Two items sent in by an anonymous alert reader have caught my interest this morning. First is the profile of a queer gaming festival in (the queer/vegan promised land of) Portland, Oregon, this coming weekend. The event will be a safe and fun space to introduce people to pen-and-paper roleplaying (think Dungeons and Dragons). Called Fantasy Quest, the event is a three-day spectacular designed to appeal to two historically marginalized categories of people – queers and geeks. Some of us are both – what does that makes us, queeks?

Check the article for photos of total babes Forsorcerers, who will be playing the second night of the event. I would love to attend this. It’s right up my alley.

The second article is a BBC story about a hetero couple seeking a civil union in the UK. They’ve been denied a license for a civil union – not only are gays not allowed to get married, but straights aren’t allowed to have civil unions either. The institutions are designed to widen the gap between “normal” and “wrong”, and Tom Freeman and Katherine Doyle have decided to challenge that.

I remember seeing an interview with Vandana Shiva – an Indian physicist/feminist/environmental activist – talking about the problems of massive Multinational Coca-Cola drying up a river in India for their bottling plant, depriving the area’s population of the water supply vital to their lives. According to the India Resource Centre, as quoted in this article, groundwater levels have dropped up to six meters, leaving wells and small bodies of water dry.

Thanks, Coke. I’ve railed at you before for your ills… and now you’re trying to pass yourself off as “green” at the Vancouver 2010 Olympics? You and everyone else.

Speaking of which, I met COPE City Councillor Ellen Woodsworth yesterday (I voted for her!) and she was wearing one of these fantastic I Am A Free Speech Zone t-shirts. She invited me to come by City Hall and have tea with her when I decide to buy a t-shirt, which I will.

For more information on the zoning of our constitutional right to free speech during the 2010 Olympics, check out this article in the Sun, or better yet, Mayor Gregor Robertson’s concern over the “Orwellian nature of that label”. I voted for him, too. Vancouver is a free speech zone. Canada is supposedly a free speech zone.

Coke in green clothing | rabble.ca.

Uganda is throwing homosexuals and transgendered persons in jail for homosexual activity. The legislature is causing an uproar globally, but Uganda doesn’t seem to mind. Cases of “aggravated homosexuality”, including repeated homosexual acts, or sex acts with a person who’s under 18, HIV-positive, or, get this, disabled, are punishable by the death sentence. The fucking death sentence.

Read the article at Rabble. So fucked.

Tens of thousands of protesters hit the streets in the aftermath of the Iranian election as the government rolled out a nationwide censorship campaign, shutting down mobile phone service, text messaging, and access to news sites. Fortunately, proxy servers have been set up to allow media access from within Iran’s borders – and once again, Twitter rises to the foreground as a powerful media/access/publication tool.

Twitter: the social networking tool we didn’t know we needed until we had it. I’d reference my old post about something similar, but I lost my blog archives and Electric Kitten (now under new management!) hasn’t responded to my request to have them retrieve my SQL table in exchange for my hard-earned cash. Thanks.