I was checking out the new Google Patents service, which is a much improved interface over the one offered by the USPTO, and which I’d heard about via Googling Google. I was also looking at information about the onstage 45-degree lean performed by Michael Jackson and his dancers during concerts featuring the song “Smooth Criminal” - it’s a damn cool move, one that was done in the original video with wires. (Up until I read this article, I had assumed they just had hyper-developed muscles from so much dancing - I didn’t realize it was faked!) To perform it onstage, Michael Jackson developed a special device, which received U.S. Patent 5255452 in 1992 - “Means and method for creating anti-gravity illusion.”

So I thought “hmm, has the King of Pop created any other patents?” I searched for Michael Jackson and got far too many results, so I figured I’d put his name as it was shown in the Anti-Gravity Illusion patent: Michael J. Jackson. The first hit was for that very patent. The second was for: Internal nasal implant. Yes, this entire post was an elaborate joke about Michael Jackson’s nose. I just had to share my amusement.

This post is the result of seeing the capitalized word “Hearing” used to mean a hearing person who is pro-Deaf people. I have seen it before, I believe in deaf, it bothered me then and it’s time to think about why. It strikes me as wrong for two reasons.

First, it’s mis-capitalized. A Deaf person is proud to be deaf, right? So a Hearing person is proud to be hearing, it has nothing to do with if they support d/Deaf people or not. Or worse, if you want to get exclusionary or audist about it, a Deaf person might prefer to socialize only with other Deaf people, so a Hearing person would prefer to only socialize with other Deaf people - BOTH groups are audists because they’re discriminating on the basis of hearing status. I can appreciate wanting to be “with the tribe,” I’m not saying it’s bad to only be with people of your own kind…but it’s bad to turn “I want to be with people like me” into “I don’t want to be with people who aren’t like me.”

Second, we all know that the number of Deaf people in the U.S. is smaller than the number of deaf people. There are tons of elderly people who can’t hear at all but they are not Deaf. Therefore, Deaf people are in the minority within the greater deaf group. And if “Hearing” means someone who is pro-Deaf, then it’s perpetuating the idea that supporting Deaf people is a minority act. Everybody should be supporting Deaf people, or at least not caring about hearing status. Distinguishing pro-Deaf hearing people with a different name highlights the fact that there are fewer of them, and de-emphasizes the need to have everybody be pro-Deaf. (I’m using pro-Deaf as the antonym of anti-Deaf…that is, not afraid of, or disturbed by, Deaf people - I’m not saying every hearing person should work in the Deaf-World or have Deaf friends.)

I see “Hearing” as an offensive neologism and, speaking as a pro-Deaf hearing person, I don’t like to see that word used to describe me.

I am depilated. It took an entire tube of Nair and some leftover Sally Hansen, but it’s done. I pretty much never get all the hair off my legs anymore, but I did it. It’s the societal pressure thing…if I’m going to be romping around in a bikini (which I am), I don’t want to have hairy legs. I used to get waxed sometimes, but that takes both time and money. So instead I spent a couple of hours doing it at home for $7.99. My legs may be covered with hives and still burning in places, but I still got it done!

I’m a bit ticked off, though, because that stuff eats your fingernails, too. I spent so much time with the cream on my hands and washing and so forth, that my nails are now paper-thin and won’t last. This pisses me off because I’ve been keeping them nice for a few months in expectation of getting a manicure with a fancy color of nail polish. A says I can just get tips put on and it’ll be fine, but I’m annoyed with the Nair anyway.

This is kind of a long post, so feel free to skip over it. I wanted to share an opinion I just posted, so there are quotes from others to put it into context. The thread is called Are gay men welcomed on Olivia Cruises? The answer from Olivia is no, but there’s been a lot of discussion about men’s space vs. women’s space, whether Olivia is practicing discrimination, whether this is different from the Augusta National Golf Club, etc.
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The morning started with me hitting snooze a time or two, and then when I got up I checked out of the hotel and brought my bags to my car. I got coffee at 7-11 and headed for the workshop. I was a block or two away when I noticed a few women standing around in yellow smocks. I thought “oh boy, they’re going to be handing out literature,” but as I approached I saw their smocks read “Planned Parenthood Escort.” As I approached the intersection, I was astonished to see several dozen protesters reciting the rosary, along with a great big picture of the Virgin Mary and so forth. I went up to two of the escorts and asked them about it; apparently every third Saturday this group comes down after their 7:00am mass to do this. It turns out that the building where my workshop was has the surgical center for all of Planned Parenthood Southeastern Pennsylvania, and abortions are done on Saturdays…hence the protest.

I chatted with the escorts for a couple of minutes and they offered to walk me in; I didn’t think I needed it but I let them come along. They ended up leaving me, though, to join a phalanx of escorts that was hustling a young woman into the building. Most of the protesters just kept saying the rosary, but a few walked alongside the woman and begged her not to go inside. They tried to shove literature at her, but she kept her head down and ignored them. The protesters aren’t allowed into the PPSP courtyard, so once we were past the gate the escorts broke away and the woman continued inside with her male friend. I was right on their heels and I could see that the woman was crying; her friend had to go up to the receptionist because she was too upset.

I went upstairs to the workshop room and dropped off my stuff, and I took a cell phone picture looking down onto the crowd. A couple of other students were already there, and one had ended up with literature in pretty pastels while the other had been presented with a tiny stuffed dog that had a note tied around its neck saying something about “don’t kill your baby.” I decided to go back downstairs to gawk a bit (from the safety of the courtyard), and I ended up taking a couple of pictures. As others arrived for the workshop, some were escorted and some were not; the protestors were telling every female walking in - including obvious staff members - that they didn’t have to do this, etc. Another woman from the workshop had a real camera with her, and she took pictures too; I gave her my email address so I will get to see them. One workshop student who was watching with me said she wasn’t sure she wanted to be in a building where abortions were being performed, but she ended up coming in anyway. When the deaf workshop participant arrived, she was guided by several escorts and I followed her into the building because it was almost 9:00 anyway. I explained on the way upstairs what the protestors were there for.

When the workshop began, we spent the first half-hour talking about the protest. The facilitator explained that there is rationale for doing the workshop on protest weekends, and rationale for not doing so; if they are at the same time, she has reasons for warning the participants on Friday, and reasons for not doing that. She hadn’t warned us because she wanted to see how we would respond, because as interpreters we could potentially encounter things like that and it’s good to have examined your feelings beforehand.

The workshop itself was about domestic violence in the morning and interpreting practice in the afternoon. For lunch I had a roasted tofu sandwich I’d bought the night before…at 7-11 of all places! The deli case there had multiple vegan sandwiches from a Pennsylvania company called Moshe’s; I was very impressed, and the sandwich I had was delicious. When the workshop ended I hightailed it back to my car and got on the road as quickly as possible, stopping only to pay $50 (!) for parking and only once along the way for gas.

Today I had my hatred for MySpace (well, it’s a healthy dislike) renewed. Here is a totally spontaneous message from, and ensuing conversation with, this guy, whom I had never heard of before this morning.
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Am I the only one who finds Sean Paul’s “Temperature” video offensive? It’s not the bouncing boobs, it’s not the freak dancing, it’s not even the dancing kiddies (much) - it’s the stepping on women. Literally. I don’t consider myself extremely feminist, but this video is the most sexist thing I’ve seen on TV. There are a couple of spots during the video in which a trio of men literally step on a trio of women, physically pushing them down. (I’m not sure the link above is the full video, but it has at least one clip of this.) It’s horrible, and yet I couldn’t find much online about this. Now Verizon is using the song in one of their commercials; they’re not using the video but every time I hear the song it makes me mad.

First, I never heard from Wil Wheaton, which makes me kind of sad. Everyone was so encouraging that I wrote to him with hope, but so far no joy - oh well. What I really wanted to write about, though, is stickers.

• First: political bumper stickers. I participated in my friend Ryan’s Political Bumpers project around the time of the 2004 presidential election, so I got very interested in political-sticker-spotting. What I’ve been noticing recently, though, is that people still have those stickers on their cars. I’ve always thought political stickers, like tattoo’s of your current squeeze’s name, are a bad idea because they will grow out of date. But it seems that around here, at least, political stickers have turned into declarations of the car owner’s ideology. I have found that I now equate “Bush/Cheney” stickers with “I’m the NRA - And I Vote” stickers, Jesus fish, and so forth. Likewise, any “Kerry/Edwards” stickers are equivalent to Darwin fish and other left-wing ideas. The Bush/Cheney stickers have the added air of “nyah nyah” while the Kerry/Edwards stickers have an added air of…disappointment, I guess, or maybe “you suck!”
• Second: cell phone stickers, or “skins.” When I had a clunky old Nokia 3390, I had removable faceplates. I ditched the original gold one early on and used Hello Kitty faceplates for the rest of the phone’s life. But now that I have a Sidekick, I no longer get removable faceplates, so my device is very bland and gray. It’s possible to buy colored rubber “bumpers” to replace some of the buttons of the Sidekick II, and it’s possible to spend hundreds of dollars to have tiny crystals put all over your phone, but I wasn’t really interested in either one. Instead I designed a skin at My Tego. The back is going to have a picture of A all over it, and the front is going to have abstract rainbow stuff. (I also tried out Starry Night, The Scream, and Hello Kitty fronts, but I decided to go with the abstract one. It’s going to be slightly tricky to get the skin on properly, but I’m looking forward to having a fancier phone!

Some holidays are known around the world - Christmas, New Year’s Day, Easter. Some are strictly religious observances - Rosh Hashanah, Eid-ul-Fitr, Ascension Day. Others are specific to individual nations - Waitangi Day, Bastille Day, Australia Day. But in the United States, we have some unique Hallmark holidays that are not widely observed by anyone other than greeting card companies. Some are even acknowledged by the federal government as nationally proclaimed holidays, but this does not guarantee increased recognition by society.
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Finally! After years and years of looking at BMEzine from the outside - I remember freaking out the first time I saw a genital piercing on there years ago - I finally have a membership! After getting my tattoo in December 1999, I tried to submit the pictures (NSFW) to BMEzine. They were rejected as being too small, even though I felt it was a nice sequence of photos from before, during, and after the process. So since then I’ve just looked from the outside, and I’ve occasionally been frustrated by not having access to the mods of friends who have accounts on the IAM community site.

Last night I figured I’d submit that sequence of tattoo pictures again. I knew they were still too small, and I have the original prints somewhere but I’m not sure where so I can’t re-scan them. (By the way, those pictures are the origin of my 2001 essay entitled Don’t develop your dirty pictures at CVS.) So I resubmitted the little pictures, and got the automated warning that they would probably be too small but were being sent to a human for checking. And then I thought…wait a minute. BMEzine considers corseting a form of body modification; maybe I should submit my corset pictures. So I sent in a couple. Tonight I got the rejection for the tattoo pictures…and then shortly after I got the approval for the corset pictures! What’s funny is that they’re not even very good pictures - the reduction is not especially dramatic - but now that I have access to the full corsetry gallery, I see that there are plenty of pictures in there less “intense” than what I’m doing. But I can see the whole gallery now!

I’m working on my IAM page; fortunately the name “etoile” was still available. I don’t think it’s visible to non-members right now, so I’ll have to figure out if I want to change that setting, and if so, how. Also, my name didn’t get attached to the two photos I’ve submitted, so I will have to ask if there’s a way to do that. Now that I’m logged into IAM it looks like any new pictures would have my name attached, but these initial ones don’t yet. Yay, I’m excited to finally have IAM access and a full BME membership!