Drugs to Drag?

A notorious gang member has been collared despite having a sex change to avoid cops. Colombian Giovanni Rebolledo faced 60 years in prison for kidnapping, robbery and extortion. He became prostitute 'Rosalina' after spending £11,500 on breast implants, a bottom op and nose job in an emergency makeover.
 Read more here.

Should we not believe everything we read? Maybe!
I also wonder which jail "Giovanni" will be placed?

More than Meets the Eye

Certainly most of us are enamored with the glamour and glitz of the ladyboy culture in Thailand. Very seldom though do we get a glance of the day to day transgender culture there.

I have mentioned here in Cyrsti's Condo the year I spent in northern Thailand close to the Laotian border -back in the Vietnam non war days. I do get a chuckle when I tell someone I lived in Thailand for a year and they start asking SRS questions. If you weren't careful you could be a candidate for SRS and much more!

I was lucky. My occasional brush with danger during my AFTN days was when I had to drive the unit truck on Thai roads.  Forgetting I was navigating on the opposite side of the highway where the only rule was survival of the biggest could be dangerous.

So during my stay in Thailand, I was able to learn first hand the mix of Thai and Laotion culture. I found the people to be accepting and friendly of us and I loved the culture and religion. (For you trans vets, I had separate rations and lived off base.)

So when I'm able to find a bit of a different look at the transgender culture in Thailand, I can't wait to pass it along to you.

This YouTube international trailer is from a film called "It Gets Better":

 While I am on the subject of countries half way around the world from me, I received an email from a follower in Sri Lanka who wrote a piece about the blog. As soon as one of us can get it translated from Sinhalese I will pass it along. In the meantime, take a quick peak here to see a beautiful example of how the word Sinhala looks.

This brings me to another point. What is scary to me is my grand kids have not been taught any cursive writing since the second grade. The two oldest academic over achievers show it. My daughter is very diligent in insisting they write hand written thank you notes for gifts. Bless their hearts but I guess their schools figure they "don't need no stinkin hand writing!"

Divine Drag

From Straight.com 

 "She was overweight, outrageous, shocking, ferocious, brash, crass, and in-your-face. And she was beautiful.The iconic Divine, branded the drag queen of the century by People magazine, ripped pop culture a new one by challenging—no, assaulting—constipated standards of beauty, sexuality, and basically everything sacred and boring about mainstream American life."

In some ways I consider Divine's memory a simpler time in drag. What you saw was what you got-and more some. I like so many fans found Divine's defiance to be much more compelling than the drag mask he wore. I enjoyed watching a social revolutionary- straight or gay in drag or not.

Time has moved on.  All facets of the transgender and the LGB community are so much more complex now.

People magazine got it right about "Divine" who in all senses is the "Anti Rude Paul".

For more on the Divine life go here.