sundries

[rm]

Patty comes home tomorrow!

I will not be at work until 11pm tonight!

I still need to finish my WIAD! Now that that's done, can I just say that I am totally working on a Jack/Auggie (from Covert Affairs) fic?

Hey, my buddy justpat wrote a book about the science of Battlestar Galatica. He thanks me in the acknowledgments somewhere because we chatted a bit about my experience with my Harry Potter book. Pre-order now and all that.

I should apply for this. Of course, I assume that if the background check is about more than not stealing shit from the museum I'd fail, having lived a colorful and open life of not technically crime.

Portland people: Duchess is hiring. Also, they're going to update/change what's available on Scotch Basic soon, so if you've been thinking of getting a suit you should keep an eye on that. Which reminds me of two things:
1. I still need to write that testimonial, and
2. I need to think about Neal Caffrey's silhouette and if that's something that works with my suit tastes and styling to create the illusion of a masculine body for me; obviously, it seems probable that the closer cut something is on me, the more feminine I'm going to look.

Yesterday I had never heard of army worms. By the end of the day I had heard of Army Worm Wine. Yeah, it's what it says on the tin.

The good thing about the Internet is that not everyone is just like you. Or me. Or whomever. The bad thing about the Internet is the way people can be complete dumbasses in attempting to value that exposure to the world outside of their own personal bullshit by being devaluing, objectifying creeps.

I'm late to this one, but if you haven't already seen the Scottish anti-rape ad, you should check it out. Yes, it's about rape, and therefore might be triggery. But it also relies on satire and is non-graphic.

I'm not sure who here will care about this other than me, but before we moved to most electronic trading everything, EVERYTHING was done by open outcry, which involved a language of hand-signals all its own. One of the last traders to be trained exclusively in open-outcry (who has since moved to electronic trading himself) has been documenting this rapidly disappearing language of the recent past, specifically that from the futures market. And yeah, the sign for Deutsche Bank really is a finger standing in for a Hitler mustache. Sorry, guys.

The business response to gay marriage. Article is way more interesting than it could be because it mentions stuff very relevant to the queer community that I feel like the heteronormative world mostly doesn't realize are out there -- like issues of a spouse changing genders in one case and being a female-bodied person who doesn't feel like a bride or a groom in another. Of course, it's the New York Times though, so it's still about upper-middle class white people spending lots of money on a party.

Washington DC-area clinic defense needs volunteers. I used to do this back in the day, and it's important work that's very necessary in that region.

Swimming in the streets of New York.

(C)Ave Canem: help for the dogs of Pompeii.

graduate_maria, you know you want to.

Comments

[hoyland54.livejournal.com]

You know, the thing that struck me about that wedding article is that the New York Times actually used the word 'heterosexist'.

I don't know that I feel comfortable with their mention of trans people. It's meant to be an example of the "norm-flouting" nature of gay marriage. While it can obviously be argued that both gay marriage and being trans are norm-flouting in the sense that most people are straight and not trans, it reads like they're implying that gay people getting married or people transitioning are acts undertaken to flout norms. It also locates trans-ness as a specifically queer issue, as if trans people are all attracted to people of the gender they were assigned at birth. All that said, it's a point in favour of the wedding magazine that they wrote the article in the first place.

[eredien]

I don't know that I feel comfortable with their mention of trans people. It's meant to be an example of the "norm-flouting" nature of gay marriage.

I think it's hard to write an article about a magazine which was created to cater to the differences between gay marriage and straight marriage without having that article coming across as either emphasizing or downplaying those differences, or both (as I think the article ended up doing, and as I am probably pretty sure the magazine itself does). I don't like that trans people were mentioned as norm-flouters, and I don't like that trans-ness was located as a queer issue at all. But I am happy that trans people were mentioned, and would have been upset if they weren't. It's kind of a weird headspace to be in.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I think the locating of trans issues comes out of LGBT, which seems to be a bit of an ongoing mess. Trans issues aren't inherently LGB but the overlooking of the T part of LGBT is also fucked.

The whole article is strange, and the articles the article is about are strange, and yet, it was less faily than I expect of the New York Times, which granted isn't really a ringing endorsement of anyone.

[eredien]

I find that the NYT tends to write a lot about issues through writing about media about those issues. I think in some respects that's understandable--the fact that that couple put together that magazine is both useful and interesting from a human-interest and a business angle--but also slants the stories a lot in terms of the kind of reporting you can do. What can you actually say, as a media outlet, about the content of another media outlet without, for instance, just reporting on the content of the articles?

(I've been thinking about this from the perspective of someone who worked as an associate editor and reporter at a small newsweekly for about six months a few years ago, but I didn't and don't have any formal training in journalism. It was a really interesting experience and has permanently colored my viewpoint on how and why newspapers pick the stories to run that they do, and why they write about things the way they write about things. To some extent it's a large and complicated and formulated/structured guess at what you think other people are going to like, and what you yourself find interesting.)

[vashtan.livejournal.com]

I vote to change DB's sign to a Pickelhaube (spike on top of the head - that's sign language for "German"). :)

[newsbean.livejournal.com]

Hey, so Obama's applying the (FAILED) Stupak amendment to women in the high risk pools: http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2010/07/15/obama-administration-applies-stupak-amendment-high-risk-pools

[hughcasey.livejournal.com]

OK, I know I'm kinda tired, but I originally read the one line as "I still need to finish my WAD!"

I couldn't help but think "Well, THAT'S a little TMI for rm!" ;-P

[dremiel.livejournal.com]

To go with your Armyworm wine, perhaps?

"In a more real-world creepy - and crawly - note, Marcel Dicke expounded the virtues of eating insects. Not only are they rich in all the nutrients we need, but they are far more efficient to grow: 10 kilograms of feed will produce just 1 kilogram of beef, 3 kilograms of pork, and 5 kilograms of chicken. But 9 kilograms of locusts. Just on cue, worm pralines were produced at break to snack on with our coffee. I tried one before realizing what it was and as I happily munched away on my first, I greedily reached for another. Then a fellow delegate pointed out what the pink ribbed curls were. I swallowed bravely and gulped a mouthful of coffee. Worm pralines might take a while to catch on - by the end of the break, the plates weren't empty."

New Scientist on TED Global

[fitfool.livejournal.com]

I wish I could've seen Marcel Dicke's presentation. I had met another man promoting entomophagy and found that the stuff he served up was pretty tasty. (link) One friend went to Mexico and had a dish that included ant pupae and some kind of larvae and said it was one of the most delicious things she had ever tasted. I have not had much luck finding much in the way of insect dishes in the US though.

[norda.livejournal.com]

My partner and I care about the disappearance of open outcry. We are weird in the fact that we have avuncular fondnesses for Louis Rukeyser and Paul Kangas, as guardians of another time and place in our lives. The loss of open outcry makes us sad in inexplicable ways.

[sykii.livejournal.com]

There was a swimming pool truck that came around the city when I was a kid. It used to come to St. John the Divine and all the day-campers would have a swim. I seem to remember that it was pretty gross, though.

And the open outcry thing is awesome. Just yesterday, we learned ASL terms for countries, and several of them are rather vague; you can tell they've changed it from something horribly offensive. The sign for Germany is now a lovely little bird.

[annlarimer.livejournal.com]

the sign for Deutsche Bank really is a finger standing in for a Hitler mustache

Oh God. Soda. Everywhere. Oh good Lord.

[eredien]

Did you all see this sign on the stock exchange hand-language blog?

http://tradingpithistory.com/gallery/9/months/liffe/189/may
May rhymes with gay and the hand flop represents a stereotypical homosexual hand motion.

[rm.livejournal.com]

NO!

Good (ugh) find. I'm not surprised at all. I mean, if Deutsche Bank got a Hitler mustache.... Wall Street isn't nice. I'm glad this shit, even when it is shit, is documented.

[eredien]

There's another one that I found even more disturbing but overall I found the language quite awesome and interesting:
http://tradingpithistory.com/gallery/12/years/cme/98/pink_year_8_v2

I suppose there's a way to be foul and boorish in basically any lingustic system, even one purpose-built for a specific use.

[redstapler.livejournal.com]

Oh my god.

That is straight up ASL for vagina. WHAT.

[eredien]

Yeah. Apparently there is also another way of signaling "pink" with your pinkie, but...I found that kind of amazingly, stunningly boys'-club.

[natf.livejournal.com]

I worked at LIFFE for a while in the mid 90s in the back office IT department and have just read that LIFFE stopped using open outcry in 2000. This makes me strangely sad.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the WACDTF signal boost. Also thank you for the open-outcry link - having only seen the vague gestures used in movies like Trading Places, I'd always wondered how in hell people communicated in the uproar!

[xpioti.livejournal.com]

I haven't looked at the details for that Chicago thing, but I think you should go for it! The background checks for Secret clearance are pretty basic, and they essentially do a criminal and credit check, plus maybe run criminal checks on your close familiars (like Patty). I should really ask my hubby, he used to be involved in running clearance checks as a geek-on-hand.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I presume they'd want someone wholesome for the gig of promoting the museum, not someone who writes porn on their very public blog and has published an essay in a book you can buy that somehow manages to combine an obsession with Baz Luhrmann and a shady history of sex-work into a narrative about paying the rent and traveling around the world.

But that's just me....

[xpioti.livejournal.com]

*laugh* Maybe so, you do have a good point. But based just on that first page of info, you more than qualify. :) Besides, what's the worst that can happen? Other than they say "no, you're not what we're looking for"? It's not like you're hiding anything, which is extraordinary in and of itself.

[delchi.livejournal.com]

Wow .. clinic escort work. That takes me back. I still remember having fake blood thrown on me, and the fetus-in-a-jar being paraded around.

Open Outcry Hand-signals

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

For some reason this remands me of the decline of the Chinook trade language, which used to rule the west coast salmon industry, which is completely synthetic, never had native speakers, and will soon be gone.(Chh-chh:locomotive.)
Same sort of sad I guess.

[jslorentz.livejournal.com]

I did WACDTF back in my DC days, too! Small world...

Of course, I forget that it is through a DC contact that I first came across your writings...

[fitfool.livejournal.com]

That Museum of Science gig sounds awesome!