yea i just looked more into it....i can either purchase something on amazon.com convert my money into an amazon gift card(usable only by me, which seems pretty stupid) or deposit the funds into my bank account. so i guess bank account to cash to bitinstant to bitcoin is the only way to go.
What is the point of a gift card if you cant give it to somebody else? That doesn't make any sense. Maybe you should check that again. If you can get a gift code, you could sell it for bitcoins, lots of people do that here. (I fill up my kindle by trading bitcoins for amazon gift credits)