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Good morning all, and welcome to Radio Free Monday! I am still dying of lurgy, but less so than yesterday. Let's get to it, shall we?

Ways to Give:

via_ostiense is running the San Francisco Half Marathon in November to raise money for San Francisco Women Against Rape, a local rape crisis center. In her own words, "SFWAR is an amazing, WOC-led organization that lives and breathes intersectional, anti-oppression activism, and I volunteer there as a crisis counselor." If you'd like to support her and SFWAR, you can find her fundraising page here.

boundbooks clued me into John Scalzi's escalating auction to help raise funds for his library in Bradford, Ohio. The higher the bid, the more fun stuff follows; bidding ends at midnight tonight. Even if you can't afford to bid, link it around! I'd link to a library donations page but damned if I can find one.

decepticonsensual is going abroad in a few weeks with Voluntary Service Overseas, a development-driven charity much like the US Peace Corps. She's raising money for the organisation (not for her trip personally) by offering to write fic for donations. Or if you're feeling generous, you can simply go here to donate.

yamx linked to the Binghampton Humane Society, which has had to evacuate during the recent floods in the North East. Their building is four feet under water, and they need both supplies and money. You can find a donation link at the top of the page.

deepfishy told me about Street Books, a bicycle-powered mobile library in Portland which lends books to people living outside. The program was initially funded by a grant which ended in August; now they're looking to keep the project going. You can see their book cart and pledge the Kickstarter page here.

Lorena let me know about Lauren Ipsum, (great title) a childrens' story about computer science written by Carlos and Yta, who are raising funds now for printing and translation. You can support them via Kickstarter here, and check out Chapter Zero for more information.

Help For Free:

tapiocastar came to me recently with questions about blogging, and while we've discussed it some I also advised her to open it up to wider suggestions. She has a post about it here and she'd love to have some advice!

xtricks has a post up about petitioning Paypal to stop providing service to several hate groups, per their TOS policy. You can check out his post to read more about the petition drive, find out how to sign the petition, and get contact info in case you'd like to send them a letter.

joiedumonde is looking for a fan-friendly, queer-friendly roommate in St. Louis.

leeftail is looking for housing advice, opportunities, and flatmates for her upcoming seven-week stay in Tel Aviv.

News To Know:

There is a story that has been circulating and escalating and mutating this week about "straightwashing" characters in YA literature in order to get them to print. This came in to me at multiple times and from multiple sources, and I am a few inches from functional in the wrong direction, so I'm not really qualified to talk intelligently about it just now. There is a super-detailed roundup here sent to me by iamshadow which might be something of an information overload but is also a good jumping-off place to read the source material.

In the end I agree with the basic conclusion that if you want to support queer characters in YA lit, and if you want publishers to buy manuscripts with queer characters, the best thing you can do is buy, review, and recc YA lit with queer characters in it. To that end, xtricks linked to a statistical review of GBLT in YA books. At the bottom of the post under the "9/15 update" is a link to Queer YA 1968-2008 and a PDF listing 2009-2011 titles, if you're looking for a place to start.

Australian passports now allow a third gender option for preoperative/predocumented transgendered people and those who do not identify within a binary gender system. It's not perfect, and I'm sure it comes with its own issues, but it seems to be also at least a step forward.

jane_drew_ reminds us that "Sometimes, we don't do too badly" with a link to a story about people working together, in the moment, to save a life.

Many people have come to me with questions about an email they received from Yahoo, stating that they needed to migrate their Delicious bookmarks because Delicious was bought by AVOS. (Apparently I am now the mediator of authenticity on the internet, which is kind of awesome.) This is truefax; you can read more here (Thanks xtricks!)

Just For Fun:

girlpearl defies us to remain uncheered by Kitten In A Hamster Ball.

pillmayken links to the most awesome a capella Doctor Who Theme ever.

Next week my folks and sister and I are going Cow Spotting in Austin -- they have a Cow Parade that I'm sure will be a delight to see.

And this has been Radio Free Monday! Thank you for your time. You can always post items for my attention in comments here (or on any post) or email me at copperbadge at gmail dot com. If you're not sure how to proceed, here is a little more about what I do and how you can help. Remember, non-embedded links are love.

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I think you have before now met my countryman and contemporary, John Roberts, who men call Bartholomew. He was from Pembrokeshire in Wales, as I, and I believe there is something in that country which produces the most able of brigands. Having known his story, hear mine.

I was mate aboard the Cadogan when I met not Roberts but the pirate Edward England, whose true name was Seegar and who was an Irishman, and for what reason he was named England, God alone shall tell. The Cadogan was taken and turned for pirates by this Irishman named England, and I being a competent and personable soul was named Captain by the eminent man.

We sailed for Brazil with intent to sell the Cadogan and perhaps obtain a more appropriate vessel for piracy, though after a mutiny and an imprisonment and various other stumbling blocks I found myself without the ship and ashore in Barbados, where I joined the sloop Buck and took it for piracy with a mutiny of my own. We laid our base off Martinique, at Coxon's Hole.

It was after this that I met John Roberts, as he had become one of my prisoners when we took his ship the Princess in very similar circumstances to those where my own Cadogan had been taken.

I made Roberts Captain of that Princess and you see, thus, how the patronage is passed: from England the Irishman to myself, Howell Davis (or Davies as please you), to Bartholomew or sometimes John Rogers who his own men call Black Bart. He may be the more famous of the men who risked sabre and cannon for gold, but I tell you I am the better pirate.

Who else had thought to pose as a privateer while a pirate, and kidnap the commander of a slaving fort while we sat together at dinner, all smiles? We took plenty of gold from that ransom, and pirates have no love of the slave trade.

Who else had thought to dress captured ships as pirate ships though they were not, and thus with no shots fired take a ship which feared attack by superior numbers? Who else was considered the best bluff and actor, the finest-looking of our chosen profession?

Who else had boarded ship as a Mate, with every intent to convince the crew to mutiny for piracy, and done the deed so well they were elected captain? No one.

I shall not live long, I think. Governors and commanders disdain the intelligent criminal who makes fools of them -- the refined man of action is not for their company. And I have no taste for blood as has my successor Bartholomew. A man I once defended from my fellows, a prisoner by the name of Snelgrave, did me great service; he has said I am a man "who (allowing for the Course of Life he had been unhappily engaged in) was a most generous humane Person".

A kind pirate is a short-lived pirate.

Still, at the least, I will have lived an interesting life.

On Talk Like A Pirate Day I always prefer to talk like a specific pirate.

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It's rainy here in ( A Cheaper World )

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This morning I spilled ink all over myself. Because I'm a motherfucking adult!

Other things that have happened today include the escalator spontaneously stairsing itself, rain, and snot the colour of which I have never before encountered. I have also reached some kind of administrative event horizon where people are now emailing me to fix problems I fixed three days ago. The problems haven't recurred; I'm just that good.

It's just as well I'm moving up. Clearly I have learned all I can in this apprenticeship. For those of you who were asking, btw, I am not becoming BossBoss; I'm moving into a position with the same job title and slightly higher pay, but for another department that offered me career advancement and nicer people to work with. I shall now be Journeyman of the Dark Administrative Arts.

I found out today that it pays to be someone our IT department finds amusing, too. They've decided I should tell them what I want installed in my new cubicle, so now I'm not just moving to a cubicle, I'm moving to the batcubicle. I get a headset with my desk phone, a laptop (this is a legitimate need, since my home computer doesn't get on with our VPN) with a docking station, and two monitors. I don't even need two monitors! I'm just getting them because I can!

I did have a moment this morning where I realised Friday was my last day, and momentarily freaked out. In fact just now I momentarily freaked out again. This isn't abnormal. As long as I don't allow the freakouts to motivate any action, like recanting my acceptance of the job, I'll be fine.

This day needs to end like, an hour ago, though.

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You know, in New Zealand I am already thirty-two.

I normally try to say something intelligent on my birthday about maturity or getting older or whatever, but you guys, I am on so many drugs. Not even the fun drugs. I'm still sick, and I'm hauling my ass into work tomorrow mostly because I have to. I'll be lucky if I remember my thirty-second birthday. I plan to spend it whimpering.

And I am going to sleep right now, and I'm not planning to get up early, so I thought I'd make my "hooray, I did not die this year" post before going to bed at eight pm.

I will say this, though. I got my new-job paperwork today and signed my life away to the Research department. It's all going in to HR tomorrow, which is the kind of tidiness I approve of. I looked at the offer letter, which for the first time told me what my monthly salary will be, and I actually said "Holy Moses" out loud in the empty lobby. It's not even like it's a huge salary or anything, it's just way more than I'm making now.

Time to sleep the sweet sleep of the codeine-enhanced.