All I have to say is: I got straight A's this semester.

Oh hai! Here I am. Does anybody notice when I don't post for four days in a row? Anyway, I'm done with school for the semester!! Only two of my grades are in, but they are both A's - Deaf Studies, and Sex & Gender. kawaiibishounen already got his linguistics grade, so I am frantically checking the online system for mine, but it's still not there! I only just had the history final exam today, so I don't expect that grade tonight. Grades are due by Monday at noon, though, so hopefully I'll have them by then!


Not a whole lot has been going on. I'm hoping to organize my workdays so that I'll be working 10-1 and 2-5, though I'm not sure they'll go for that...it's basically because a 30-minute lunch break isn't enough for me, emotionally or physically. We only get an hour paid lunch if we work 8+ hours, and I don't work more than a 6-hr day, so I shouldn't be getting an hour lunch...but I'm giving up my 30-min paid lunch in order to have a 60-min unpaid lunch, so they ought to go for it, I would think...we'll see. The scheduler approved it for this coming Monday, but I think he's going to talk it over with the boss because he didn't say it was approved for the whole week as I had requested.


I'm finally playing The Sims again! My Sims blog is called My Sims Stories, and it's just fun to keep a log of what's happened. I started a new character using the romance aspiration to see if I could play it, but then I just used the InSIMinator cheats so I'm not sure it really counts. Oh look, this person instantly loves me! Now I can woo-hoo with them! Yeah, not very challenging.


I really want to travel this summer, it seems like everybody I know is traveling in some way or another. I want $1500 to burn on travel, I could have such a fabulous time with that, but I spent $5700 on hearing aids so that's not very likely. I get to go to New Orleans in July anyway...I just have to be patient and wait for that to come around rather than lusting over trips for June or August. Anyway, I can't afford to take so much time off, I need to work the whole summer!


The final word of wisdom I would like to impart right now is: Ben & Jerry's Cheesecake Brownie ice cream is simply astonishingly wonderful. NOM NOM NOM.

Once again, I have been invited to interpret at Dragon*Con. Once again, I have to say no. In the past it's been various reasons. Last year it was because of school. This year it's because of school, too. I just don't understand why they have to have it on Labor Day weekend, which is just one week after classes start. I can't just fly off to Atlanta right after classes start!


Of course, there's only a few people I'm sorry I'll miss interpreting for. Sean Astin, Adam Baldwin, and Avery Brooks. Oh, and Michael Dorn, Brad Dourif, Jerry Doyle, Richard Hatch, and some guy named Walter Koenig. Have I already mentioned J.M. Linsner, some author chick named Anne McCaffrey, and Robert Picardo? Or James Randi? Did I mention Jewel Staite? There's also this old guy named Adam West. Yeah, I won't be interpreting for any of them.


I've already interpreted for Cirroc Lofton, Dean Haglund, and James Marsters, but I wouldn't mind doing it again. And I've attended a con where George Takei was a guest, but I'd love to interpret for him. Yeah, Labor Day weekend is a bad, bad time for the biggest con of the year. Sigh.

This is a quasi-meme. If you have Netflix, go to your queue and look in the "Genre" column for documentaries. Pick 5 and post them. It's okay if you post less than 5, but not more, so we can keep things tidy! Personally I have a lot more than 5, I love documentaries. That's why I'm forcing this meme upon you - so I can see what documentaries I might have missed and would want to add to my queue. If you don't have Netflix, find 5 and post them. You can post as a comment to this entry, or as an entry in your own journal.

Here's my 5:

• Helvetica
• My Kid Could Paint That
• Tupperware!: American Experience
• Southern Comfort
• 30 Years of National Geographic Specials

Whoops, messed up the copy from my journal. Well, here you go.

HelloTxt

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I got way out of control at College Bowl tonight. One of the other players had written the questions we were using, and one was about Jamie Lee Curtis. It said she was born with a syndrome (I think it actually said birth defect actually) that makes her a what? Well, of course I knew she was born with Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, but what does that make her? I puzzled over it for a few seconds and then it hit me - an intersexual. The student who wrote the questions came around and looked at our answers, and told me mine was wrong. As he turned away to reveal the answer, I signed (to nobody in particular) "I am right, and if you said hermaphrodite I will kill you." So he shows the answer, and it says "Hermaphrodite (do not accept transsexual, shemale, or transvestite)". Everybody always contests answers, so everybody started protesting. I leapt out of my chair and started yelling, "I OBJECT! I OBJECT! I VERY STRONGLY OBJECT!" (This is all in sign, btw.). Everybody else settled down, and I kept demanding to file an objection. The guy who wrote the questions tried to shut me down, but the coach said "it looks like she knows what she's talking about." So the student let me stand up and explain my objection. I got up and ranted "that is an old greek word, of course. But it is NOT APPROPRIATE anymore! It is considered DISCRIMINATORY and derogatory! It is not accepted by the medical establishment or the people themselves!! It is not appropriate!!!". The guy who wrote the questions said something to the effect of "yikes, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to offend" and apologized profusely. I said "okay, thank you" and sat down, saying "oh, but, I'm not one, though." Which was kind of unnecessary to say and implies that there's something wrong with being intersexual. I think I said it because I was overexcited. At the end of practice, I got the guy's attention and apologized for getting so overexcited. He said "oh no, I'm sorry I offended." I said "well, I really could have said it more calmly and nicely, so I'm sorry."

And that was my little freakout for the evening.

There are a ton of songs about Julia, but the one sticking in my head right now is John Lennon's elegy to his mom. I can't get it out of my head. It's so haunting, so evocative of how I feel right now.

My friend Julia Case died last week. Some of you may have known her as mornhyland. She had a lot of diverse experiences in her life, a lot of wonderful things but also a lot of sorrow. She was deaf-blind, and suffered from bipolar disorder, PTSD, DID, and possibly other mental illnesses. She was in and out of mental hospitals pretty regularly, but underneath all that she was a brilliant mathematician who loved technology, and that's what we frequently talked about. Every time I mused about wanting a new cell phone, she'd give me the lowdown because she knew all about those things. We talked about programming and other geek toys. She had an answer for techie questions I never thought anybody would know, and she had that answer ready within minutes of me posting to Twitter or LiveJournal.

Julia had been going through some hard times recently. She moved from Massachusetts to Oregon, and she broke up with her wife, to whom she was legally married (in Massachusetts anyway). She sent me a message on Twitter not long ago, so distraught over her breakup that she asked if she would make it through. I told her yes she would, because she was one of the strongest people I know. She had survived SO much. And really, things were starting to look up. She had interpreters in her college classes, she had just gotten a dog named Chance from Project Pooch, and I believe she was intending to train him as a service dog - guide or therapy, I'm not sure which. She had just gotten hearing aids (one day after I got mine) and was having a hard time adjusting to all the new sounds. She was also taking mobility training, learning how to guide herself with a white cane and so forth. She talked about wanting to learn Braille. I honestly thought things were looking up, but something was obviously wrong.

Julia took her own life on Wednesday, April 23, 2008. She was 39 years old. I will miss her very much.

IMDb says that if I enjoyed "Sweet Nothing in My Ear" I will enjoy "Sound and Fury" - well, that's pretty accurate, because the former is basically a fictionalized version of the latter. Yup, the old CI debate again, this time starring Marlee Matlin and Jeff Daniels.
Thoughts:

• It showed that some deaf people are very opposed to implants but didn't really do a good job of explaining why. The deaf grandfather was obviously a strong supporter of deaf culture but they didn't really say why he was against implants at all.
• Jeff Daniels did a better job signing than I was expecting. Plenty of flaws, obviously, but he was more fluid than I had anticipated, less stilted than I feared.
• They got the same guy who plays the interpreter on the L Word to play an interpreter in the courtroom on this movie. Marlee's doing? Hmmm.
• They used voiceover instead of subtitles to explain what the signing was saying. Yuck! Somebody on the IMDb message board said they preferred that because it conveyed the emotions better. That makes sense if you're a blind person watching the movie, but otherwise, can't you see the facial expressions? Do you really need to hear someone to know how they feel?!
• Deanne Bray was in it! That surprised me. Phyllis Frelich was smashing as always. Is Shoshannah Stern only playing CI/oral characters now? Who was the grandfather? I couldn't recognize him.
• Good discussion about the movie at Cochlear Implant Online here.
• I missed most of the "you were born hearing" discussion because the station interrupted for a tornado warning...for somewhere that is at LEAST two hours away. Come on guys, your signal isn't that strong that they're watching you out there! They broke in again a little later but I forget what part that was.

I always like watching Marlee Matlin but this movie wasn't very good.

I found out yesterday that one of my best friends was badly beaten and left in the street around 2am Friday night/Saturday morning. He was found by police and taken to the hospital, his mother has since picked him up and taken him home. I don't know if he'll be back this semester. I can't get him off my mind.

I joined Second Life back in 2005 or so. For a while I didn't have a computer that could do it at all so I only played at friends' houses. Then I had a computer that could do it, but not well, so I got frustrated and gave up on it. Now I'm back, thanks to aleja, and I'm getting more involved! (This is only in the last few days, even.) In fact, I just bought a home. Yup, I'm now a Second Life homeowner, paying RL cash for a virtual plot of land. Oh well, it's not much. I did always kind of want a home...I was a total vagrant before. Anyway, here are some pictures of my renewed second life.
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I have no idea if I'm forgetting stuff, I really should get out the syllabus for all my classes and double-check everything. But it's getting late now and I have to go to bed.

• Family history paper for HIS 112H


• Read Coming of Age in Mississippi for HIS 112H


• Time research project for LIN 263


• Compounding homework for LIN 263


• Another test coming up for LIN 263


• Reaction paper (ASL Poetry) for DST 101


• Research paper for DST 101


• Powerpoint for DST 101


• Position paper for GSR 150

Whoops, I missed a couple of days there, I should let people know I'm not dead!

• The ant problem in my computer seems to be resolved. Unfortunately the ones making a line from the back porch in through the cracks and to the cat's food dish are not resolved.
• I'm writing a letter to the audiologist who told me hearing aids wouldn't help...letting her know that THEY HELP!
• We went to see Vantage Point today; I was not at all impressed. Definitely not what I was hoping for. I like Forest Whitaker, and I wanted to see all the different points of view, but the whole thing was kind of blah with about 20 minutes of actual plot.
• Got shoes at Payless, woo hoo!
• Still too much homework and stuff to get done, including three papers due within the next month. Fun!

I sent the following e-mail to my wife shortly after I got home this afternoon.

Do you have any compressed air at work? Can you please bring it home?

I have the world's most disgusting computer problem.

Remember the tiny ants I mentioned? Turns out they're not in the bedroom.

They're in MY COMPUTER.

I am NOT making this up. I have watched them coming out of the keyboard at least a dozen times now.

I think an ant crawled in through one of the vents, and did whatever ants do to reproduce, and now I have a computer full of ants.

This calls for a nap.