On his blog today, Andrew Sullivan posted this little YouTube gem from The Harvard Sailing Team, a New York comedy troupe.

The video runs about 4 minutes and can be found by clicking here.

I look in the mirror on my return home. There are the perfect eyes and lips I painted a few hours before. I'm definitely getting the hang of this makeup business. Pencil eyeliner, four shades of shadow expertly blended, brows trimmed, plucked, combed and secured in the right shape with some pump-type hairspray that I've transferred to an empty clear mascara bottle. The gel that came in it was useless, so I took it apart and washed it out. My lashes are bold and beautiful. The latest two-part mascara I've tried looks to be a big winner. They'll probably discontinue it next month.

Thought I'd post a link to this here, as it relates to the emotional and practical issues many of us have to deal with at one time or another.

http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2010/01/18/sl-lett...

For all too many, and even one would be too many, this time of year reminds people of the power the Church holds in their community, a power too often used for evil and hate when it comes to people of alternate gender identity and sexuality. The number of TG folk who have been abused in the name of religion is staggering.

As an alternative, and to show the loving and accepting side of some Christian denominations, I'd like to share this page with you: http://www.nyym.org/nurture/gender/

We've had some truly excellent writing posted here lately. Great, adventurous stories packed with powerful emotions and levels of deeper meaning. Humorous stories with reader misdirection and Aesop-like morals. Simple stories, yet with a powerful grip on the heart-strings that profoundly affect the readers. I love all of these!

Not sure if I should label this as NSFW ("Not Safe For Work"). Maybe someone else can offer their opinion on that. I'd call it tame, except for the fetishy aspect of it, at least by lingerie standards.

It's a picture of a group of 9 scantily-clad lingerie models, outside of a London department store, with a passing bus in the foreground and the driver clearly gawking. The women, in formation, are viewed from the rear and wearing indentical outfits, something which could best be described as storm-trooper-inspired lingerie with hats and boots to match.

What a wonderful interview by a wonderful person and activist for transgender acceptance! Good Morning America ("GMA") is a workday morning news-magazine show in the U.S. with a large viewership. It's great to see such a sympathetic interview on this, the Transgender Day of Remembrance.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGr8vl0vlfg

We recently had a discussion here about health care reform and whether it would cover SRS. Someone sent me an interesting thing the other day that dovetails with that, and the National Healthcare System side-discussion that entailed, nicely.

She walked into my office on legs as long as one of those long-legged birds that you see in Florida - the pink ones, not the white ones - except that she was standing on both of them, not just one of them, like those birds, the pink ones, and she wasn't wearing pink, but I knew right away that she was trouble, which those birds usually aren't.

Like this:

http://www.threepennyreview.com/samples/mcdonough_sp08.html

Here it is, folks! The first television advertisement for a unisex dress for men and women!

http://www.wearabletowel.com/

It's shapeless, ugly, and terrycloth, but hey.

I found this article about raising medical professionals' awareness and sensitivity towards gay and trans patients. On the one hand, it's encouraging that there are efforts and energies afoot to do this. On the other hand, it's sad how ignorance and discrimination can exist in the medical community, just as elsewhere. The third paragraph of the article is of particular relevance to our little community here.

I have access to this through a subscription from a free Medscape blog site for Med students entitled "The Differential" (no, I'm not a med student -- I lied when I signed up for the site.) I found copies of it adapted for other websites, so I'm going to assume its copyright is either absent or permits that. Rather than post a link that probably won't work for anyone not subscribed, I'm posting the full text here.

I've seen this before, somewhere. I think someone here may have posted it already, but I haven't seen it in a while, and today Andrew Sullivan posted it on his widely-read blog at The Atlantic magazine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEaGbTr8B2o

The state legislature of Vermont has voted to override the veto of their governor to a bill allowing same-sex couples to marry. The bill now becomes law. Vermont becomes the fourth state to legalize same-sex marrige, and the first to do it through legislative action.

I always liked Vermont. There's something honest about the place. With this new law, they renew their dedication to their state motto. "Freedom and Unity," indeed!

I injured myself last Friday. Nothing of the usual home injuries. Didn't take a fall, step on a pin, hit my thumb with a hammer, pick up the business end of a soldering iron, or bang my head on an open cupboard door. No, I executed a sudden maneuver. I was outdoors, testing a type of lightweight fabric used for roofing, when my sample started blowing away from me. I lunged for it after chasing it across the roof a few feet, to catch it. Something happened in my ribcage and knocked the wind out of me temporarily.

Just found this Wikipedia article on Fictionmania:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictionmania

For anyone who doesn't know the history of the site, it's quite informative. One can't help noticing, though, that in its current form, it reads rather like the obituary of a well-loved senior statesman or other notable person.

Let's hope it needs amending soon, and because Fictionmania rises from the ashes.

Here are two reading lists, one of men's "must reads" from Esquire, and one of women's from Jezebel. Can we assume someone's gender orientation by whether they've read more of one list than the other?

http://www.esquire.com/the-side/feature/75-books?src=rss

http://jezebel.com/5053732/75-books-every-woman-should-read-...

[credit goes to Slog for this one]

Apropos of nothing, or maybe of the upcoming Transgender Day of Remembrance, I tripped over this today, and it speaks to me:

I'm posting this for reference and discussion. It's quite a conflicted article, showing the unhappy sides of two opposite approaches to treating gender dysphoric behavior in young children and raising doubts of the value of either.

I find the name of this bus inspirational, at least from a fiction point of view.

I first saw it go by a couple weeks ago when I was driving through a neighborhood in Brooklyn. On Saturday, we were out doing a bit of shopping in that same neighborhood when I spotted the bus again. My wife had her camera with her, and this time, I was able to get some pictures.

A happy blog entry, just for a change!

As some of you may know, from a chatroom we often hang out in together, I've been having some really great breakthrough experiences lately! I've somehow made friends with a few of the staff of a local lesbian bar. Pretty good friends, too. I feel like I'm in a dream at times!

The New York Times...

God bless them! With any luck, this is the wedge that eventually breaks open the minds of the keepers of the rigid "Binary model" of gender.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/opinion/03boylan.html?_r=1...

I just read this story in the NY Times:

http://olympics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/lab-ready-for-s...