Hey everyone,
I am taking a Psychology class at PSU and have been tasked with collecting survey info about desired gender of future children.
It is quick and simple, only 6 questions. If you could take a minute and fill out my survey I would be really happy!

Click here to take survey

Thanks,
Camille

ATTENTION TRANS-IDENTIFIED ARTISTS!

We need your art! The Portland State Univ. Queer Resource Center is hosting a Bizarre and Art (Pink) Gallery showing on November 20th for the Trans Day of Remembrance.

Submissions for the Pink Gallery must be framed artwork and space is limited to two artists. This is a free space to show art; a great resource! Other art mediums may be displayed as well if space allows, first come first serve! Please send all inquiries to William at qrc@pdx.edu

Submissions for the Bizarre can any and all. Have a craft skill? Want to sell art? This bizarre is for you! Contact Zoey at qrchwc@pdx.edu

Please feel free to contact with William or Zoey for general information as well!

x-posted to queerportland, transgender

What a refreshing feeling it is to hang out with a bunch of other trans women my age. Went down to the Q center for the Trans-Fem meeting last night, then out the drinks with a bunch of the women from the meeting. I forget how nice it is to be around people who simply understand, without that fear that you might accidentally upset someone because you surprise them. Anyway, good times were had. Oh, and we sat on the back porch and for the first time I understand what it is like to have clothes that reek of smoke the next day as a non-smoker.

Sometimes we do things for the first time that really no one else cares about, so this is why we have the internet :)

I sat down today, wrote 3 new functions into my program, that included a sorting algorithm and an array expansion function and there were no errors when running the application. I am a in a bit of daze. Not having to fight my way through various seg fault errors is a real pleasure I have to say. It seems my education might actually be worth something, woot!

Well, let see then. The surgery was a success. Was released yesterday since they couldn't get me off the I.V. painkillers until then without turning me into a ball of suffering. Everything they scraped out of the femur was benign in nature so that was really awesome news. My doctor thinks that I had some weird tumor at some point, it died off and the resulting hole was filled with fluid. Since this was all in the neck of my left femur, it is also most likely the reason I have had a limp. Hopefully after I am all healed up I can walk normal and be pain free more days then not. Oh, and I am now a zombie cyborg! Part of the procedure involved a bone graft wit cadaver bone and then putting pins through the whole thing to keep it all in place. Woot! Cyborg Zombie!

Of course, since all things must come in bundles of extra random crap, I will also begin undergoing a barrage of tests to see if I have colitis. such fun.

Well, the pain med dose is kicking in so I am going back to sleep.

EDIT:
Thank you for all the wonderful suggestions! it is nice to know that you think she is as cute as we do :)
WE have decided to name her: Haggis Leona MacNori...we like food.

We have officially added a new member to the household :) it is a kitty >^_^< !!!!!!! She is the best kitty in the whole world! We haven't decided on her name yet. She is so loving and apathetic at the same time, it's awesome.

Here is her beauty shot from the humane society, once she starts running the house you can expect your friends list to be flooded with awesome cuteness of her. She is a scottish fold mix, so CUTE!!!!!!





what should we name her?

http://www.jointheimpact.com/

Nation wide protest against Prop 8. Information for local events across the country on Nov. 15th. Get the word out, perhaps we can make this into something worth happening.

Digg link

First off, YAAAAAA~!~ OBAMA~!~ I started to cry during his speech. I have spent the better part of my life hating this country and what we stand for, cynical of the empty promises and unashamed stealing from the poor. I may not of donated much, and I only volunteered a handful of times, but I feel that I was a part of something, that I helped this happen. It is a wonderful feeling. He isn't the socialist I want him to be, but Obama is going to move this country in a direction I can approve of.

Sadly, this wasn't what I woke up at 5:30 thinking about. Instead I was thinking about the destruction of equality in California, Arkansas, and Florida to name a few. Yesterday I was reading some news article about a parent who was angry that his daughters school failed to pretend that gay people don't exist. This notion that a parent has a right to deny our existence. That talking about gay people is like talking about sex. That somehow we are optional. I hate this. It hurts me. I am tired of being told that *I* should hide my existence in case it offends someone. I am sad that the gay community can not seem to muster the community strength to fight this either. I used to think that the only solution to the gay marriage problem was a universal civil unions program. I am forced to change my mind now. It is to important. Gay Marriage will be the cornerstone of America's acceptance that queer people are equal, have equal rights and can not be brushed away because We happen to offend someone.

I feel like the queer community has been quietly sitting by while the lawyers try to work their magic. Waiting with baited breath in the audience, hoping for the best. We fight in the court, but apparently people still don't think we are "worthy" of their precious equality. I want this to change. I don't know how, but this contempt for being told I am unequal, that I am less of a citizen is burning me inside. I want to see a line of a hundred couples, everyday applying for marriage licenses. I want to see systems disrupted until we can't be ignored.

I don't want to see the option for hate on the ballot. My rights as a citizen are not an option. They are granted to me upon my birth, no matter who I am, or where in this country I come from. When women earned the right to vote, it wasn't a ballot measure. It wasn't a ballot measure that desegregated school systems in the south. It wasn't a goddamn ballot measure that allowed inter racial marriage. It won't be a ballot measure that grants us the right to marry, it won't be a ballot measure that protects that right in every state, and it won't be a ballot measure that gives Me equality.

I am Trans. I am Queer. I am Equal.

Nick Cave is fucking intense!

I am now also convinced that his world domination plans involve making everyone deaf.

We are moving! our shithead incompetent landlord who has managed to botch every single repair job just raised our rent $155, starting in November. Well, fuck that I say. God I hate renting sometimes, oh to have money for the buying of housing. As a side note, they are back on the roof with no notice, crappy surprise for the morning.

Off to Seattle for a few days. Staying at The Moore hotel, there is no plan for sober time.

Just wanted to post an update. The orchi procedure went super smooth and I am laying around the house popping pain killers and watching anime now. Ignoring the pain, I couldn't be more pleased right now. The physiological effects of an immediate stop to T production is already feeling magnificent :)

I plan on going out tomorrow for at least a short time to watch shit explode..yaaa!

--camille--

18 hours and counting to my orchi....dear god I am excited.
Also, Anie and I are now the proud owners of a 2007 purple Honda Metropolitan.
I love it, the ride home from the dealership was great. Soon the volvo(needs some repairs) will be up for sale along with my drumset and most likely my Korg as well. I really just have to accept the fact that I have not picked these instruments up in years and sell them.

18 years waiting for something better, and now it is only 18 hours away. It will not be the final solution or even resolve any of my problems. But it does mean no more spiro and that I will start responding to HRT with more success. I feel like a gitty school girl ...wheeee~!~

There was discussion on Obama vs. Hillary today. Since I missed the debate I wanted to post up some info I have started to scrounge from the FEC website. I am still working on actually getting the numbers to work right now, and it looks like I need to learn some fancy Excel functions for that, so we will see. But in the meantime, my sole and only needed reason to vote for Obama.

Obama FEC record:
Individual Contributions: $234,792,268
Non-Party (e.g. PACs) or Other Committees: $8,190
With Aprox. 5-10 corporate donors.(1)

Hillary FEC record:
Individual Contributions: $174,494,945
Non-Party (e.g. PACs) or Other Committees: $1,251,540
With aprox. 1100+ Corporate Donors.(1)(2)


1.
These are rough numbers, since I don't know the excel formulas to actually calculate out the data I want.

2.
It should also be noted that the majority of Hillary Clinton's corp. donations are hidden within a group called "Friends of Hillary", which has no true connection to her campaign but receives almost exculsivley from corp. PAC groups and donates nearly 100% of it to her campaign committee.


This is hard fact that I like to use when discussing the issue. He is not lying, and she is in fact more of the same old same old.

The stitches are out, and the scar is very minimal (considering). They did a real bang up job for sure. However, they found some fucking stupid heart murmur while taking the stitches out. Apparently my heart sounds like an electronic device... I'm a robot! They told me not to worry, that it is probably nothing, but then turned around and told me get checked out as soon as possible. I don't have insurance until next month, so it kinda sucks. In the meantime, I have fallen into some crazed psychosomatic anxiety where if I am not constantly engaged in something, all I can do is feel my heartbeat. It is consuming every free second of my day. While on break at work, I internally feel my heart beating. I sense it's every movement and wonder if it is about to stop working. This of course causes anxiety, which in turn causes my heart to beat faster and drive me deeper into anxiety, cycle cycle cycle. The line between "reality" and "imaginarey" has blurred in the most horrible of ways for me. I can no longer seperate my body from my mind and examine myself without sever biases. Off to try and write a short paper now, see if I can get my mind to focus enough to even do that correctly.

*sigh*

Oh wow. So I went to Ministry last night for their farewell tour. Good show. Also met the Lighting Designer through some odd conversation stuff, which was cool. Sadly, my face also met someones head in the mosh pit. 4.5 hours in ER, 7 stitches and minus a couple of crowns, I look real pretty now. I forgot to take pics before the ER trip, but oh well. It was pretty gruesome, half my face splattered in blood, wandering around the roseland. I take my vicodin now play sims, no work today.

Bunny crafts on Zombie Day We had people over yesterday. We made crafts. It was fun. Here is the proof.

I went to the Downtown peace march and rally yesterday. It was interesting, I got rained on a lot. It helped to solidify some trains of thought I have been having lately concerning the general craptastic state our world seems to be in right now. It is good and just to stand for peace, to call for an end to aggression. However, war is a symptom of capitalism. So long as the culture of consumption continues, with it's unending need for growth and expansion, the U.S. will use military threats and force to expand it's economic imperialism. Global corporate domination will continue to stripmine foreign economies for the sake of short term gain. Agencies such as the IMF and WTO are the hands of this domination. The true enemy to peace is not the bush administration but American culture and our willing blindness to the true cost of a consumer nation. With 600 military bases outside U.S. soil, we will continue to use coercion through violence for personal gain. Like the dictator's addiction to political police, capitalist barons have an addiction to military show of force. For them, it is the easiest route to acquiring what they want, with a bonus of generating profit. The system in place will and can not be changed overnight though, it must be perverted from the inside and assaulted from the outside. My brain is still twirling about what that means exactly, but my thoughts are at least becoming clearer now on this subject.

On the topic of ending the Iraq occupation though. This war has to end. Whether or not it is a symptom of a greater problem, it must still be addressed and repaired. Marches with permits and happy sponsors will not end the occupation. Writing letters to our congressman and reps. will not end the occupation. Outright disturbance of business on a regular basis and grand scale, will get us closer to ending this occupation. I was talking to R about this while we plodded along our 8 block carefully selected path, and decided that what would be best if every single person yesterday had simply stopped where they were, and refused to leave the area. We need to be doing this kind of thing as much as possible. Crippling downtowns on a regular basis until their tactic of ignoring us stops working.

that is all for now, I go do my sociology take home final now. I hate take home tests, because anything less then a perfect score is unacceptable on them, so I have to freak out and go crazy about making sure I have the right answer, it will take me forever :(

--Camille--

So I realized that all I post these days are meme stuff. sigh.
School and work are basically completely consuming my life at this point.
This weekend will be full of fun though.
Party tonight with co-workers, tomorrow I let my EMT friend take my vitals for her class, then writing a paper.

HRC is having a discussion about the new Oregon Non-discrimination bill and how to implement those changes in the workplace. There is a whole section on transitioning in relation to restrooms and dresscodes. I don't know how I feel about going to an HRC event though, I don't like them anymore.

sometime ago I got to play sick and dead for a street medic class, that was fucking fun. It made me want to go an do stuff.

that is all for now.

--Camille--