So...now that we've covered the employment side of things, here's what's new in the rest of my life:

A few weeks ago, I watched the movie Ghost Rider, with Nicolas Cage.  Wow, was it bad.  It was so bad that I found myself enjoying it.  It was a B movie in most every sense.  The special effects were cool, but the story was just...weak.  They could have done a much better job with it, but hey, instead it was fun to watch for the sheer enjoyment of how bad it was.  If ever you want a bad movie to watch, pick up Ghost Rider.

Continuing on the bad movie front...I saw Dragonball: Evolution with my friend Daigham on opening weekend.  You know a film is going to flop when it's in a small theater the day after it opens and even then, there's like...15 people in the theater.  I was expecting a crap sandwich of a film...and that's what I got.  They tried very hard to match the feel of the show.  Chow Yun Fat really gave a great Master Roshi performance, but ultimately, the show just doesn't translate well to the live action realm.  The show itself spans 153 episodes.  They kinda jumped in and mish mashed the story into 85 minutes.  The whole movie just felt like a high budget, but poorly executed Power Rangers episode.  The effects were pretty, but that's about it.  It was cheezy bad.  Disappointing, but at least the anime is still cool.

During all the time that stuff was going down at work, I was still finishing up some freelance.  I was dealing with a ton of stress.  I felt it pushing down on me every which way.  It was manifesting itself in a lot of ways.  I was breaking out, which isn't cool.  Also, for those of you that don't know, hair grows more when you're stressed.  So, when I went  in for electrolysis, she really had to remove a forest.  Haha.  Thankfully that stress is gone now.

Part of eliminating stress in my life involved dumping the website project that I took on a few months back.  It was a flash based project that was a bit over my head and skill level.  I found a very talented flash developer that was willing to take on the project.  I think it was a good move on my part.  I'm bad with web based freelance anyway.  I think as my skills progress with web development, I'll feel a bit more comfortable at it.  Plus my friend Tracy might be willing to work with me.  She's a much better graphic designer than I am by a long shot.  So maybe I can do the back end and she can do the front end.

I've been watching a lot of PBS's Nova lately on Hulu.  It's a great show and I've always loved it.  Anyway, this particular episode was about ants.  A famous entomologist, E.O. Wilson, has been studying them for years and actually was the founder of the concept of sociobiology.  Basically sociobiology is social behavior that is embedded in the biology of the lifeform.  It's really fascinating stuff.  It got me thinking about gender...as usual.  I was thinking more specifically about transphobia and homophobia and how perhaps those behaviors are sociobiological in nature.  By that I mean that the fear of the unknown is a survival tool that humanity has employed.  By using fear, we can ensure that we stay safe.  In the case of homo and trans phobia, there are a lot of things that could subconsciously be feared.  Perhaps it's about procreation or self preservation.  As time progresses, I think the sociobiology is changing in that regard...at least specifically to homosexuality and transgender.  Perhaps as a population grows to the immense size that humanity has, those biologically embedded fears are less and less necessary.  Anyway, I thought it was a fascinating concept to ponder.  Feel free to share your thoughts.

Oh, a few weeks back I finally got to do a photo shoot with my friend Ken.  He's a professional photographer, and he'd asked me if I'd model for him at some point.  So I finally did.  Let me tell you...I'm not much of a model.  I can do the physical positioning, but I suck at facial expressions.  I'm too much of a deep thinker.  I have trouble with smiling for real without having something make me smile for real.  I haven't gotten the photos yet, but I have a screen capture from my little video camera if you'd like to see it.

A video screen capture from the photo shoot.

Queer Camp starts tonight!  You can find information on it at www.queercamp.org.  It's free to go to, and it'll be tons of fun.  For those of you that don't know what it is, essentially it's an informal conference on LGBT issues.  I'm doing two sessions.  One is titled "Gender in a slightly larger than average nutshell" and the other is "Ask a transsexual anything".  I'm looking forward to it.  If you want to go, the registration page is located here.

When the whole thing started to go down at work, I had a conversation with Scott, a member of management, about my future.  I talked about my goals for starting a non-profit, writing a book, and mentoring others.  It's my calling.  He told me that when I talked about that, my face lit up more than it ever has.  He told me that I will have more success at doing just that than I will working at any corporation, doing any sort of freelance, or doing just about anything else.  He told me I need to build an empire.  That sounds kinda...Darth Sidius like...but that's now what he meant.  He gave me some good advice on how to get moving.  So I think once genderverse gets going, I'm going to create a special twitter account for it that I use to post news about the gender world.  I think I'll establish another professional blog that talks about gender daily.  The podcast will be important too.  I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

Being a leader is what I do naturally.  I've really noticed that I tend to take a leadership approach in most everything I do even when it comes to just mentoring someone.  I think this weekend and the next few months will truly define the direction the rest of my life takes.

It's a new day!  Time to take life by the horns and ride off into the future.