan of the series from when it aired on FOX, even with the mucked up schedule that made the character interactions a bit odd.

I was very happy to find the series on DVD, and when iTunes added podcast support The Signal was one of the first podcasts I added. I would like to do something from that podcast some day, but I don't think my RL self has enough pull to do that sort of thing.

If I may indulge a bit, I would like to chat a bit more about my own geekness. Firefly isn't the only series I enjoy, I've been a "Doctor Who" fan all of my life (my first memory is watching the show). I like "Star Trek", more the original series then the new stuff, and some of the early seasons of "X-Files". I'm still a big fan of "The Adventures of Brisco Country Jr." and not just because it has Bruce Campbell. I also go geocaching as well as my own writing.

I've never been to interested in Second Life, it's an interesting place, but my main experience has been how it takes up my friends lives. These are people who go to a large gathering only to long into Second Life to talk to their friends there... or worse spent two hours talking about how they got there 'bits' to work correctly, then show it off even though we don't care.

To be honest, I've taken to disabling the Internet connection when some of my friends come over so they will talk with us instead of spending their whole time on SL.

That's not to say everyone who play SL like this, it just seems these people are the most visible about it.

Myself, I use to be big on IRC and FurryMUCK back in the day, though I never let it get in the way of the real world, including school. There were times I missed my homework because of chatting on IRC, but I learned my lesson (many years later).

Oh, and thanks for the clip from "Strange Days". I'm glad to see I'm not the only person who remembers that movie. I always liked it, it had some fun ideas, even if it wasn't always put together that well.

Yay! Another person who started on a C64! That was my first computer as well, used to write all these silly programs in Basic on that system. Still have it around here someplace.
_________________
--Vikky
A Crossdresser and a fur!