rm ([personal profile] rm) wrote2010-07-16 08:13 am

sundries

  • 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 [livejournal.com profile] 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.

  • [livejournal.com profile] graduate_maria, you know you want to.
  • [identity profile] hoyland54.livejournal.com 2010-07-16 12:45 pm (UTC)(link)
    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.

    [identity profile] vashtan.livejournal.com 2010-07-16 12:54 pm (UTC)(link)
    I vote to change DB's sign to a Pickelhaube (spike on top of the head - that's sign language for "German"). :)

    [identity profile] newsbean.livejournal.com 2010-07-16 01:39 pm (UTC)(link)
    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
    ext_4831: My Headshot (Brain Fart)

    [identity profile] hughcasey.livejournal.com 2010-07-16 01:54 pm (UTC)(link)

    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

    [identity profile] dremiel.livejournal.com 2010-07-16 02:44 pm (UTC)(link)
    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

    [identity profile] norda.livejournal.com 2010-07-16 03:14 pm (UTC)(link)
    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.

    [identity profile] sykii.livejournal.com 2010-07-16 03:43 pm (UTC)(link)
    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.
    ext_6373: A swan and a ballerina from an old children's book about ballet, captioned SWAN! (Default)

    [identity profile] annlarimer.livejournal.com 2010-07-16 03:51 pm (UTC)(link)
    the sign for Deutsche Bank really is a finger standing in for a Hitler mustache

    Oh God. Soda. Everywhere. Oh good Lord.
    eredien: Dancing Dragon (Default)

    [personal profile] eredien 2010-07-16 04:19 pm (UTC)(link)
    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.

    [identity profile] neadods.livejournal.com 2010-07-16 05:37 pm (UTC)(link)
    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!

    [identity profile] xpioti.livejournal.com 2010-07-16 06:26 pm (UTC)(link)
    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.

    [identity profile] delchi.livejournal.com 2010-07-16 08:39 pm (UTC)(link)
    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

    [identity profile] stardragonca.livejournal.com 2010-07-17 12:38 am (UTC)(link)
    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.

    [identity profile] jslorentz.livejournal.com 2010-07-19 07:50 am (UTC)(link)
    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...

    [identity profile] fitfool.livejournal.com 2010-07-20 05:42 am (UTC)(link)
    That Museum of Science gig sounds awesome!