sundries

[rm]

Ho, ho, Chicago vacation approved, which means when Patty and I are in Chicago, I'm actually off the clock, as opposed to working from the hotel and calling in sick to go to a wedding.

Sleeping with the eye-mask is life-changing. Like, when I found out I had celiac disease and stopped eating gluten life-changing. I've always had very bright bedrooms. And now, suddenly I dream, or at least remember them. Oh.

Fun at graduate_maria continues. More items going up tonight! And I'll do a listing of things with one and no bids tomorrow. Check it out, she still really needs our help. Right now we've given her some hope, but the problem really is not solved.

kyburg posts about a legal immigrant who may be deported because of a paperwork snafu and needs a whole lot of help.

So, German with Rosetta Stone continues.

I worry about my ability to retain information. The lessons last night were mostly easy (and I did all of them, pictures, just spoken, practicing my own pronunciation, writing), but then when I tried to tell Patty about them later, I could explain the grammar things I'd figured out (how "ein Junge" seems to become "einem Jungen" when something happens to the boy and how it looks like "ein Madchen" even though you'd think "girl" would be feminine, because kids are gender neutral and therefore default to masculine), but couldn't remember the word for horse or airplane. Although when I woke up this morning I had those back ("ein Pferd" and "ein Flugzeug").

Meanwhile, my pronunciation is way better than my French, right off. I think both because I hear a lot of German and because the sounds I have to make in German are less "bad sounds you are not to make" in terms of English language speech therapy my accent is not terrible. But I'm still sure, probably in a way that's not helping, that I'll never be able to speak the language because I'll always be too ashamed.

As noted last night, the Prop 8 ruling is coming down today. As noted in the comments to that post, it's also quite unlikely that that's the end of this, or will make any marriages start happening again immediately.

I think, sometimes, because LJ can often be an echo-chamber of those we more or less agree with, how fucking hard it is to be gay. It's not just "oh, the laws suck and haven't caught up with reality yet." I have at least two people on my friendslist with profoundly strained relationships with their parents because they are in queer relationships. And I don't mean strained like "but what about grandkids?" I mean strained like making threats, demanding lies, gender-policing, shame, bullying, removal of resources, isolating from friends and family, other abusive behaviors, etc.

And here I am, out and loud and very much not much one for bullshit, but a week doesn't go by where I don't think to myself that when my mother had me in her mid-twenties I bet she never thought her life would look like this: breast cancer and a gay daughter. My parents aren't even mad or disappointed in me, but all I know from living in the world is that I've probably made them sad.

So, do I hate how much of the LGBTQ rights debate has come to rest on marriage when everything form healthcare to employment to housing can be denied to you simply because you're queer? Ayup. In spite of this, does the marketing person in me think the equal marriage rights issue is sensible from a PR perspective and a potential cascade from which all other rights will come? Ayup. Do I remain deeply conflicted because of the way the necessity of mainstream political activism combined with the AIDS crisis basically destroyed and remade the gay community in a totally different image (in your image, straight world, not ours) in just a few decades? Yeah.

But what's done is done, and hopefully soon we can simply live.

(This rant brought to you, in part, by having to explain the AIDS crisis to someone yesterday. I'll take being too young to remember when cashiers were afraid to take your money if you were male and read as gay because there might be AIDS on the dollar bill and people thought you could get it off toilet seats. But "I'm sheltered"? History is not an R-rated movie, and Wikipedia is a totally appropriate starting place but not a primary source. Thanks.)

The downtown mosque has been approved. Racist assholes are still freaking out though. And what the fuck was with the ADL weighing in on this one? And did people miss the part where us Jews aren't the only Semetic people out there? Argh argh argh.

Meanwhile, The New York Times points out of the obvious by saying the labor market is punishing to women. Then, of course, being the New York Times, it comes up with winners like, "Men and women are not identical, of course. Many more women take time off from work. Many more women work part time at some point in their careers. Many more women can’t get to work early or stay late," as if these are all biologically based facts.

Really, I'm starting to even wonder why I read the Times, and that's hard for me to say, as a native New Yorker, an educated person, and a J-school alum.

The Tea Party and 'historical fundamentalism.' (Sometimes this is saying you need to be subscriber, sometimes it isn't - apologies for their annoyingness).

Free-range lawn care and goat rental.

The Piano that Lives in the Hall now has a damaged microscope on it.

I know more things about my tentative Dragon*Con schedule. I've already hit one major conflict. If neither of the panels gets moved by the master scheduler, I'll be pulling off of one of my YA Lit track items (I'll be on others!) in order to give my mourning-related presentation at 8:30pm on Friday on the Anime/Manga track. That is some primetime loveliness. More when I know it, because depsite my typing this, I know nothing.

I completely regret ever linking to that thing about Tom Hardy and whether or not he's had sex with men, since it's keeps changing and won't go away. This is hopefully, yet surely not, the last word on that.

I have read two really good Big Bang fics for the Whoniverse in the last couple of days. I must note, however, that military don't call women "Mum." You're just hearing "Ma'am" in an accent that's unfamiliar to you and you're writing it down wrong. It's a very distracting wrong too. So, you know, FYI. And yes, really, I'm sure.

Confession, I didn't pay enough attention really to White Collar or Covert Affairs last night because Patty had just come home and I was multitasking other things, so I'll need to rewatch both shows.

It occurs to me that part of the problem with the slowly emerging Jack/Auggie fic is we're getting so much new backstory on Auggie every week that I still feel like I am in the middle of a rapidly shifting landscape. But how great was the lie detector scene???? "I have four older brothers, so you'd think I'd learn how to lie." Oh man. Also, still so Jack's type -- tragic past, stubborn beyond what's good for him, thinks he knows better than the folks in charge, keeper of secrets, nice clothes. Also, how much does this CIA remind you of Yvonne Hartman's Torchwood?

Comments

[elainasaunt.livejournal.com]

Do I remain deeply conflicted because of the way the necessity of mainstream political activism combined with the AIDS crisis basically destroyed and remade [something?] in a totally different image (in your image, straight world, not ours) in just a few decades?

Um, not nitpicking, honest - I think you have a word missing there, and because I feel that what you're saying is important, I want to make sure I have all of it.

[rm.livejournal.com]

It was three words, and now it's fixed. Thank you.

I am not sure people realize that I do not compose these things or ponder them. I just type stuff into LJ and then fix later. Which is a little weird for how much I write, and sometimes, for the style in which I write, but these aren't planned really. Even the long, essay-ish ones.

[hughcasey.livejournal.com]

RE: how hard it is to be gay.

I am not gay ("Straight but not narrow" is my motto), so maybe I don't get to really have much of a say about this, but I was brought up by my mom and dad with a strong sense for HUMAN rights, regardless of who the human was. I was raised in a VERY Irish Catholic family, and I had an uncle who was gay (and not closeted... I mean "queer-as-a-three-dollar-bill" gay!). And while he wasn't always understood by his family (oh, BOY, was he not understood), he was always accepted and loved. And I think that maybe that's the important part... we can't always understand each other (we're only human, after all), but as long as we can accept each other, we can move forward.

Of course, I also have a friend who, when he came out to his family years ago, his father attempted to shoot him dead. Yes, you read that right... shoot him, with a gun, right there in his home. So we probably still have a long way to go. But I hold out hope that we'll get there, one day.

I hope I'm not wrong.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Of course, I also have a friend who, when he came out to his family years ago, his father attempted to shoot him dead. Yes, you read that right... shoot him, with a gun, right there in his home.

See, as a straight person, you have the privilege of being surprised by this. I don't. That's, sadly, the different right there.

[melebeth]

Yeah, I was wondering about the ADL involvement too, after listening to the news last night.

I found myself somewhat shocked with my fervor as I said "You go, Mike Bloomberg!" at the radio.

[rm.livejournal.com]

This. All of this.

[laughingacademy.livejournal.com]

china_shop made a great point about last night's White Collar, "By the Book": Neal wants Peter's pen. Yeah, that's not a euphemism AT ALL! I enjoyed the ep because it was Mozzie-centric and bibliophilic, plus the guest star was a regular on Numb3rs.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Totally caught the pen thing. At this point they're just like "Here, fandom. ARE WE KEEPING YOU HAPPY?" Which is both cool and amusing, but also gives me a lot of feelings about queer fetishization, the sketchy relationship between creators and audiences in American media, and what's supposed to be enough for the actual queer people in the audience.

[hoyland54.livejournal.com]

It's actually das Mädchen. It's neuter because it's a diminutive (of die Magd, which I think has largely fallen out of use--I only learned it because of Mädchen).

Junge is only itself declining (rather than the article declining) because it's a weak masculine noun. That seems like it would be reason for Rosetta Stone to avoid it very early on, but clearly not.

/stops talking about German

[rm.livejournal.com]

It was showing me "ein Madchen" on the program last night (and I can render the accent on the a on this keyboard, although I know it's there).

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Excuse me if this is too do-my-homeworkish, but I've wondered how gay marriage got to be a prime issue. I'm not saying it was a bad choice, but it doesn't seem like an obviously good one, either.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Part of it comes out of the AIDS crisis. People were dying. And we couldn't visit our partners in the hospital. Or inherit the homes we'd lived in for 30 years. Marriage solves those two problems and over a thousand others.

On the other hand, from the image perspective, it says "we're just like you, we're harmless, we're monogamous; we're not about sex we're about mortgages." It's been an effort to make queer people seem non-threatening. From a marketing standpoint, I get it. I might even advise it. But as a queer person, it makes me a big aggravated. Because I am Not Just Like You. And I shouldn't have to be to be treated like a human being.

[emyrldlady.livejournal.com]

Years ago I started sleeping with an eye mask. It really is life changing. You get it now when people talk about a full night's rest.

[yarram.livejournal.com]

The WSJ Tea-Party article you link to is subscriber-only. :-(

[rm.livejournal.com]

Argh, it wasn't five minutes ago. Fuckers. (I'm not a subscriber either).

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

You're just hearing "Ma'am" in an accent that's unfamiliar to you and you're writing it down wrong. It's a very distracting wrong too.

Ugh, agreed. If you must write it because you're rendering things phonetically, *lowercase* it to avoid confusion. Is it that hard?

[stuffphile.livejournal.com]

The trouble with that suggestion is that (short of using IPA symbols) your phonetic is not my phonetic. To these Australian ears, the British pronouniciation of "ma'am" sounds distinctly different to "Mum".

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

As far as Rosetta Stone goes, there's a LOT of repetition. It's hardest in the core lessons, because that's where most of the new information is, but it gets much easier with repetition. Part of it really to train your brain to think in German rather than in English and translating.

Re: Prop 8 -- fingers crossed for the right outcome although (as you point out) it's unlikely to change anything in the immediate future.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Is that why after they give me something new and difficult (i.e., ein Maedchen und ein Junge in einem Boot) they always go back to ein Junge und ein Hund? Yes, yes, a boy and a dog! I GET IT!

[sahiya.livejournal.com]

I find your remarks about learning German on Rosetta Stone to be very interesting. I've never learned a language not in a classroom with a live teacher (well, I learned Spanish primarily by living in Ecuador, but there were classes both before I went and while I was there), where there was very explicit grammar, where it was explained, to take your own example, that it is der Junge but das Mädchen (and no, there is no reasoning behind it as far as I've been able to discern in my eight year acquaintance with the language). But when I went to Germany the first time, I'd had two years of classroom instruction and could not find a useful sentence with both hands and a flashlight, so I'm very interested to hear more about how Rosetta Stone does it! I've always been curious (and a little wary, as a language instructor myself).

[gement.livejournal.com]

I'm learning Rosetta Stone Italian, and it made me burst into frustrated tears until I got a separate grammar book on the side. They serve different purposes in my mind. I have the grammar book so I have an idea of the structure to hang things from. I have the program to get my brain doing the muscle memory trick of just knowing a word when I need it.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

I like Random House's Ultimate Living Language sets. They are expensive, but not as much as Rosetta Stone! Compared to Rosetta Stone, Ultimate Language is downright budget. The Ultimate package is different from the other Random House language CD/book packages, in that it gives a good overview of the grammar as well as the vocabulary and pronunciation. It doesn't help you with everything, of course, but IMO it's a good place to start. Also, if you don't want the whole pay-through-the nose CD/book set, you can simply buy the book for far cheaper. Many, though not all, of the languages are in separate beginner/intermediate and advanced learner formats.

I have the Ultimate Portuguese and Russian sets, have the Ultimate Spanish book (sold separately), and have checked out Ultimate German and Italian from the library. If I had heaping wodges of cash, I'd buy the lot. My only complaint is that they don't have a set for Advanced Portuguese.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

There is something deeply wrong with the ADL. I don't trust the ADL, at all.

I hate the idea that I've made my parents sad, as well. Though my bitterness kind of trumps that.

I think I've seen the "Mum" and just replaced with "Ma'am" in my mind, because I've also read a few Big Bangs and don't recall any of those.

[chaos-by-design.livejournal.com]

I have a question about the "we're not Just Like You" thing, in regards to gay people:

Are gay people not supposed to be just like straight people? I mean, are gay people who are monogamous and into having the house and the white picket fence somehow less legitimately gay than those who aren't?

See, I'm asking this as a bisexual person who really avoided that label for a long time; I think partly because I felt like taking on any sort of queer identity meant that I couldn't just be a regular person anymore; that it would have to subsume my identity and be all that it's about. And I didn't want that. I wanted it to be just another thing about me, like having brown hair or liking science fiction. Not something that my life had to revolve around.

I mean, I'm fine with queer people who aren't like straight people, but I'm also fine with the ones who are. And I kinda like the whole 'gay people are normal people' thing not so much because I think all gay or queer people need to be one way or another, but because I think it allows them the freedom to be 'normal' and white picket fence-y if they want to be. Though I don't think by any means that it should proscriptive.

This is all sounding convoluted and I'm afraid I'm probably going to wind up being offensive without meaning to, so I'll just wrap up by saying that is coming the perspective of someone who always knew she'd never fit into the queer 'scene', so feels better if there's a non-scene way to be queer.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I don't know what the queer "scene" is. We have friends. We socialize with them.

Patty and I are monogamous. This is neither a queer exception nor a queer rule, it just is.

We don't particularly have white picket fence fantasies because we live in NYC and that precludes large swathes of this.

The fact remains, however, that even in the 7 years I spent with one man, or the many years in which I dated other men and men, the fact that I was queer was obvious. I don't read straight. I have never read straight -- not even when I had long hair and wore dresses and makeup.

When I came out my friends and mentors were older gay men. Their culture and my culture was different. It was not about gender as defined relationally to someone else; it was not about what expectations in or out of bed my gender required of me.

While lots of relationships between men and women (straight or not) also defy gender expectation and roles, they come with them to defy.

Mine to do not. Not when I am a woman with a woman. Not when I am a genderqueer person with a woman. Not when I've been a qenderqueer person with a man.

I can't define your queer culture for you. I can't define queer culture for everyone.

But there were defineable queer cultures that AIDS destroyed. There are defineable queer cultures that have come out of lesbian rights movements, out of the BDSM scene, out of polyamorous communities. There are queer cultures that have come out of politics, out of fashion trends, out of academia.

And many of those cultures are mine. One ones I learned from. Or ones that supported me when my family, my friends, my university wouldn't.

And I resent that I have to prove to people that I'm just like everyone else to beg for my rights. And I also don't particularly enjoy having to reassure other queer people with different lives than mine that there queer is okay too.

Being okay with my life and my vanishing worlds is hard enough (post coming later about why this is, despite being a good day, really fucking hard). I can't do it for anyone else.

I'm incredibly, incredibly sorry if this sounds curt (I'm sure it does because I'm in a mood), because you don't deserve that, I've just had a long day of explaining my life to people, over and over and over, and those people have ranged from allies and community members to folks being right assholes and I'm really tired. Ask me another day, and I may have a better answer for you.

[pookledo.livejournal.com]

My ex-husband and i divorced due to him being gay and wanting relationships with men (to be honest if he still loved me that would have been fine to do in the marriage. He told me he was gay when we met so I had no problems with that. Long story *lol*)

So to hear of him dating women again and even getting married makes me so sad. not from a "he has another woman" point of view, but a "I'm sorry he didn't feel he could live his life as a gay man" point of view. We used to go to pride together, and different events. He was my best friend and for him to reject his sexuality like that makes me wonder what happened in his head when he was so out and proud for a a good 6 months or so. We aren't in touch any more.

[lyorn.livejournal.com]

Sorry if this has been said, I don't have time to browse all the comments...
(Edited because the above sounds horrible: I cannot leave language things alone. They just occupy all the brain space. I need to resolve them or go somewhere else, and I wanted to read the rest of the posting...)

how it looks like "ein Madchen" even though you'd think "girl" would be feminine, because kids are gender neutral and therefore default to masculine),

Never forget the difference between grammatical and natural gender when dealing with German. (Or, I suspect, any language that uses grammatical gender for words that do not map to natural gender.) Also, there are three grammatical genders, here with elementary school mnemonics: masculine (der Hund [the dog]), feminine (die Katze [the cat]), neuter (das Haus [the house]).

There is no default to masculine. What you are seeing with "das Mädchen" is the effect of a diminutive. "Die Magd" (outdated, the maid, the female servant) is grammatically feminine. Add the diminutive "-chen" (or "-lein") and you get neuter: "das Mädchen" (the girl) or "das Mägdelein" (outdated, the little maiden).

You can do the same to a boy: "Der Bub" (the boy, regional use) is grammatically male, "das Buebchen (Bübchen)" has a diminutive, is therefore neuter.

This applies to all words, regardless of their grammatical gender. Diminutive means neuter.

If the umlauts do not survive the posting, I'm going to edit this.

Have you read Mark Twain's delightfully funny essay, "The Awful German Language"?

[alienne.livejournal.com]

If not, it's available here: http://www.kombu.de/twain-2.htm

I speak some German and love languages, and Twain's take had me about to spit my drink out in SEVERAL places. It also specifically comments on the das Mädchen issue:

Every noun has a gender, and there is no sense or system in the distribution; so the gender of each must be learned separately and by heart. There is no other way. To do this one has to have a memory like a memorandum-book. In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has. Think what overwrought reverence that shows for the turnip, and what callous disrespect for the girl. See how it looks in print -- I translate this from a conversation in one of the best of the German Sunday-school books:

"Gretchen.
Wilhelm, where is the turnip?

Wilhelm.
She has gone to the kitchen.

Gretchen.
Where is the accomplished and beautiful English maiden?

Wilhelm.
It has gone to the opera."

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

And here I am, out and loud and very much not much one for bullshit, but a week doesn't go by where I don't think to myself that when my mother had me in her mid-twenties I bet she never thought her life would look like this: breast cancer and a gay daughter. My parents aren't even mad or disappointed in me, but all I know from living in the world is that I've probably made them sad.

This comment gave me a chill, how much I relate. After so much battering back and forth, lots of hurt and general badness, my parents and I are somewhat... stable. But underneath it all and never far frrom the mind is the simply fact that they really really wish I wasn't. And that is a huge thing

[natf.livejournal.com]

I forget if you use a mac but, if you do, the umlaut is created by typing alt+u then the letter you want under the accent, e.g. ü = (alt+u, u) and ö = (alt+u , o). On a PC, if I remember correctly, they are typed by combining the alt key with a keypad number sequence but I am not sure what numbers, although the following may be relevant there as well.

In HTML, the codes are:

This code	or this code	displays this entity:
Ä	Ä	Ä
Ë	Ë	Ë
Ï	Ï	Ï
Ö	Ö	Ö
Ü	Ü	Ü
ä	ä	ä
ë	ë	ë
ï	ï	ï
ö	ö	ö
ü	ü	ü

HTML table contents extracted from: http://www.evolt.org/article/A_Simple_Character_Entity_Chart/17/21234/