I had a whirlwind weekend in California. I ended up flying out to party with awesome people, have pictures taken of myself, and now I am flying back. It was a really awesome weekend, and hopefully next time A can come with me. I’m about to get on a red-eye to Atlanta, where I have a three-hour layover, and then I’ll go home. I have to stop at Gallaudet to get something and then I am going to crash - my only previous red-eye experience, a transatlantic flight, was not a good one. Hopefully I can sleep!

• GreenPrint
  Eliminate waste by removing those logo, disclaimer, and other orphans that wind up on the second page when you print something.
  Tags: software
• 10 Ways to Have Fun with Boobs
  Funny products that are shaped like or otherwise reminiscent of boobs. The first page is pretty worksafe, they put the PG-13 stuff on the second page.
  Tags: funny sex stuff.to.buy

• Tooth Tunes
  Dudes and dudettes, I totally need a $10 toothbrush that plays YMCA in my head when I brush my teeth.
  Tags: funny stuff.to.buy health
• GLEE.com
  Social and professional networking for gays, lesbians, and everyone else.
  Tags: networking queer

• Possess Me
  A boutique range of quality handcrafted erotic jewelry and gifts for adults who are passionate, sensual and adventurous lovers.
  Tags: kinky_stuff.to.buy
• OneDayBlogSilence.com
  Supposedly you should only post their graphic on April 30th 2007, to honor the VT victims. But people said “uh, what about everybody else?” so they said “oh wait it can be for all the victims of our world!” As for me, I plan to make a post about the victims. Staying silent accomplishes nothing. [via cygnoir]
  Tags: blogging
• Sex, Etc.
  Why Wonder? The premier teen destination for real, honest sexual health information, written by teens, for teens. Published by Answer, at Rutgers University.
  Tags: sex

• TOS Icons
  100×100 icons from the original Star Trek series. [via greydruid]
  Tags: graphics startrek
• When She Graduates as He
  There’s a battle brewing at the Seven Sisters over the growing population of transgender students. The question at its core: What kind of women’s college awards diplomas to men?
  Tags: queer education
• The Cute Project
  Dedicated to collecting the world’s cutest photos, art, and videos. User-contributed unlike certain other sites. [via awesome!]
  Tags: fun photography animals

My job during the school year is taken care of! This morning I interviewed with Gallaudet’s VRS interpreting department and they accepted me. The interview was not easy, but I managed okay. A lot of people don’t realize that anytime an interpreter interviews for a job, there is always a skills test involved. (Or at least at all the interviews I’ve been through.) And then there’s the dreaded period while the interviewers go off and discuss how you did!

Fortunately, when they came back they had good news for me. I have to take even more time off from my current job to attend the VRS training, which they will not be thrilled about, but there’s not much they can do. Even if they fired me I’d already have another job lined up to start immediately! (Not that I want to burn bridges.) And the training is paid, so that’s good at least. I’ll be working as a freelancer, so I can fit it around my school schedule as conveniently as possible; they do take out taxes for you.

So I’m all set with a part-time job for the school year. Yay for me!

For some reason, when I read As Nature Made Him a few months ago, I didn’t look up David Reimer on Wikipedia or anywhere else. If I had, I would have found out that he committed suicide in 2004. I got the news from an anti-circumcision website, where he was reported as a “long-delayed death due to circumcision.”

For those of you who aren’t familiar with David Reimer’s story, he was born as Bruce, an identical twin boy. His circumcision was botched and his penis was accidentally removed. This was in the mid-1960s in Winnipeg, and his parents didn’t know what to do - their doctors recommended putting him in a dress and raising him as a girl. Because the babies were twins, Brian and “Brenda” became famous as an example of how gender roles were learned rather than present from birth; psychologist John Money viewed “Brenda” as his greatest achievement. But as we all would find very obvious now, putting a boy in a dress does not make him a girl. After an emotionally troubled childhood, “Brenda” shed her female role at age 15 and became David Reimer.

After years of hiding the truth, he went public, appearing on Oprah and working with John Colapinto on a 1997 Rolling Stone article that became the book As Nature Made Him: The Boy who was Raised a Girl. He was motivated by sexologist Milton Diamond to speak out to prevent babies from suffering the same fate he had. But unfortunately, too many things were going wrong in David’s life. Despite the anti-circumcision website’s assertion that he died as a result of his circumcision (presumably due to the trauma it caused him throughout his life), he was also suffering the effects of a divorce, a bad relationship with his parents, and the overdose death of his brother Brian in 2002. Colapinto, who knew David well, wrote about the real reasons for his suicide. It was a tragic end to an ultimately unsatisfying life, but hopefully lessons learned from David Reimer’s experience will keep this kind of treatment from happening again.

Repost at will! I’m definitely sending something, you should too!

When President Bush ordered troops to Iraq, he probably never imagined that he would be ultimately be responsible for what very well could be the very first D&D convention/game day ever held in a war zone. Ziggurat Con, being held June 9 from 1200 to 2100 hours at Camp Adder/Tallil Airbase, is open to all allied military personnel and civilian contractors in Iraq.

KBR and MWR (the army’s Morale Welfare & Recreation Department) have graciously allowed service members to use part of the Community Activity Center to hold the Game Day. The Ping Pong room will be set up for RPGs (Role-Playing Games, not to be confused with the rocket propelled grenades which share the same acronym), and the DVD Movie room will be playing Anime Movies all day in support of the event.

The largest problem with running a Con in Iraq, of course, is that there are no local stores or game publishers, and few game books on the post. Even dice are in short supply, with many soldiers breaking the unwritten taboo held by many gamers and sharing dice. Thankfully, many game publishers have also lent their support, and have agreed to supply game products to help the Con along. aethereal FORGE, Sovereign Press, Final Redoubt Press, Goodman Games, Paizo Publishing and Steve Jackson Games are among those that have thrown in their support for the convention. But Amberson indicated that the soldiers could definitely use more.

“This convention is currently in drastic need of prizes and giveaways for the troops,” he said. “Everything donated will go directly to the troops, or to MWR to use as loaner books for the soldiers.”

For more information, contact SPC David Amberson at the following address: david.amberson (at) iraq.centcom.mil

Donations can also be sent to SPC Amberson directly at the following address:
SPC David Amberson
A Co 86th Sig Bn
APO, AE 09331

They’re planning to run the following games (and will be happy to get additional games):
Babylon 5 RPG, Cyberpunk 2020, D&D, D&D RPGA, GURPS, Historic Miniatures Battles, Magic Tournament, MechWarrior Miniatures, Rifts, Shadowrun, Starship Troopers, White Wolf System-Vampire, White Wolf System-Werewolf, XCrawl

I know this is going to sound funny, but I’m absolutely serious. I have spent time poring over the stables of motivational speakers that can be hired to give talks at events. I think it is so cool that if you have enough money, you can have just about anybody come and talk to you, and you can find them by going through the listings of who’s available from various management agencies. They are expensive - Donald Trump probably wants a million or more, I’d bet - but they will come if you have the cash! I noticed that Bill Nye’s fee is $20k-30k…it might be an interesting school project to do a fundraiser to bring him in to talk to a science class. And you can get Al Franken for as low as $30k, though Hilary Swank and David Spade won’t come visit for less than $50k. But seriously, how cool is it that for the right price you can meet Sir George Martin or Jon Stewart?