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.