The Burger King “Manthem” commercial is back on TV, almost identical to its spring 2006 version. And it’s time for me to add my voice to those of many other bloggers who have expressed their dislike for this ad spot.

Although I have been a vegetarian since 1993, my dislike for this ad has nothing to do with the Texas Double Whopper burger itself or the I Eat Meat slogan. Many people eat meat, that’s fine with me if that’s what they want to do. My dislike stems from the appropriation of Helen Reddy’s 1972 song I Am Woman, which was used as an anthem for the women’s liberation movement which was just taking flight around that time. And even though Reddy herself said that it was a “general empowerment song,” the fact is that it is specifically about the gender divide and Burger King has cruelly twisted the song’s history. How many young Americans are not familiar with that song? Do they think it’s a catchy jingle? How many think it’s a good perversion of a classic protest anthem? Would they be so willing to endorse a corporate-generated version of “We Shall Overcome” if it was written to sell hamburgers?

I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned this here before, but the interpreter who had my position before I got here put herself on a ton of mailing lists. She was here for several years, and I guess she thought she was never going to leave, but there was a falling out between her and the woman who runs the contract for interpreters, so she was asked to go.

As a result, I am now on those mailing lists. More accurately, I am on a bunch of telemarketing lists - when my phone rings, there’s about a 90% chance it’s a telemarketer, because I never get calls here.

What I find really annoying, though, are the sleazeballs who pretend they know me. Or more accurately, they pretend they know the president of the company. They’ll say “oh hi, is Dave there?” or “can I talk to David?” But if these people knew the president and were really on a first name basis with him, they’d know…the president is deaf. No, you can’t speak to him. He uses video relay and anybody he interacts with in a corporate or B2B setting knows to call him through that. Buh-bye.

I get my medications - there are a lot of them - by mail-order pharmacy. At the beginning of the year, my insurance company switched from using Express Scripts for that service to using Medco Health. All of my prescriptions transferred properly, except one: fexofenadine, the generic for Allegra. Due to complete incompetence on the part of Express Scripts, I am now down to a week remaining of that medication and I have to jump through very twisted hoops to get it. Here’s the e-mail I just sent to my physician:
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All day I have been flipping out about forgetting my website’s master password. See, I reset the password shortly before going on vacation, and now I only remember the last half of it. I have submitted one helpdesk ticket through the website (priority one), two e-mails to support@my_host, one of which was from my Sidekick because I thought Gmail wasn’t working, and one e-mail to Christine directly just in case that helped.

The one thing I really, really wanted it for today was accessing my installation of Thyme. Unfortunately, my installation has been disabled because it’s shareware. You can reinstall it and everything is fine, but I can’t do anything without that master password. I would even go into the MySQL database by hand if I had to just to manually extract the information from my calendar, I don’t care. I just want my damn calendar! And, well, everything else on my site, I guess. Fortunately other stuff (like, oh, WordPress) is installed and running happily so I can at least update my site, but I can’t do any FTP or admin functions without that stupid password. Argh!

Did I mention this is driving me crazy?

Well, I’m annoyed. We had brought a shopping bag from Lord and Taylor in the trunk of the car. In the bag was a wrapped present and two bottles of meds, and a giant koosh ball we bought today. And when a certain guy who lives with us went to the car to bring in the present, he brought the whole bag. When we got out to the car at the end of the reception, A noticed the shopping bag was missing. So we spent 45 minutes trying to track them down, and we ended up giving up. The father of the bride suggested we call the happy couple (who was staying at a different hotel), but of course we’re not going to bug them on their wedding night.

I am actually really annoyed, probably more than I should be. I should just calm down, but I’m all angry about it. Ah well, that’s what writing in here is for.

Here is a word of advice for non-interpreters: never ask a sign language interpreter if they are “in training.” Unless you have been an interpreter yourself - and if you have, you know better than to ask - you have no idea what our work entails. When I stumble in the last five minutes of a 14-hour workday because the speaker suddenly changed the short speech they gave multiple times in the previous couple of hours, don’t assume that I don’t know what I’m doing. If I ask my co-terp for help, be aware that this is standard procedure in my field. You don’t know me, you don’t know what I did earlier in the day, and you don’t have a clue how difficult my job is. Do not fucking ask me if I am “training to be an interpreter” and then when I say “I’m a certified interpreter” rephrase your question to ask again if I am still in training. Just don’t fucking do it.

Please indulge me in a bit of self-righteousness and indignancy as I continue to challenge the femme invisibility barrier.

I’d heard a few days ago that someone had complained that J and I were not lesbians. Of course we thought that was silly, but we weren’t sure who had said it, as the information seemed to have gone through a long grapevine. That night at dinner one of the deaf men I was eating with asked me if I was a lesbian. I said yes and he seemed fine with that. The question nagged at me though, until tonight. It was toward the end of the cruise, I was chatting with a deaf guy and his hearing boyfriend at the leather party, and I told them about this trange question. They were surprised by that, and we talked about it for a few moments. And then who should walk up but the guy I suspected all along. Now, this guy is a hearing interpreter from Baltimore; I did not know him before the cruise. He walked up, said hello, and then we had this exchange:

Him: Can I ask you a personal question?
Me: Sure. (knowing what’s coming)
Him: Are you a lesbian?
Me: Yes. (conversation was in ASL; I used an emphatic form of yes)
Him: Are you in a relationship?
Me: Yes, for seven years.
Him: How nice for you. Do you have a picture of your partner?
Me: Uh, not on me, no.
Deaf guy: Do you have a picture of your boyfriend?
Him: Well, he’s here. I can bring him over.
Me: She’s not here because she’s already going on a cruise this month with her mom, blah blah blah.

So then he went off, and the deaf guy, his boyfriend, and I marveled at the guy’s balls that he asked me such a thing to my face. I was miffed, but we talked about things like narrow-mindedness and interpreter ethics. I finally decided I was going to go, and I said goodbye to my friends. On the way out, though, I decided I was going to give the guy a big fuck you.

At first I went to the computer cafe to search for the guy’s email address. I didn’t find it, so I went to Flickr, found a suitable picture and printed it, then logged off. The total cost was $2.65 for this. Now, the picture I’d chosen was specific. It has me and A standing with Teddy, International Mr. Deaf Leather 2004, between us. Perfect. So I took it back downstairs to the party. (By the way, I did have a rum and coke in me at this point.) I couldn’t find the guy at first, but I ended up telling a couploe of other deaf people why I was looking for him. I also told M, the male terp, who mentioned that he’s been getting asked all week if J & I are straight. (At least five times, by hearing people but not the guy I was after.)

Finally the nice deaf guy spotted the guy dancing far away. I couldn’t see him, so the deaf guy offered to take the printout over to him. After a few minutes he returned and said “I showed it to him. He knows the guy in the middle [Teddy]. You’re safe!”

So I felt pretty good. But I still can’t fathom the question. Femme lesbians do exist, dammit! Just because 99% of the lesbians on this cruise are (sometimes soft) butch does not mean femme dykes are a straight man’s fantasy? (I think he might have been jealous that he didn’t get my job but rather had to pay to be there.)