Foiled By Chemistry

[bloodyrosemccoy]

So I was wanting to post about the nifty stuff I got from the Gem Faire fairies,* my miniature victory garden, and of course the traditional What I Learned yesterday, but instead I spent half the day shelving books OH GOD WHY DID I TAKE THESE EXTRA SHIFTS and the entire day wondering why I was feeling like grilled shit. Itchy, skin-crawly grilled shit.

Then last night I reached for my pillbox and found that instead of putting in a Fukitol, a Zyrtec, and a The Pill, I had put in two Fukitols and no Zyrtecs for every day this week. Yes, that would pretty much cover the feelings of lousy.

At least I caught the medswitch after the first day. All should be better at this point, except that I still have to go do four more hours of shelving in a little while. With luck I’ll get a What I Learned or some sort of post up soon.

Meanwhile, enjoy this conversation Mom and I had at Office today:

AMELIA: *shouting into the phone* MR GROMPUS, YOUR WIFE’S APPOINTMENT IS AT ELEVEN TOMORROW. ELEVEN. YOUR WIFE. YES, THAT WOULD BE MRS GROMPUS. NO, NOT TODAY. TOMORROW. YES. AN APPOINTMENT. GOOD-BYE. *hangs up* Dammit, if you’re hard of hearing perhaps the telephone is not your best option.

MOM: *cackling* That’ll all be your generation** in a few years … shouting into the phone, yelling “WHAT!” after every sentence …

AMELIA: You wish! We’ll just text.

MOM: …

AMELIA: That’s right, my dear Golden-Era-Rock Deaf-Going Analog-Age Baby Boomer! This generation planned ahead!

MOM: I’ll get you next time, you smug bastard.


*Not to mention the aggressive friending I was subjected to at the Faire. It was awesome.

**Us kids with our iPods and our loud musics and our Twitters are going to go deaf prematurely, according to Mom.

Comments

[black-rider.livejournal.com]

We probably will go deaf, but you're right, we'll just text.
...and when we go blind, we'll just change the text size!

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

And after that, braille keyboards for everyone!

(Back in college, I had a job scanning/OCRing texts for various students who needed text-to-speech versions of their reading material. There was one guy in the class after mine who was blind, who'd come in once in a while for exams I'd proctor. He had a laptop attached to this sort of panel of flat-headed pins that he'd lay his fingers on, and the pins would bounce up and down--in Braille, I assume?--to give him the text. It was one cool piece of tech.)

[black-rider.livejournal.com]

I'm not at all surprised tech like that exists, but I'd never heard of it before. Totally awesome.

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

It was one of those pieces of tech that I never would have thought of, but seemed entirely obvious the instant I did see one. It looked like a more modern version of the one pictured here, as I recall, though I imagine they have better yet now with an extra 8 years or so of development available.

[black-rider.livejournal.com]

Oh that's brilliant! I love stuff that's like "well of course it exists" but you'd never ever imagine it on your own.

I've added you, because I like internet-stalking interesting people, feel free to add back or not. :)

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

Yay! I'm interesting!

(I mostly ramble about random stuff. You are thus Warned. At least now that I have a twitter account, I'm less likely to post three times a day on LJ about what I had for lunch and how I feel about the weather.)

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

I knew a blind guy in college with one of those things. And yeah, it's braille. He was a jazz drummer.

[cjtremlett.livejournal.com]

Ten to twenty years, and we'll be able to replace our going-deaf-from-all-the-ipodding and going-blind-from-all-the-computing eyes with bionics. We'll be fine!

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

WE ARE GERIATRIC OF BORG. SENILITY IS IRRELEVANT. ASSISTED LIVING IS FUTILE. WE WISH TO WATCH "MATLOCK". WE WILL ADD YOUR SENILITY AND URINARY INCONTINENCE TO OUR OWN. YOUR GRANDCHILDREN WILL DISPERSE FROM OUR LAWN.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

YOUR BASEBALL IN OUR YARD IS IRRELEVANT.

[queenlyzard.livejournal.com]

Ha! How will you all text with arthritic fingers and thumbs damaged from years of video games, huh?

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Voice activation! Obviously!

And no, that's certainly not coming full circle, no sirree ... we'll just have to make some software that decodes deaf accents!

[daiq.livejournal.com]

Interestingly my Auslan teacher (Australian Sign Langauge) went off on a giant rant recently in a discussion about communication methods and their variation between deaf and hearing about how SMS Texting was invented for The Deaf (and possibly by The Deaf?) and therefor us hearing types shouldn't be allowed to embrace it and use it as our own...

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

... yeah, I seem to recall that Graham Bell's telephone invention stemmed from experiments meant to help the deaf speak, too, so ... well, I don't know if I can agree with her.

My ASL teacher had no such rants; she was just happy there was a way for folks (hearing and d/Deaf) to communicate so easily!

I didn't know you studied a sign language! What got you interested in it?

[daiq.livejournal.com]

Oh, and the extended rants about the horrors of Oralism in education! But i am sure you heard them too if you have studied a signed langauge.

I kind of fell into Auslan, i wanted to do something to keep my brain active ('cause working with kids all day turns me into a cabbage sometimes) and Auslan was on the timetable and fitted in with my schedule. Oh that sounds bad, i have always been interested in learning the langauge because i think it is a brilliant skill to have. And being a teacher it is certainly something i can use at work (i have taught the kids in my younger classes "yes" and "no" so i can sign the answer across the room while talking to someone else at the same time).

And i have always been bad at learning langauages so i thought (erroneously) that because this would be easier for me (due to my dance background) as i would be physically enacting english in a way, except i am not am i, i am not sure what the grammar structure of ASL is like, but Auslan is totally different to English, it i really is a totally different langauge, it is awesome! Another 18 months till i finish the course!

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

... Okay, well, I actually rather dislike oralism for young children simply because I learned enough about language development to realize that it would not work. My teacher was pretty cool, though, so maybe you just got a lucky one.

Yeah, ASL has a very different grammar from English. (As an aside, how often do people react to the term "Australian Sign Language" with "There's more than one sign language?" ;) ) I'm good with different grammars, but I'm apparently terrible with kinesthetic and visual signals, so I have a harder time learning a signed language than another spoken language. I figure it's a good way to challenge myself. (Other reasons I got into it: researching a Deaf character I was writing, an attempt to help my sister learn to spell, and my completely nerdy love of languages in general.)

[daiq.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, i think Oralism has been a dismal failure and cruel in the case of the profoundly deaf. My problem is that i have a teacher/class/syllabus who are unable to disconnect "bad educational policy" with the individuals who are teaching that policy. So i have spent the last 6 months having my profession slammed on a weekly basis because if we don't agree that "teachers are horrible people who mistreat deaf children" then we are wrong and not meeting course requirements.

I think most people here are pretty aware that there are mulitple sign langauges - but that would be because we hear about Auslan in the media, and then see ASL and BSL etc talked about in TV shows from other countries (and can i just say it is very strange to watch Mr Holland's Opus now and the subtitles do not match what is being signed, well the do in ASL, but many of those signs have a different meaning in Auslan ;) ) What is fascinating is the completely seperate dialects we have within australia, i am mostly learning northern dialect, but if i moved one state south i would be using southern dialect. Also the fact Auslan is the term used pretty exclusively here now, so maybe people just think "that is what the langauge is called".

I am really loving the kinesthetic aspect of Auslan, and because i am a mostly kinesthetic learner i find the signs "stick" which i love. Putting the sentances together, well that is a whole nother thing ;)

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Ooh, yeah, accusing you of mistreating isn't all that cool.

The regional differences in ASL are the same way. I took a few classes here in Utah and then some in Oregon and had to re-learn them. But my biggest dialect problem comes from the little time I spent interviewing Deaf people in Kenya--KSL uses the ASL finger alphabet, except for the letter T, which is an obscene gesture in Kenya. So I picked up the habit of signing it the KSL way.

I have real trouble with pretty much every aspect of signing--both making signs and understanding others. But I'm glad it's working well for you!

[daiq.livejournal.com]

I much prefer the ASL sign for Toilet to the Auslan one, but i don't think my preference will catch on ;)

Also none of our History of Deaf Education stuff is any more recent than about the early 80's (and most is much earlier, like the 60's and earlier), so academically it bugs me that we are not actually being taught about the up to date educational practices, as in kids are being taught as Auslan as first langauge, and this is just all being ignored!

I think i need to search your journal for your Kenya stories - what were you doing there?

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Study abroad program--I spent four months on the coast, from September-December 2007. It was pretty cool. Here's the tag for it, though I don't really have a lot on it written ... it took a while to really get it all settled in my head.

I'll let you look through that--I've got to get to bed sometime before dawn, though. ;) Later!

[daiq.livejournal.com]

Oooh, tag, yay!

I am planning an early night at the other end at the moment, Goodnight!