Acting as a secrete shopper, I called the Copperwood Apartment complex. This complex receives HUD funding to provide housing to the elderly. I was posing as the transphobic family member of an elderly male-to-female trangender woman.
So, I know this is gonna sound strange and maybe even a little creepy.
Vanity posted an announcement that she's carrying Stand to Pee (STP) devices at her shop now on the FTM egroup. After reading that, I went to use the restroom and after sitting down, I tried to remember what it was like to stand and pee. I then experience this... well, blank spot where I could not remember what 'it' looked like. I still can't remember. I then had this weird experience of trying to imagine what it must have been like to have a penis. In other words, I have no clue what it looked like to look down and see a penis. I can imagine what it must have been like and I know that looking down and seeing it was an experience I had most of my life, but the memory seems to be misfiled.
Don't get me wrong; I'm not bemoaning the fact that I don't have a penis. What's bothersome is that I have had a feeling that's very similar to the feeling I get when I'm reaching for a person's name I should know but have forgotten. I've not had such an explicit lapse of recall before.
It's really strange. Has this happened to anyone else? It's been 6 years since my surgery.
I’ve been a member of
Audible.com for more than a year now. I’ve been very happy with the service
until today. Now I think I’ll close my account.
For those of you that don’t
know, Audible is an audio book retailer. Since I’m busy, I like to listen to
books while I drive, clean, etc.
Recently, my computer
crashed and I had to reinstall everything. Today I purchased a book and since I
had not yet installed the Audible downloader program, I streamed the book
directly from the audible site this morning while I went about my routine.
Tonight I downloaded the Audible program download and itunes for my ipod and
reinstalled them.
Tonight I thought I’d do
some cleaning, so I try to listen to the book I bought. Upon trying to listen to
my book, I got an error message that basically read, “To cut down on piracy, we
only authorize 3 devices to pay your purchases. If you are seeing this message,
you must unauthorized one of your devices.” I thought, “Well that’s fucked.” So,
I went to the Audible.com site to unauthorized a device. After mucking through
the support site, I found that they require that I have access to the offending
machine… which is across town. The instructions tell me to call customer service
if I don’t have access to machine I wish to unauthorized. So I call… Only to
find out that their customer service office is already closed and won’t be open
again until Monday. I go back to their site and find their help desk. So I fill
out a ticket and submit it. I get an email saying that they will get back to me
on Monday.
Since I couldn’t play the
download file, I decided to go back to simply streaming it like I did this
morning. I download the steaming file and… I get the same goddamn message
telling me that the corporation will not allow me access to the content I own
because they don’t want me to listen to it using this computer.
At this point I’m calling
bullshit.
If I purchase a CD, I can
listen to it on any player, computer or in my car. If I purchase the exact same
content in a digital download format, I apparently have to deal with Big
Corporate Brother telling me what device I can and can’t use. Furthermore, to
use the particular device I want, it seems that I have to beg Big Corporate
Brother to let me do it… when it’s convenient for them.
This is why people use
pirated content. Apparently the way it works is, if I dish out money to buy
things the right way, I get to deal with a corporation telling me when, where
and how I can use the content I own. If I elect to use pirated content, it’s
free and I get to use it wherever and however I like. At this point I’m pissed
enough to start looking for copyright busting programs so that I can bust the
copyright “protection” on the files I bought so that I can listen to the damn
things instead of waiting until Monday morning so that I can call a corporation
to get their blessing to listen to the book I paid for.
So, what’s the best program
to convert aax files to MP3?
All about my life as: The designer of TransHouston; The program manager of Houston's only TG program; A post-op transsexual vegetarian Theravada Buddhist; and, recovering drug addict with an obsessive-compulsive disorder - Cristan Williams' Blog : )
