I’ve been playing around with the idea of a deafness-related tattoo for a while now. Of course the only thing I can really come up with is the ILY handshape - anything else seems like it would be too complicated, although I did know a girl with a finely detailed tattoo of the sign for interpret.

The design I have been working on is pretty basic. I drew up a basic premise and went over it in permanent marker; then I tried to make a color version on the computer but it didn’t come out very well. The blue and green (and maybe purple) should fade out around the edge of the picture, as in the bottom of this space tattoo. The rays should look like crepuscular rays, as seen on this tattoo (but not in green). The style of the heart itself will depend on how the ILY over it comes out, but I would like for it to be kind of 3-D and shaded, a bit like this one.

I am thinking to place this on my upper right arm, up high where it will only peek out from under cap sleeves, for example. And yet I want it to be big enough to be crisp, so the height should be at least the width of my hand, I think. I have no idea how much this would cost or where to go, though I will be stopping by Marlowe Ink tomorrow after work to see how much it would cost to get one of my paw prints fixed up, so I might ask them how much they would charge for that kind of thing. Obviously I’d have to get someone to draw it up proper, though presumably tattoo artists do that all the time, right?

This is all just an idea, the tattoo itself could be months or even years away, or it could never happen. But that’s what’s been knocking around in my head, so I just wanted to get my thoughts down.

Could I please have a little less frustration on this trip? This morning I got to the Tropicana with no problems by taking a bus, but then when I went to the box office with my confirmation email there was a sign saying the Titanic exhibit was closed until further notice. The woman behind the desk claimed that I was automatically refunded when the exhibit closed last Saturday, but she didn’t know when it would be reopening. She was rather rude about it - I guess she’s been dealing with this a lot.

So since I was down at that end of town, I figured I’d go on the Manhattan Express roller coaster at NY-NY. I got all the way through the casino and up to the entrance, only to find that it wouldn’t open until 11:00am. By this point I was pretty annoyed! I figured I would move my afternoon plans up and head down to the Golden Nugget to meet the deaf dealer there. I had to wander through just about every hallway at the MGM Grand to find the monorail entrance! I actually liked the $5 monorail ride, though - they have entertaining recorded commentary. So I took it to the Sahara station, and then got on a bus to the Golden Nugget ($1.25)

I had heard about the deaf dealer from a DeafNation video, which featured a guy. When I got there, I asked an idle dealer about “a deaf dealer,” and she said “oh yes, she starts at 12:00″ - and sure enough, she turned out to be female! Her game was three-card poker, and her shift apparently started with a break, so I used my Sidekick to look up the game while she was out. It looked awfully confusing so I figured I’d ask if I could just watch. She was very nice, and happy to chat with me as she worked; it was amusing to see how she communicated with the players - mostly gesturally. She did have a little “hearing impaired” sign, but one guy didn’t see it wand was confused when she didn’t respond to his question about the minimum bet; one of the other players stepped in to tell him. After a while she had me ask a player where he was from, and I interpreted a couple of questions between her and the players.

It turns out she works at the Wynn too - if only I’d known, I could have saved myself the solo trip downtown! She’ll be there tomorrow from 12-8, so I might go visit her again. She said there were about six deaf dealers in Vegas overall, including her husband (who I gathered was the guy in the DN video). When it was time for her next break, I said I’d be going, and I headed for the Downtown Transit Center to take another $2 bus back to the Strip.

YouTube now has a special channel for PayPerPost. It primarily includes their reality show RockStartup, which is basically pretty self-referential from what I can tell…about how PPP is getting started as a fairly new company.

I quickly noticed a video about the HP camera giveaway, which I’ve displayed below. It’s one of the most accessible videos I’ve seen from PPP yet - the title tells you what we’re talking about, the name of the winner is shown in writing, and then the person who talks is almost easy to lipread. Of course, that’s partly because I know what she’s talking about - she says “PayPerPost dot com” several times, and she says “first winner,” and so forth. Considering that many PPP videos are not accessible to deaf viewers (or those who just don’t like sound on their computer), it’s a nice treat to see this one. And it looks like she’s holding the camera herself, so I get to compliment her on how steady she holds it!

I was so sorry to learn via Ridor that Gil Eastman has died. For those of you not familiar with him, Gil was an amazing voice in the Deaf community. Watching him sign was like listening to James Earl Jones speak…rich, powerful, and intense. He contributed so much to the Deaf arts community and the community at large. With Mary Lou Novitsky, he co-hosted “Deaf Mosaic” for 10 years, a fantastic newsmagazine produced at Gallaudet University that I watched every Sunday when I was a kid; he won an Emmy for his involvement in the show. He was also known for stirring performances of ASL literature, including a great version of the U.S. national anthem (Star-Spangled Banner). He contributed to a production of ASL poetry on videotape, he wrote plays about Deaf people and Deaf culture, and he was a professional storyteller.

I am greatly saddened by Gil Eastman’s death, I had always hoped to see him speak in person. I will have to resign myself to watching as many old tapes as I can, so I can see those beautiful signs over and over.

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.

We went to see “Pirates of the Caribbean 2″ last night, and I noticed it had Rear Window captioning available so I asked for the reflector. I’ve heard bad things about Rear Window from deaf friends and clients, and I wanted to try it for myself. For one thing, I was surprised by how big it was - I thought it would just sit right down in the cupholder, but the reflector itself is on a big tall bendy pole. I had very little trouble setting it up; we were there kind of early so I had plenty of time to play with it. I was surprised that the captions were orange, for some reason I was expecting red - maybe different theaters have different colors, or maybe I was just assuming incorrectly all this time.

The previews and commercials were not captioned. When the movie started, I noticed a problem immediately: the captions were one-half to about one full second ahead of the movie. I’m not sure if this was intentional so you have time to look back and forth, or just a matter of the projectionist starting the Rear Window track and then the movie itself a moment later. It was a bit annoying for me, but I suppose if you can’t hear the audio you aren’t bothered by the slight difference.

Looking back and forth was a drag; I now see why many deaf people I’ve talked to prefer open-captioned movies. The captions were pretty small on my reflector (perhaps because I was seated toward the front?) and I found it hard to fix on them visually as I looked back and forth. I had no trouble following the general action, but I spent too much time looking back and forth to really appreciate any of the visuals of the movie. By the way, I use captions regularly at home to help me follow the plot, so I really did use the Rear Window captions - but admittedly I didn’t need them, so I had the luxury of leaning on A’s shoulder part of the time and still following the movie.

I was not super-impressed by Rear Window. I’m glad I tried it so I now have a frame of reference for discussing it, but I wouldn’t like to use it regularly. I think it is probably worth it for popular films that everyone will be discussing around the water cooler, which will then come out on DVD with captions or subtitles at a later time. But in general I see why open captioning is often preferred…Rear Window is just very tough to use without getting dizzy or a stiff neck.

I had my hearing tested today. I have flaccid eardrums; the audiologist recommended seeing a physician to make sure nothing is wrong (she implied that sometimes there’s a cause, and sometimes people just are that way). Flaccid eardrums mean that it’s harder for sound to make my eardrums vibrate - the eardrum moves with the sound, rather than vibrating and passing the information along to the cochlea.

My hearing is “borderline normal” for all of the sounds of speech, which means I’m essentially just fine. I do have a sharp drop at about 6kHz - a 60dB loss there and a 70dB loss at 8kHz. Those numbers indicate “moderate to severe” hearing loss, but because no speech sounds are in that range, I’m fine. It does, however, explain why A can hear when the TV is on and I can’t.

I hadn’t been to any Pride events since 2000, but yesterday I went! I had been asked to interpret for the DC Dyke March, and I was happy to do so. (They weren’t paying me anything, so I asked for one of the “MARSHAL” t-shirts other volunteers were given.) I had thought the interpreting would all be before the march, but it turned out there was one speaker, then the march, and then another speaker. Prior to the march there was a group of deaf girls there, but they paid absolutely no attention to me - oh well. I chatted with some deaf gay boys during the march and invited them to join us, but they were heading for Lambda Rising instead. I spent most of the march tagging along with boiswillbebois and the “Femmes Car” which contained pegsioux, bias_cut, and a couple of other lovely ladies. After the march, the speaker was Jessi Holman-Ahart, who is one of my absolute favorite people in the leather community. I didn’t see any deaf people, but I interpreted anyway; afterward a deaf woman came up and thanked me, so I’m glad at least someone was there!

After I was done, I headed over to the Eagle for the deaf leather workshops being given by boy alex. fairerhiannon and I were the only hearing people there, although Jessi and her partner Janet turned up briefly so fairerhiannon and I voice interpreted while they were around. She and I went out for dinner in Chinatown after the workshops (and 30-45 minutes of goodbyes) were done. I had been hoping to go to Crystal City to see Amy Armstrong perform, but I was too exhausted so drove me back to the metro and I got my car and went home.

This morning I noticed two things on the Pride schedule. First, I saw Amy and Freddy will be performing on the main stage this afternoon. Second, I noticed a complete lack of interpreting services - they weren’t mentioned anywhere on the website or in the official publication. Now, this year’s Pride theme is “Many Communities, All Proud”> - and yet they are ignoring the large local deaf gay community! So right now I am on the metro heading downtown to volunteer my services (I’m so nice). If they don’t need me I will just hang around the festival until Amy performs; I interpreted for her on the RSVP cruise last year so I’m going to try to ask if I can do that again. She is such a riot!

Yesterday I got a moderately strong sunburn because I completely forgot about that big star up there in the sky. So today I brought two kinds of sunblock - the regular kind, and the new “mist” no-rub kind. The latter is awfully weird - today is the first time I’ve tried it - so I’m glad I brought the regular kind, too.

I took the Lloyd’s test again and did much better, but when I did the Audacity tones again with headphones I couldn’t hear the tones - and yet I could hear them without headphones. So who knows if it’s the computer, or my hearing, or what. All I know is that last night, A could hear things I couldn’t.

• Fantazyland Review
  The most bleak theme park I’ve ever seen. Located in Alexandria, Egypt.
  (tags: coasters)