Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness

Trans Pride Manchester today.

I took photos of signs saying:

• "Pride was a riot started by us" (held by a dark-skinned person
• "New chair, new arse, same shit!" (with both "EHRC" and "TERF" on it and crossed out)
• "I bite TERFs" (on a blåhaj)
• "Corgis for trans rights" (accompanied by two adorable corgis)
• "Making trans boring since 1983" (held by a trans man)

I didn't manage to get photos of the signs that said:

• "You made toilets weird, not us"
• "Tough year, tougher community"
• "I went to Athens and all I got was this stupid top surgery"

I particularly love the concept of making trans boring -- it can be complicated because trans men/mascs are invisibilized as the flipside of trans women/fems hypervisibility and I don't think it's inherently better to pass as cis or fit in, but also there's a screenshot of a tumblr post that goes around every so often with a photo of a few standard white guys in t-shirts and jeans, completely unremarkable hair and stuff, walking with an "FTM" banner (it might have more words on it too, presumably whatever group they actually were, but this is what I remember of it), and some commentary about how great it is that they just look like Some Guys.

D's sign, tailored to be dual-purpose since we planned to do the trans march and then go counter-protest a UKIP demo in town, ended up giving us cause to illustrate an entirely different way to make trans boring. By the time we got to Piccadilly Gardens, the fash had marched off. So we went for a drink with a friend. But on our way back through there on our way to the bus home, D spotted that a couple of fash had returned. His placard suddenly had a few white guys swarming around us, phones already held up as if videoing, asking him to be "interviewed" for their "citizen journalism."

Their attempts to shock him with language about "men cutting their dicks off" didn't work even after repeated applications, and when asked loaded questions he blandly responded "Well, I don't think that's happening" and then said sensible stuff like "I think kids should learn about all the kinds of humans that there are." His standing-for-political-office skills might be dormant these days but they were undiminished! Another guy -- absolutely stereotypical British racist, down to the bad teeth -- accosted me with "if trans people end up coming out anyway, kids don't need to hear about it in school," an extremely straightforward stance for me to bat away like a fly.

Very quickly they realized that they weren't going to catch D saying anything damning or even interesting for their YouTube channels or whatever, and lost interest, and we strolled away.

This, too, is an advantage of making trans boring.

it has been a minute since my insomnia was this bad.

It was bad that I woke up at 6am after woefully inadequate sleep and could not fall asleep again even though I was so tired I felt like I'd been poisoned.

It was bad when I slept for like 3 hours this afternoon to make up for that, thereby deciding for me whether or not D and I were going to the Midsommars gig today.

And then I felt bad for "not doing anything" today, even though I was up and dressed by 7, had breakfast and coffee, emptied the dishwasher, walked with yrieithydd to meet angelofthenorth, tidied away the bedding they'd used on the sofa last night, started the laundry, fetched and carried things for D while he looked at doing some car DIY, heated up some leftovers for him for dinner, talked to my parents...

I think it felt like "nothing," despite all that, because it didn't feel like enough to prepare me for another week of work. I felt so good about meeting a deadline for getting the first draft of a report done by the end of Friday, but now there's a ton more work to do on it -- the first task being to constructively accept the feedback of the four managers I've sent the first draft to, even though I'm so acutely aware of its failings that the only feedback I can cope with the prospect of receiving is one-dimensional gushing praise. And I can't even have my emotional-support circuits class that normally makes Mondays bearable, not unless someone who's currently booked can't go, unbooks themselves, and I can book beforehand.

My insomnia felt worst this evening. I had a terrible case of the Sunday night morbs: I'm dreading work tomorrow like I said, I felt so lonesome, and I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep. I can usually tell by 8 or 9 at night whether I'll be able to get to sleep without too much difficulty or not. I can't explain how, but it's weirdly reliable. And everything about today was telling me there will be no sleep.

I walked up next to D after having a snack and told him I was going to bed, something I almost always do. He asked me how I was and I said my brain was being a jerk. He said that I should go make a rum and coke and join him on the sofa. And make him one too (heh). It was such an unusual thing for him to request -- he never argues with me saying I'm going to bed -- that I couldn't resist.

He put something on the TV and we ended up watching the first half of When Springsteen Came to Britain, which he told me he'd found and downloaded a while ago, but I'd forgotten about it since. It was a really nice treat, seeing the footage of the Boss and the Big Man when they were impossibly young men, singing along, letting the instrumental parts of "Backstreets" knit up the raveled sleeve of care like it always does...

It hasn't made it any easier for me to get to sleep of course. But it at least gave me some nicer things to think about while I've been awake. I felt very cared for (which sometimes helps with the loneliness too).

D came along to lift club this morning! It's so much more fun when he's there.

This afternoon we had a snuggly nap.

When I woke up this evening, angelofthenorth was making amazing delicious food. It smelled so good. What a treat.

This evening, D and I had a couple beers and watched the Twins actually win a game! And explained things to angelofthenorth as they came up.

I didn't get as far as Sparkle on its first day today but I did go to the Village for a meal with a local disabled group (moat of whom are also queer/trans) which I'm adjacent to, with a friend who needed a PA.

(I was glad to learn that I can still queer this friend/PA binary; it used to make up my whole employment for like five years.)

I got to my friend's house before we went out. They had glitter on their face and offered me some. I love glitter but it was the kind of hot day where I started sweating as soon as I got out of the shower. After having to hustle over to their house, my face was so sweaty I told them not to bother putting it on my face because I'd just sweat it off. Of course I had a sleeveless t-shirt on (the one D bought me at last year's Sparkle!) so they offered to put it on my shoulders. Pretty soon both my upper arms were covered in pink, purple and blue glitter, it was great.

When I got home, D saw me and pointed this out of course (as well as my "painted for the first time in five years" fingernails (chrome with rainbow sparkles over them).

I said it'd be the perfect time to flex my biceps, now that they're extra gay.

"Guy-ceps!" he said. "Guy for guy-ceps."

I had a fun time tonight watching D play a very silly round of Hardspace: Shipbreaker, which then got surprisingly stressful and harrowing for a game about taking spaceships apart, and then had an eventful and actually sweet cutscene.

Short version:

• snuggling in bed with my lovely boyfriend, being the little spoon, holding my phone up for both of us to watch

( Long version: )

It's almost midnight and I'm too tired to say much about today but every part of it was brilliant, from the treats I bought my household at the Birmingham Bizarre Bazaar to the new friends we accidentally made there to the old friend we ran in to -- who luckily recognized us from the internet, because we never would have recognized him! -- to meeting up with B and being introduced to a polycule, to having dinner with D's sister and her awesome family, to good and much-needed conversations on the trip home.

I've gotten a lot of time with D this weekend and it's all been so great, I feel so lucky. Friday will be our sixth anniversary and it still never ceases to amaze me that I get to have my favorite person as my boyfriend.

Literally did the Distracted Boyfriend meme this morning. The glaring girlfriend was D trying to tell me how electricity generators work, and the girl I was distracted by was a HUGE cactus just on the side of the road

It was much taller than me, looked like it had lots of fingers growing up out of the ground, I wanted to touch it so bad but I didn't know how prickly it was.

D of course didn't notice this at the time but, when he found out about it, said if we see another one he'll tell me if its too prickly to touch. Aww now that is good accessibility support.

I understand that modern big-budget video game sound design is not optimized for the gamer's boyfriend who never plays video games. I'm annoyed about something in each new game and I accept that.

But when the gamer himself is yelling back at the NPCs' dialogue because it's nonsensical or even the opposite if its intended meaning...there might be an actual problem there.

This post andrewducker shared about good new years resolutions reminds me of the December when diffrentcolours said "This has been such a shit year, I don't know what the next will bring, so I'll limit my resolutions to [sexytime thing he wanted to do with me]." (This seemed wise to me so I similarly suggested a sexytime thing I wanted to do with him.)

It was wiser than I knew; we were saying this at the end of 2019 and it turned out any "normal" resolution would've had no chance.

(We've done mine (I think) just recently and still haven't quite managed his. It's fine if the resolutions take more than a year, too.)

Meanwhile, I determined that the end-of-year wrap-up for every app (app-up?) is getting out of control. This afternoon I got a notification from my bank app that says "2024 mobile wrap up. Here's how we have improved the app this year and what we're working on in 202..."

At first I thought it was gonna tell me what I spent my money on this year and that thought alone made me almost drop my phone in horror.