Magnificent!

By Sniper Tom Monday, September 5th, 2016 Things Which Amuse Me :: The Adventures of Sniper Girl No Comments

This creature appeared on the Book of Faces the other day:

highly groomed afghan hound

And the following interaction forsooth did happen:

D-Dawg(transdude): She reminds me of that dog in the RSPCA ad

Me: HOW DO YOU KNOW IT’S A GIRL YOU CISHET CAPITALIST SCUM

Me: IT COULD BE A GENDERQUEER HORSE

D-Dawg(quietly): Because they said she was a girl

Me: AN MSM CONSPIRACY

D-Dawg(eyeroll): I CBF

And then I thought to myself, and to Elcee out loud in my head, and we realised that we could work out this magical creature’s lengthy pedigree.

It is in fact a silky mop. The silkiest mop. The fanciest mop in the world. A display mop that is an heirloom you keep in a glass case. It never get dirty, always have straight hair. Eccentric great great grandma bought it because some weirdo Victorian tradition.

And it was in her weirdo mansion when she died. The bow was added by the grandma. It didn’t come like that.

It became a drag queen poster girl, but then the genderqueerfags got angry? Then it became an internet celebrity.

No-one is sure how it has been alive so long. It is thought that it was friends with Marlene Dietrich back in the day. The romantigoths adopted it as a mascot.

And yet, somehow, its less pedigreed cousins ended up in a mysterious and creepy Book of Dogs. A ghost dog.

Haunting the pages. Dolefully looking out into the night. Howling at the moon. Yawning.

The Truth About The Exam

By Sniper Tom Saturday, April 16th, 2016 Things Which Amuse Me :: The Adventures of Sniper Girl No Comments

It was on a Saturday that I was rudely awoken at 7:30 am with a forceful demand to get dressed and proceed to the hospital for an unscheduled practice exam. The truth of course was that anything other than starting at 5 am for preparation was in fact lazy and means you have an attitude problem.

I found out from Cgiffard that next year, it turns out that they are going to replace the exam with a big boulder that you have to push uphill, whereupon an exam convener will kick it to the bottom again. In addition there are 5 concurrent boulders, you guess which boulder to push but regardless of which one, you will be squashed by all 5 then chained to a rock to have your liver ripped out while people point and laugh and say you did a bad job.

After that (god willing) you get to be a specialist and drive around in a dentist’s Porsche! So it’s all OK. And once inducted into the cult you believe with religious fervour that This Is the Way®™. Of course, it’s not actually your Porsche, and you are not a dentist – you are actually tied up in the boot with a missing liver, a feeling of being a little scathed in the abdomen and nothing but a frilly ice pack to nurse your wounds. A small price to pay for true luxury!

You mumble to yourself “this is not my beautiful wife, this is not my beautiful car“, watching the days go by, and alternating humming a song by a Fauxdashian.

It goes without saying that this is just something you are chanting to yourself  ineffectually as you bleed out in the boot of the dentist with whom your wife is having an extramarital affair.

But at least FRACP will be engraved on your gravestone! In fact, that’s all that will be engraved on it. Just FRACP over and over again in Crazy Font®™. Your relatives will look upon your gravestone, clutching the tender hands of their young children as they say:

“Wasn’t he such a hero? Don’t you want to be just like him when you grow up?” And the cycle repeats. There’s not FRACPing end to it.

Somewhere out there, there’s a person with a possessèd liver. The liver COMPELS THEM to become an FRACP examiner.

Future examiner: “But I’ve wanted to be a motor mechanic my whole life… I… AUGH!!”

LIVER (voice of Danny DeVito): “Ah, cmaaahn! You just got to liver little!”

The worst thing other than being forced to judge people subjectively over impossible tasks is putting up with the Danny DeVito voice. And uncontrollable guilt that makes you only put fellow transplant patients into the exam.

In The Examiner‘s house lies a maple wood plaque with a burnished silver nameplate reading ‘FRACP’ in elegant conservative engraving, of which The Examiner is particularly proud.

Atop this plaque is mounted a frilly, bloodstained icepack.

“I am the one who SURVIVED! I MADE IT!”, The Examiner thinks when he looks upon it. “I’m right! My ways are absolute and incontrovertible!”

“Yah did good, kid.” The slow mafioso drawl from his liver is something The Examiner had come to enjoy. He adjusts his black tie and white shirt in his ill-fitting corpse cult suit, smirking in the mirror. A wisp of black smoke curls from the examiner’s ear — the last synaptic linkages of empathy now completely cauterised — held in place only by an increasingly thick glial sinew to the section of his hippocampus that stores memories of his Porsche. When the other organs fail, heck there are plenty more organs where that came from. The team that performs the surgery are all overseas trained doctors waiting endlessly for their specialist recognition to come through.

“Hurry up, GUAM.” The Examiner barked, stomach pinned open in a grotesque array of drapes and clamps. He lifted his head. For some reason no amount of general could ever keep him under. “I’m warning you, GUAM. Your specialisation is at stake here.”  Guam nodded her head soberly. No matter how many organs she harvested for the RACP she knew she’d never get her FRACS. Not while surgeons competed over >$1 million private practices in the inner city.

“I’ve started a skin cancer clinic in Balmain.”, chirruped an offensively smug young practitioner walking past the theatre. “Of course it was all my own money. I’m not like those people who rely on others. I built it all myself.”

“What’s your draw card?”

“We take a regular procedure, stick lasers into it somehow, and market the hell out of it.”

“That sounds easy!”

“Lasers are expensive! I only have five million dollars capital per year here.”

“But it has panache, doesn’t it? Sex-appeal?” He leans in toward his friend. “We don’t suture your wound. We laser-suture it. We don’t diagnose your condition. We laser-diagnose. We don’t have bedside manner. We have laser focus.”

The smug young practitioner sighed. “Life is so tough that I have to have a YouTube channel with at least 500000000000 followers.”

“It’d be way cooler to have a Youtube Channel with 500000000 followers if it could somehow involve lasers,” thought the even younger practitioner, obviously disappointed that YouTube didn’t immediately equate to a ritzy practice in Balmain. “Not fair.”

Contemplating this, a drug rep offers them branded laser pointers with “viagrialis” and a penis etched into them.

~ fin ~

OR IS IT?!

Sartorial Style

By Sniper Tom Saturday, April 16th, 2016 Things Which Amuse Me :: The Adventures of Sniper Girl No Comments

Elcee: The Bendigo Hotel was on Gold St, near Johnston. Just east of Smith St.

Elcee: It was like it appeared out of a time rift from the 70’s. [The lesbian clientèle were] so butch and middle aged.

Elcee: Like the sartorial style was ‘diabetic trucker’.

Depressio the Third, or, 14 Kinds of Really Depressing People to Be Around

By Sniper Tom Sunday, August 16th, 2015 Things Which Amuse Me :: The Adventures of Sniper Girl No Comments
  1. People who are desperately trying to be interesting (but are not)
  2. People who are eagerly, grinningly pretending that they have not given up on the idea of happiness, beauty and truth
  3. People who are trying to “tick all the boxes of success” on their slow, inexorable march towards death
  4. People who have decided that the only way they can be happy is with the physically ravishing and completely oblivious object(s) of their obsession
  5. People whose deep emptiness pervades their entire existence
  6. People who stopped living sometime during high school or university
  7. People who demonstrate their uniqueness by being exactly like all the other hipsters around them
  8. People with no personality of their own whatsoever
  9. People who tell the same stories over and over again
  10. Human parasites
  11. People who to be around sucks all oxygen from the room
  12. People who make you die inside
  13. People who read clickbait
  14. Humour bloggers

How To Fail At Existentialism

By Sniper Tom Sunday, July 26th, 2015 Things Which Amuse Me :: The Adventures of Sniper Girl No Comments

Nietzsche: Ok guys most people are mindless sheep, I’m just saying, give them jobs they like and maybe don’t promote them to leadership positions?

Nietzsche: OH NO RANDROIDS

Her head is surrounded by the rings of UR-ANUS. GET IT GET IT

Social Evolution!

By Sniper Tom Tuesday, June 30th, 2015 Things Which Amuse Me :: The Adventures of Sniper Girl No Comments

Forsooth, A Wild Gay APPEARS.

It is the rare TRANSPLAID:

transplaid

After many BATTLES, it evolves to the bold GAYTARTAN:

gaytartan

Its final EVOLUTION is the adorably individual PAISEXY:

paisexy

TRANSPLAID‘s PREVOLUTION is of course QUIOLET, which is queerly enough, related to GAYPURPLE.

The truth is that those dear QUIOLET and GAYPURPLE are sadly related to the rather political VIOLENT.

Its evolution is the patronising TRANSPLAINED, which after ranting on Tumblr, evolves to GAYTARD.

Its final form is FAILSLEY. Or FAILSEX. Whatever. At that point the distinction is moot and no-one cares anymore.

Absolutely Fabulous!

By Sniper Tom Wednesday, August 20th, 2014 Things Which Amuse Me :: The Adventures of Sniper Girl No Comments

I, The Drug Dealer and Puppycat are, respectively, the Fashionista, the Barista and the Hipsta of the hospital. The Three Musketeers of good fashion in the hospital, clad in excellent shirts, pants and two-toned shoes. It is possible we loiter around like alley cats, talking dirty.

It turned out that Puppycat had spent all of her time and money on makeup:

“Look, I was being self-destructive. But fabulously.”

Paisley Thursday. Be there or be square.

A Jillion

By Sniper Tom Wednesday, August 13th, 2014 Things Which Amuse Me :: The Adventures of Sniper Girl No Comments

I am like, a jillion years old.
A jillion is a 1000 fillions.
A fillion is at least 1/5 of a firefly.
A firefly is about 1/2 of a season.
Thus, a fillion is about a fortnight.
A jillion is 38 years.
Well, about a jillion anyway.

An Update.

By Sniper Tom Wednesday, August 13th, 2014 Alle an Bord DeutscheBahn! Zug! No Comments

Dear All,

How has it been since I came out for the second time?

Amazing. A huge relief. Scary at times. A little confusing but not that confusing, certainly not as confusing as life was before. My head has been incredibly clear.

I'm Tom– short for Tomás– and I am currently sitting around being well-dressed, smart, interesting and cool. I am mostly straight, I have two awesome cats, I have started rereading one of my favourite book series', "The Riverrun Trilogy" by S. P. Somtow, one of my favourite authors. I bought some new clothes and fountain pens on the weekend and caught up with friends. I am basically contented and complete.

One thing I really did not expect was it to be such a relief or for me to feel suddenly so much better and so much happier and confident. I thought it would be much more confusing and harder in my head.

So, how has it been otherwise?

Other people have mostly been supportive, or at least congratulatory. Seriously! It has been much much better than I had anticipated. I feel like I have a lot of people to talk to, and generally they are all pretty awesome! People have noticed that I look happier and more confident and that my demeanour has changed. I am constantly getting compliments about my new wardrobe (which looks pretty awesome). It also helps that in general my friends have been interested in the whole process! I think it is interesting!

Here is a photo:

However, I have been a lot more sensitive than I expected in regards to when things have made me feel upset.

The people who have advertently or inadvertently made me feel uncomfortable have fallen into the following camps:

  • Women (usually) who say "But you can be female and still like masculine things". Not the point, honey. Plus, what if I am a feminine man (I am).

  • Men (usually) who are fixated on "But you don't have a penis and phalloplasty sucks". None of your business, I would like to see how well you pleasure your partner(s), and once again, none of your business. (Actually I am quite pleasantly surprised at how little of this I got. Really, only one or two people)

  • People who jump the gun and become very insistent– even when I say I have not decided yet- on "So when are you doing X, Y or Z" when I have not made any decisions yet about whether I will do hormones or surgery or legal things. "Oh but you must!" – says who?

  • People who later make inappropriate jokes or jokes that hinge on me being a "girl". Fortunately this has not happened often but when it has it has, it has hurt.

  • The wrong pronoun. This is actually probably the least of my concerns. Most of which has just been a matter of people forgetting inadvertently. I can excuse that as long as eventually people get the hang of it.

  • Once again, the idea that "it only counts if you have done something". Sometimes people for one reason or another choose not to take hormones or surgery at all, often for complex reasons. Does that somehow make their gender different? Given that the first stage in any transition anyway would be to "live as one's gender", I don't see how this "does not count" or that close friends should be waiting to change their pronoun use.

  • People posting links to anti-man rants that generalise everything about masculinity or manhood or men as being pathological or suggest that women should take over. Unhelpful. Inaccurate. Counter-productive. And kind of hurtful, actually. That sort of essentialism and black and white thinking is exactly what made historical male-centred patriarchies problematic. Oh, wait, you did not mean to include me in your anti-man rant. Why is that exactly? Oh, right, because I am not a "real man"?

On a much more positive and once again interesting note, since coming out quite a few people have approached me and said that what I have talked about really resonated with them- either because they understood a friend/family/other people much better, or because what I was describing really resonated with their own experiences and for the the first time they had talked about it openly and it was good.

So I guess one small action sometimes makes a big difference to the people around you in ways that are actually kind of awesome and unexpected.

Yours,
Deutschy, campaigning for the Oriental Express since 1201!

Everybody Needs a Bosom for a Pillow

By Sniper Tom Sunday, August 3rd, 2014 Things Which Amuse Me :: The Adventures of Sniper Girl No Comments

It has been conclusively shown, via the power of the Internet but in particular the power of the great minds of Seraphim and myself that Our needs (the needs of Humanity & Co.) are quite simple; elegant and concise, you might say:

  • Love pillows
  • That are called ‘cat*’
  • Made from a Japanese material that feels like boobs
  • That cleans the haus
  • Has 8 nipples
  • *May or may not be a cat (undetermined, due to Schrödinger)

Given that the Future is Now and that cats love Roombas, clearly this is a thing that can and will happen.

I present to you:

Býůbž, Roomba cat love pillow

Býůbž, Roomba cat love pillow

This is Býůbž. His number of buttons :3.

The Truth About Cats

By Sniper Tom Saturday, July 19th, 2014 Things Which Amuse Me :: The Adventures of Sniper Girl No Comments

The other day, Puppycat, who is a puppy who is also a cat but not one of those infernal beasts known as a CatDog, pointed out a fundamental truth:

The truth is that whenever there are two cats, there is always an outgoing one and one weird reclusive one.

It’s true! There is a Pantalaimon the Camel Cat (who is cuddly and a ladies’ man) and a Nocturne the Owl Cat (who lives under the bed and reads Anxiety Cat and casts spells).

There is a Handsome Cat (a cuddly Burberry stripy cat) and a Pixie Cat (a skittish Tuxedo cat).

There is a Chloe Cat (a derptastic tortoiseshell who always falls over) and a Jesse Cat (an emo who was born with the disability of being pure white).

There are the cats at the hospice at MMC- a playful older Devon Rex and a reclusive Psychic Hospice Cat who may or may not be Nurse Catte.

My goodness!

The Truth About Doctors

By Sniper Tom Saturday, July 19th, 2014 Things Which Amuse Me :: The Adventures of Sniper Girl No Comments

Doctors are vampires. They are after your blood. They stare at your jugular and palpate your carotids. They listen to the seductive drumbeat of your heart. They cut you and bleed you. They feast on the arcane signs found within your altered, filtered blood. They cast ritualistic spells with it. They predict the future. They never see the sun. They never sleep.

Their agents are the Blood Sisters, a goth/earth mother lesbian band of space elves who roam the wards early in the morning bleeding patients willy-nilly, collecting their life-forces and not even carrying pagers.

And radiologists are the worst. With their X-ray vision and their powers of ultimate rejection, they are the most arcane wizards of medicine, those with the ultimate right of veto. Radiation does not temper them, it makes them only stronger! They never see the sun and live in the dark, their pallid eyes sensing only electromagnetic radiation in the non-visible spectrum.

Worse yet, radiologists are never awake between the hours of 5pm and 9am (which is why they reject your scan requests). Which makes them…

REVERSE VAMPIRES.

MY TRUE SELF

By Sniper Tom Saturday, July 19th, 2014 Things Which Amuse Me :: The Adventures of Sniper Girl No Comments

Everyone knows that deep down I exist in the realm of the Lesbian Space Elves. I am probably one of those ones that ends up living on the dark sibling-planet on the other side of the orbit of the Lesbian Space Elf planet that contains SECRET SPACE ELF MANS who are also CATS.

Thus, this is the avatar of my Soul:

MY TRUE SELF

 

True Self Knowledge is a kind gift that strikes one at the most tender of moments (waiting for blood products on the ward after hours).

How vampiric!

The Death of all the Bromance

By Sniper Tom Wednesday, July 16th, 2014 Things Which Amuse Me :: The Adventures of Sniper Girl No Comments

It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times. I was in possession of many flying monkeys, who I refer to as my ducklings and/or minions.

It was the oncology/haematology/gastroenterology ward aka Home and It Was Good.

Marky Mark and Fetlife/G were hanging out at Home at the desk with me and Puppycat, who had just finally tamed the manly and frayed ends of my motorcycle jeans . It became obvious that Fetlife/G and Marky Mark had a special bond (which is similar but different to Fetlife/G‘s ‘bromance‘ with Puppycat):

Me: You guys have such a bromance! It’s bromantic!

Puppycat: It’s totally not gay.

Me: It’s only gay if the balls touch!

Puppycat and I burst into uncontrollable spasms of laughter.

Marky Mark and Fetlife/G look at each other and at us nonplussed.

Puppycat and I continue to giggle.

Marky Mark and Fetlife/G look incredibly disturbed.

Giggling continues for 30 mins.

That Damn Sniper Dude. Totally free for professional development tutorials at all times. Don’t call him, he’ll call you!

Snipergirl

By Sniper Tom Friday, June 27th, 2014 Midnight Children No Comments

They fought that day, Father and St Antony. Antony is my brother, Saint because that’s what everyone treats him like. God. Except Father Superior, of course. That’s because he’s the Father of God.

The words burst into my ears from downstairs. This wasn’t just another fight. So I stopped. Looked in the mirror at this man, sorry, girl. I pulled the cuffs long, adjusted the navy silk bow-tie, smoothed the eyebrow pencil moustache and really looked. My hair, just cut, was the right length for the suit. I would have made a great guy. I grinned quickly to myself, ran my fingers through my hair.

My brother blasted some more abuse at Father, the kind of stuff he got away with.

“Shut up! You shut up now!” Father finally shouted some authority crap at him. Dream on, city boy. Then a thud, crash, splinter. What the hell was that? I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to know. I breathed in and looked back up into the mirror.

I slowly ran my clammy fingers down my jaw, then across Father’s stiff, smooth, Armani shirt collar. Down to my painful breasts, hot and bare against the clean fabric and to my quavering heart.

There was a thwack. An animal shriek. Thudding steps on the staircase.

What was I doing? I tore off the suit, folded it. Ran back to my room naked and guilty. Shit, shit, where were my clothes? I ducked into the closet as they ran into my room. Father hit Antony, hit him so hard. Every time he opened his mouth, another slap. Maybe a punch. But that wasn’t all that caught me. It was what he was wearing. I knew what this was about. And I knew where my clothes were.

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