Rants ‘n Raves
<RaveTime>
Rave: The King County district court in Seattle…
For having such a trans-friendly process when you go in for a name change. For other people who change names, they call you in open court with your “old” name, and then read your “reason” and ask if its true.
For trans-folks, they call you by your new name and say “Is the reason you listed for the record correct?”
I can’t think of a better way to do this… thanks!
</RaveTime>
<RantTime>
I usually try to keep my blog posts as positive and upbeat as possible. I try hard to not rant or get on a soapbox. Sometimes I do, and I fell a little *dirty* for doing it. (e.g., the “Last Day on SFO” macro-post where I became the staunch defender of capitalism)
However, its part of this too, so I’m going to start this little (I hope!) section to just let it out… let it all out! It’s good! It’s all good. WARNING: I may use a little more foul/harsh language here than usual.
RANT: Pseudo “MacroBlogs” – aka “Thieves”
I am NOT ranting about real blogs or sites who post some real comment, by a real person, who then link in – that’s super cool, and I really appreciate the links. Some of the ones I loved:
http://twitter.com/microspotting
Her comments are short, but clearly personal or 3rd hand, and it’s a real person. Cool.
http://jessicagoldharalson.tumblr.com/page/3
(scroll down past Mr. T (no shit), and a comment about a NYT art about making marriage private (getting the gov’t out of the way – very interesting – I agree!), and you can see her link. Nice. (Note, if you don’t find this on page 3, she posted more stuff – just go earlier in her blog.)
http://shippingseven.blogspot.com/
The post is “Winding Up, Winding Down” Right now (December 7) about halfway down on this page. This person is a Microsoftie, although I do not know who they are (they never self-ID – so I don’t know if I know them or not. I think I prob have worked w/them, but I have no idea (but I’ve worked with maybe 50%? (Little less?) of everyone who has worked on Windows in the past 11 years. That’s a lot of people – 10k? 20k?)
Go down to the “Not even the buffet” post, which then refers to the post I did about black tree mushrooms and how Dr. O said not to eat them pre-op.
This one gets even cooler because “saya” (http://www.gamalei.net/syaffolee/) on a comment on Dec 1 – explains the medical reason why this is true, and points to research. I won’t even repro it here to make you give dustbury the traffic they deserve for adding real value. The sad thing is that I’ve had two inbound links from these guys (dustbury), and way more from he losers I’m about to rant about.
UPDATE>> This site is so cool he *reposted* to make sure that this link didn’t come off the front page, under the post “To the Friends of Megan Wallent”. Dude (or Lady), you are ok in my book.
Go here. Fabian goes through stuff, points out what he thinks is cool, with a minimum of commentary (but some ads – so don’t go there if you don’t like ads.) I once called Fabian, “Fabian-bot” because I was confused, and I was not demonstrating the right behavior. Rant for me for doing that. Fabian’s good friend Kelly corrected me – Fabian Rocks, Kelly Rocks.
Go visit these people’s blogs – they are adding value to the world!
Now, on to the RANT!
These are the sites who post crap like this on a page plastered with banners with sometimes embarrassing and inappropriate crap. Real example:
[Comment about www.dailynugget.com deleted - Look, I was wrong, but I honestly didn't like the M$, the "sex" thing, the him/her thing, or spelling my name wrong, but I now understand that there was no malice, and without malice there can be no issue. Please read the comment by Kelly below.]
I was just trying to find the one that really irritated me – they basically replicated an entire post on some sleazy pseudo-porn site. ACK! First off, cutting and pasting snippets – clearly fair use. Cutting and pasting a whole post – not cool. There are these cool things called “hyperlinks”. Maybe you should USE THEM.
[Ed. note. I originally gave credit for the invention of hyperlinks to Andries van Dam from Brown University. However, while Andy was involved, I asked him for his opinion about the invention of these. This is what he said:
"No, I absolutely didn't invent hyperlinks - I was first exposed to the idea of hypertext by my Swarthmore College friend and coiner of the word Ted Nelson, with whom i then designed and had my students implement the 1967 Hypertext Editing System, which ran on an IBM 36/50 mainframe with an IBM2250 display attached. I then led two more hypertext/hypermedia projects (FRESS and the Electronic Document System) in the late sixties and early 80s) and created an institute at Brown that lasted for a bit over a decade that did research in the field (creating Intermedia which used the term web extensively in the mid-80s, well before sir TB-L). But the real credit belongs to Vannevar Bush, "As We May Think", Atlantic Monthly 1965, who talked about associations and links and dreamed up the Memex (based on microfilm) for storing and navigating thru hypermedia - Ted insufficiently credits him with the fundamental idea. It is still a MUST-READ article for anyone working in IT."
Thanks for the clarification Andy! ]
There are so many more of these loser sites that its hard to keep track. Don’t click on their links, don’t click on their ads, they add no value and are leeches.
RANT: Haters
As Yoda said “Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering! Much fear I sense in you.”
Dude, way way too much suffering in the world.
If you’ve read my blog and think that WHAT I DO AND HOW I INTERACT WITH PEOPLE is not nice, not good, not human, and choose not to like me – peace out my brother! I’m totally cool. To all the bullshit chat rooms that “commented” when the Valleywag art that came out who were just spewing crap because I’m transgendered, or work at Microsoft, saying things like “Where do these people get off having kids.”. Well, let me tell you, my three kids rock. They are going to make this world a better place. Samwich, in his nine months (less!) has made so many people smile and laugh, its amazing. We even call it the “Samwich Fan Club”. I have SO many pictures of random people coming up to him with the biggest smiles on their faces. Especially in Italy. The Italian ladies were WILD for the Sam-man. Old, young, he killed them all. John killed ‘em in China and Japan last year. So many people wanted their pic w/him (he’s got light brown hair and he’s super cute), that he got kind of sick of it (as six year olds will do!). Peri can sit down with any small kid and get them to laugh in seconds. She’s an *artist* at almost 10, and she is one of the smartest, most delightful people I know. I tear up even thinking that anyone should think that these three shouldn’t exist.
You know you who you are. I hope you can sleep at night. I sleep great (when I don’t have crap from surgery up my nose!)
RANT: Always, Never
These words are rarely true. You better be damn sure before you use them. Especially in a public forum, and when it’s personal.
(Ed. I had written something else here that had more details about the thing that upset me. I decided that as much as a relief as I felt to write it, that it was out of touch with the tone of this blog overall. I have truly come to the point in my life where I try as much as I possibly can to not be negative or make others feel bad. I did not live up to this, so I’m deleting the detail, but staying w/the rant about Always, and Never – powerful words – use them with care and precision.)
</RANT time=”ForNow”> (yes yes, I know - this isn’t “correct” HTML/XHTML/XML, whatever. It’s a “Joke”, we “writers” use “jokes” to make our “readers” “laugh”.)
hillel said,
December 7, 2007 at 11:06 am
You closed but never opened your “” tag. This is not W3C standard RML. You microsoft gals are always messing with the standard.
Kelly said,
December 10, 2007 at 5:43 pm
Hi Megan!
(I really meant to email you privately rather than direct post but didn’t know where to find your address. Please feel free to remove if needed…)
I saw this post and felt a little compelled to write to you, since I have been visiting this site and saw my friend Fabian’s name and site mentioned here, and just wanted to express my perceptions in this regard.
First of all, I got here from his blog and got to learn about your amazing journey, and I personally have been nothing but a big supporter of yours, I think by being so courageous and open you’ve not only transformed yourself into a beautiful person inside and out, you transformed all of us and made each of us a little more beautiful inside as well. Also your writing makes me smile and laugh here and there, which is super value-added.
Now, regarding Fabian’s blog, he is an old colleague of mine who lives in San Francisco area, and also one of the memorable warm, open-minded, and progressive person I’ve met at work. His writing style is lucid and neutral, and through years of reading from him, and since I too, like Fabian, have been a Liberal person working among Conservatives (the Conservative ratio is a bit high in our industry), I understand that he just wanted to make people aware of extraordinary things and people that we are not aware of everyday. He stated your case neutrally without adding doses of commentary because that’s the way it should be – people who visit his site – Liberal and Conservatives alike, should read on ourselves then make our own decisions about your amazing journey indeed! If he was against gender transformation itself or disrespectful to you in anyway, he probably would not have recommended your blog. He is not a ranter or hater to any community out there and he too, dislikes people who have excessive pride or prejudice.
About the M$ deal, well, you would know this, the good old Silicon Valley vs. Microsoft competition stuff for a Bay Area dweller- Living here, his Seattle officemates here give the SV people plenty of crap back everyday on your behalf.
Bottom-line, Fabian’s blog is mostly viewed by friends and family who shares his openness and progressive views, regardless of how his blog might have came across as unfriendly in any manner, the most important thing is that he made us aware of you, and you made us aware of the reality of gender transformation. There would be no genuine support if there was no understanding through your sharing, and I got my opportunity to understand better through the awareness Fabian brought forth on his site. (And, I want you to know there is really -1 non-supporter of you in this world.)
Sincerely,
Kelly
P.S. Your new pictures look great! All the best wishes for you, Ahn and Samwich The Cute.
Megan >> Wow. First off, thank you for telling me this in such a super calm, civil way, defending your friend (which is awesome) and at the same time complimenting me. This was an anti-flame mail. There is no better.
I feel like a heel. I’m sorry. I just saw this a second ago, and I’m going to fix my Rants ‘N Raves page NOW to fix my egregious error. Don’t get me wrong, I hate macro-bot blogs, and I still will rant about them – but if you are telling me that Fabian’s blog isn’t that – but he just doesn’t comment, and has ads, then ok.
I won’t even try to defend myself, I’ll just fix my error, immediately. I hope you, the community and more importantly Fabian forgive me. I’m really sorry.
I really appreciate the correction. I hope you keep reading (Today was actually interesting, I’ll write shortly! (I HAVE A NEW LEGAL NAME!)).
With Kindness, and Red-face-ed-ness,
Megan
dustbury.com » To friends of Megan Wallent said,
November 28, 2008 at 3:21 pm
[...] (Ms Wallent mentions the item in a Rant.) [...]