Picture Test

Waiting for the Flyaway

Off We Go

This is a test...I'm making sure I know how to email my posts to
Blogger in case something goes amiss with the Contemporary's wi-
fi...it's easier to post from my iPhone by email.

We're leaving for the flyaway around 4:30...I'm in my usual last
minute flurry of updating my iPods, which I always say I'll do the
week before and never do.

So here's to a less eventful flight than the last time I went to
Orlando, where the pilot (1) couldn't find the airport and (2) almost
botched the landing once he did find it.

He, of course, said that the airport had asked him to circle and
abort the landing, but my dad's dad was a pilot and my dad, peering
out the window the whole time, called his bluff. (Never did say
sorry for that, Amie -- I know how little you liked flying at the
time...it wasn't the most tactful thing to do.)

Patrick has confessed to having "butterflies" in his stomach and goes
monosyllabic whenever I ask him if it's the flight, so I'm assuming
it is. I bought some Unisom and will probably slip it to him as
Advil, since we're flying non-stop. Having attempted the same when
we flew back East for...someone's...funeral, and having had to drag a
nearly comatose Patrick through O'Hare airport in Chicago because our
plane was late, is not an experience I care to repeat.

So, I'm going to try to post a little each day. If not, I'll see
everybody in a week. :-)

P.S. Could someone please comment on this so that I know it posted
all right? Thanks. :-)

Hosted by Stephen Hawking

A few days ago, Wil Wheaton griped on his blog about all that's wrong with television today -- how shows can be killed before they even have a chance to develop a following.

He was, in particular, speaking of ABC's new anthology Masters of Science Fiction -- where they take short stories written by, get this, masters of science fiction, and adapt them into hour-long episodes.

ABC's new anthology, which airs at 10:00 on Saturdays. I think. (I have TiVo.) In any event, it airs at some awful hour destined to kill it.

I watched this past weekeend's episode, and rather liked it. It reminded me very strongly of the 90s version of The Outer Limits (with good reason; Sam Egan was involved in both shows).

Anyhow, that's just background. What I want to talk about is one of the comments on Wil's post.

Viewers of The Outer Limits (original and 90s) will recall that a "Control" voice gave an intro and a closing to each episode -- rather like The Twilight Zone.

In Masters of Science Fiction, the narrator is Professor Stephen Hawking -- which I think is awesome. Of course, I was also tickled pink when he appeared on The Simpsons and Star Trek: The Next Generation. It proves that even geniuses watch TV. ;-)

In any event, the comment in question was that the poster thought it was "cute" that Stephen Hawking's "voice box" narrated the show.

For my non-nerdy visitors, Stephen Hawking has ALS (Lou Gherig's disease) and speaks with a voice synthesizer he controls with (I think) his thumb.

I immediately felt uncomfortable with the post, for two reasons. One -- if some other science genius (say, Carl Sagan if he were still alive) narrated it, I doubt it would be considered "cute." But when Stephen Hawking does so, it's "cute."

Two -- it's not his "voice box" narrating -- it's Stephen Hawking. His "voice box" doesn't mysteriously compose messages to speak -- Professor Hawking does so (painstakingly, laboriously). To say that his "voice box" narrated is to imply that it was not Professor Hawking narrating, but some nifty computer gadget.

The thing is, the only difference between Professor Hawking's voice and mine is that he composes his thoughts, which are spoken electronically. I compose my thoughts, and a variety of body parts work together to speak them organically.

That's the only difference -- his thoughts go from brain to electronics, while mine go from brain to muscle.

I might be reading too much into one comment, but I don't think so. I think it speaks to society's still very pervasive prejudice against people with disabilities -- people with severe disabilities in particular. I think it also speaks to the common misconception that severe physical disability must -- must -- always correlate to severe intellectual disability.

There's a perception that alternate modes of communication are worth less. Therefore, Stephen Hawking's narration is "cute," where Albert Einstein's could have been "unnecessary" or "trite," I find it difficult to believe that it would have been called "cute."

People use alternative communication all the time. They text, email, blog, IM, picture-message...they might even gesture insistently at the sink if they need to wash down that peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

But when all those other means of communication are not accompanied by speech, people's perceptions immediately change.

And that's a shame.

A few weeks ago was the anniversary of the ADA, and comments like this, which point to a (perhaps more silent) pervasive prejudice that still exists regarding people with disabilities, just show how much farther we have to go.

Edit: For what it's worth, Wil's right. It's ridiculous that shows can be killed before they even have a chance to develop a following. If X-Files premiered today, it'd never have lasted a month. And that's sad. Maybe that Alien Nation movie wasn't so wrong when they had a show cancelled 10 minutes into it.

The Internet is Cool

I didn't start watching Farscape until it had been cancelled.

I didn't start watching Babylon 5 until its 3rd season.  It barely saw its fifth.

I have left a long line of cancelled shows in my wake.  The neat thing, I suppose, is that I often discover these shows over the summer hiatus, which makes the reruns "new" to me -- thus alleviating summer boredom.  Always a good.

Well, last summer, my TiVo, having by now figured out I am interested in programs about folks with disabilities, TiVod as a recommendation a little show on PAX called Sue Thomas F.B.Eye.  It was cheesy but cute and I immediately fell in love.

(It did not hurt that two of the main characters were clearly in love with each other (I'm a 'shipper; what can I say?), nor that one of the other characters had an absolutely adorable Australian accent -- that I later learned is semi-genuine, he having lived in Australia for several years as a kid.)

It had already been cancelled (of course), but they were re-running it nightly.  Of course, I came into it about 10 episodes into season 1, and before I'd seen all the reruns, it stopped airing them.

There are no plans to produce DVDs in the immediate future.

Occasionally, I google "Sue Thomas .torrent" to see if I can find episodes to download (official voice) NOT THAT I WOULD EVER DO SO (ahem).

Tried again tonight, and I found roughly the first half of the episodes, with more being uploaded about every week or so.

Of course, I am not downloading it as we speak, because I would NEVER DO SUCH A THING.

Ahem.

:-)

...Except for Bunnies

So, I pretty much watch everything Alton Brown does.  I even watch Iron Chef America from time to time for his commentary -- which, I know, is probably not his and is probably fed to him, but whatever.

Last year, he did a four part travelogue called Feasting on Asphalt, where he and a small crew traveled for a month from his home near Atlanta to Los Angeles, using back roads whenever possible.  He stopped at "road food" places along the way and was generally insane (especially when he tried to make coffee at the top of a mountain).  It was fun, but too short.

Fun was, seemingly, had by all -- though of course turning a month-long trip into a 4 hour (minus commercials) show leaves a lot out.

However, in the fourth episode, near Las Vegas, Alton loses control of his motorcycle and smashes his shoulder.  He claims to have swerved to avoid a bunny rabbit.

But the best part is a classic example of the weird things people focus on while injured.  Alton is laying in the gravel with a bottle of what looks like Gatorade under one side and his motorcycle on top of him.

He mutters about being in pain, then exclaims, "That's my mirror!"  He tries to reach for it.

One of his crew says, "Alton, don't worry about your stinkin' mirror."

He hands it to someone.  "Aww, my mirror broke off.  Here, someone take care of it."

Heh.

So, Anya was right -- it was the bunnies.  :-)

(Actually, given the nerd Alton clearly is (he's done takeoffs of everything from Gollum to calling...something "edible tribbles), I'm surprised he didn't make that reference himself.)

Anyhow, Feasting on Asphalt 2 starts tomorrow; this time, Alton is tracing his way up the Mississippi.  He claims to have suffered no injuries except an expanding waistline (heh heh); no bunnies this time.  And -- it's six parts long instead of four!  Yay.  :-)

Meanwhile, I am currently transferring all the contents of my mother's PC (the subject of my CAPSLOCK OF RAGE that got deleted last week) so that I can reformat the hard drive and reinstall Windows.  I have never done that before.  Wish me luck.

Oh -- and, in another entirely unrelated note, a few weeks ago, on a whim, I bought Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising -- a fairly famous piece of young adult science fiction.  I was halfway through it when I saw Order of the Phoenix, which had a preview for the movie they recently made of the cycle (I guess it's a 5-book thing which I -- predictably -- read volume 2 of).  

The book was...meh...all right.  I liked the hints of Arthurian legend in it, and it might have made more sense if I'd read volume 1, but it was...meh.

The preview for the movie?

Well, it bears about as much relationship with the book I read as your average Disney movie has with...well, whatever story it's trying to retell (can we say Zeus and Hera as tragically doting parents?).

Patrick packed up all his technology (laptop -- my faithful, 6-year-old ibook -- cell phone, shuffle, headphones, iPod, digital camera, etc.) for Disney World tonight -- he's finally beginning to get excited.  I think the flight still freaks him out, but that's why I'm buying a bottle of Unisom. :-)

And, in one last bit of news, I went to get my hair trimmed today.  They did a much better job this time making the back the way I wanted it, but they continue to refuse to cut the top the way I'd like.  Oh well.  We'll get there eventually.

And Also

The casual use of the word "retarded" (and its variations)  as a put down (e.g., "just don't say anything retarded like ____") is one of the reasons people like my brother are not treated as full members of society.

It equates intellectual disability with inferiority.

The two are not the same.

...as a matter of fact, just don't use that word at all, okay?

(Yes, this was prompted by something online -- something linked to by fandom_wank.  No, I'm not going to link to it directly, because it was all kinds of offensive, and I'm going to pretend I didn't read it in the first place.)

Shaking Head

I seriously want to email something like this to the whole Internet.

Who's = who is.

Always.  Forever.

Whose = possessive.

Correct:

Who's coming to dinner? = Who is coming to dinner? = Correct

Whose shoes are those? = Who owns those shoes? = Correct

Wrong, Wrong, Wrong:

Who's shoes are those? = Who is shoes are those = NO NO NO

Whose going to cook dinner? = Who owns going to cook dinner? = NO NO NO

In short, if you can't substitute "who is" and having it make sense, use whose.

Eesh.

A Boring Month

So halfway through the year last year, I changed the way my class does journals. Instead of using the various books of writing prompts I'd found -- but which were difficult to simplify while keeping a variety of topics -- I switched to a This Day In History type of thing, prompted by finding this website in one of our district's 4th grade social studies books.

The best thing is that even if I repeat a question, the event that prompted the question is different, so I don't feel quite so bad about asking what someone's favorite TV show is over and over. ;-)

Anyhow, I've been slowly working on adapting Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and making the first groups of journals for the coming school year.

And aside from a few interesting things -- and one, of course, very interesting and notorious thing -- very little interesting happened in the month of September. One of the journal prompts is actually that there was an earthquake in Mexico City.

Yeesh.

By the way -- the reason I chose Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for the first book is so that I can do one of the pre-adapted books later in the year when I'm more stressed and burned out. ;-) It's going well...I'm about a third done -- I haven't done anything but type the chapters (I haven't done any of the questions or sequencing yet) because I don't quite know how the class's academic abilities will sort themselves out. So I'll probably only do a few days' worth, and then adjust up or down as necessary.

TMI -- You Have Been Warned

An open thank you to my reproductive system for, for once, being exactly on time and thus giving me one less thing to worry about for Disney World (less than a week!).

However.

Ow.

Whoops, and About Audiences

I failed to notice that my last post was my 200th.  Whoops.

You know, when you learn how to write in junior high and high school, they tell you write to your audience.  Write to your audience.  Always write to your audience.

The funny thing about blogging -- and about blogging about such eclectic topics as I do -- is that it's quite likely you have a variety of audiences.  Most people I know in real life, for instance, have very little interest in my fannish endeavors, while people who come here from my website are probably more interested in my fics and vids than in my day-to-day experiences teaching.

Then, there are the people whose blogs I have commented on, who click that link and come here.  Kristina, for instance, of autismvox, has commented occasionally. 

To my knowledge, none of my family members read this blog -- and given the Drama going on now, I rather hope they don't.  But if they did, they...well, they might be interested in my Harry Potter reviews.  Very few of them actually understand what I do, and even fewer of them are interested in fandom-type things.

This was prompted when I came to the somewhat staggering realization that out of everyone who has read my rant on my family's current drama, only Amie (I love that you're commenting now, by the way) can really, truly appreciate the depths of Drama to which my family can descend, having been subjected to it on more than one occasion.

The moral of this is -- I know that for any one of you, a given percentage of my posts mean absolutely nothing to you.  All I can say is...don't feel obligated to read the ones that don't.  :-)

Current drama update:  My mother neglected to ask M if he wanted his job back, and he may either (1) not take the offer my mom wrangled (the details of which I didn't ask about, but involves staying only through October) or (2) refuse to help train his replacement.

Also for those of you who don't know M, the latter is not maliciousness.  It's just that M has the emotional intelligence of a 7 year old, and is being whiny and petulant.

Now my mother is freaked that M will make her look bad.  (1)  Duh.  (2)  Should've thought of that first.  (3)  Double duh.

Ironically, when my dad's mom was alive, this would have all been nothing.   She took drama and wank to stratospheric levels.  Until someone involved in this whole mess is yelled at for not wanting to cross a busy street against traffic, this is really minor.  I guess it's just that we're all out of practice.  ;-)

Head, Meet Wall

Wank has indeed erupted.

I am taking my own advice and keeping my big mouth shut.

But here, in cyberspace, I just have to say this: While it was nice for my mother to talk "till [she] was blue in the face" to D. about M., it was not her job. She is not M's direct supervisor. She is not in charge of hiring people. She should not risking D's goodwill for her by sticking her neck out for M.

That's my grandpa's job. He's the closest thing M has to a supervisor. He's the one that hired him back when he was 13 (he's five years older than me). He's the one who trained him, who taught him, and who turned a blind eye all these years to the things M needs help with.

My aunt led a...high-risk lifestyle, shall we say, when she was married to my cousins' father. I strongly suspect both of them have traces of Fetal Alcohol Effect (not full-blown Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, but similar). M has no concept of consequence. A does not lead to B in his brain. It just doesn't. But M was always "the smart one" of all of us cousins (despite nearly failing high school math and the fact that I graduated with a 4.something GPA, but that's a favoritism rant for another day) and my grandpa just doesn't believe that this is not something M can change.

All that is really beside the point. What is the point is that this is not my mom's job, and D is not somebody that you should actively try to tick off. M did a dumb thing and while it's admirable to try and help him keep his job, my mom is almost 60 and never saved for retirement. She figures she will have to work until she's at least 75 to have enough saved to live comfortably. She is playing with fire.

Also -- and totally unrelated -- Writing With Symbols hates me. It's crashed 3 times on the same journal entry. So I suppose it either hates me, or Francis Scott Key....

Insane Giggle

So, I could explain how I found this -- or, rather, why I'm reading fandom_wank at 1:15 in the morning.  But I just gotta share, even though Cat will probably be my only loyal reader to get this.

People are chatting about some Buffy fan that is upset over...aww, it doesn't matter.  What made me laugh until I wheezed was this:  people listing various other things that Buffy fans have argued over, and mention that Ben is Glory.

Three or four comments down, some random user says:

Wait a minute...

Ben is Glory?!

And I cackled like the insane person I am.

Ben is Glory?!

Heh heh heh.

What is it About Summer?

A few weeks ago, I realized that it's the (gulp) ninth anniversary of the Summer o' Drama.

Which can only be truly appreciated by those who lived through it. The thought of the POKmobile still sends chills up and down my spine sometimes, and I often keep half an eye out for it as I drive around school. This, of course, means that the ninth anniversary of the You Didn't Know I Cried Myself to Sleep Locked in My Room Alone Drama is nigh as well.

Anyhow, it seems like the summer months invite drama -- or, in fandom terms, wank.

Wank is brewing in my family right now, and I find myself with a distinct feeling of "meh."

My grandfather started an electronics company in the 1960s with a friend and named it after both their wives. Wank ensued, and I never met the friend -- or the wife for whom the company was half named.

By the 1990s, the comany was struggling. They sold the consistently profitable part of the business (a calibration and repair lab -- all electronics test equipment requires yearly or better calibration). They hired an engineer to help them design a fabulous New Unit that would save the company.

While the new engineer did have a core of goodness (after the '94 earthquake, he drove all the way up from San Diego and brought us -- who had been living on bread, crackers, and the supplies from my dad's office's 'vending machine' (a box with a "please pay for your stuff" coffee can) McDonald's in Anaheim) and while he did tell good stories about his other job as a Disney Imagineer (there was a reason I never rode Rocket Rods, suffice it to say), he was a big blowhard who never accomplished anything.

By 2000, my grandpa was actively seeking people to buy the company. He eventually sold it to a company back east owned by a friend of his. The fabulous New Unit did not yet exist, but it was Only Weeks Away.

(Let the random capitalization assure you that these were oft-repeated mantras.)

Things started out well, but the company back east soon decided that the New Unit was not Only Weeks Away and hired an engineer to help.

That was an unqualified disaster. He was, also, a big blowhard who never met self-imposed deadlines and loved to make himself sound more important than he was.

When my grandpa decided to semi-retire, the company back east asked him his opinion about hiring the engineer as general manager.

And, in a move that still baffles me, my grandpa said he'd be fine.

Thus putting all that happened afterwards in the category of: "You made your bed, now for frell's sake just shut up and lie in it."

That was two (I think) years ago. The Fabulous New Unit remains Only Weeks Away! The manager is actively looking for new jobs on the one hand while having fun engaging in power plays with the office back east and also looking for a completely pointless new location for the business so his office will have a frelling window.

Meanwhile, he's convinced that just because he's a smarmy politician, so is everybody else. Because he's a Ferengi in disguise and only interested in money and glory, so must everybody else be.

Okay, so I'm slightly more irked than "meh" but go with me here.

We must now backtrack to fill in the other gap in the story: my oldest cousin.

My oldest cousin has...well, issues. He's just not able to work unsupervised. He gets easily frustrated and while he's good at starting projects, his follow-through is not great, and as soon as something goes wrong, he'd rather start another project. Don't get me wrong -- he's a nice guy, and he's been faithfully helping out my grandpa's business since he was doing it for chump change at the age of 13.

(I think it was a rite of passage for my cousins and myself to attempt to do an inventory of the place, which was like Sisyphus rolling his stone uphill, because nobody kept track of what they took out of the bins, and the inventory was incorrect within hours of you starting.)

Anyhow, he got other seasonal jobs here and there but was never able to keep them for a variety of reasons. When my grandpa was more involved and kept on him better, he actually did a good job. He does do a good job when someone keeps on top of him. But left to his own devices...not so much.

The problem is the manager has become convinced that my cousin, like him, is a smarmy politician who is deliberately trying to Sabotage the Fabulous New Unit which is Only Weeks Away.

My cousin may be a lot of things, but for one thing, he's not socially aware enough of anything to do that.

He's also been known to fudge his timesheet...which he did for this past weekend. He filled it out Friday or Saturday intending to come in on Sunday and never came, then talked around that fact and made it sound like he had been.

So my mom announces in this grave voice that M is probably fired.

And I'm left with three very conflicting feelings, which combine to a self-preservatory "meh."

1. Dude, how dumb can you be? You know he's out to get you and you do something that boneheaded?

2. And we're shocked by this because...?

3. You all hired the idiot manager in the first place. You had the opportunity to be rid of him and chose not to. You made your bed, and all that.

I can imagine that the whole family is poised to erupt in wank. None of it will be M's fault -- while some of it unquestionably is. People will wring their hands about how the new manager could do this -- forgetting that this has been coming for a while. People will wonder how he could actually fire M -- except that everybody -- my mom included -- knew that M can't work unsupervised and no one got off their butts to...I dunno...supervise him.

One thing the Summer o' Drama taught me, though -- is to rant about it on my blog and keep my big fat mouth shut. :-)

Nerd Squee

That rocks.  The person who drew it rocks.  'Nuff said.  :-)

Murphy's Law

The week o' Murphy's Law ended yesterday when I was stuck in a colossal traffic jam (11 miles in 2.75 hours) and then proceeded to try to break the middle finger of my left hand.

Because typing sucks, more on that later.

Instead, a grammar rant:

Cliche is a noun.  It refers to "a phrase or opinion that is overused and betrays a lack of original thought."

Cliched is an adjective.  It describes something that is overused.

In other words...

Correct:

1. The jokes in the last episode of The Simpsons were tired and predictable, to the point of becoming cliches.  D'oh!
2. So many people imitated Lucille Ball's style that it became cliched.

Incorrect (oh, so incorrect that it makes me weep for the English language):

1. Apple's style is becoming a bit cliche.  (Quoted from macrumors.com.)  You meant cliched, as you're describing the style.

Also?  "Nitsche" is not the term you were looking for when describing a small, particular market/audience/fandom.  You meant niche.

Eek.

Opinions Please

As the date of our departure to Disney World approaches (a week from Tuesday evening), I have been seriously pondering something.

Having no particular interest in surly, exhausted Patrick, nor in carrying my linebacker-built brother to the nearest First Aid station, I lobbied long and hard for at least renting him a wheelchair -- Florida in August is going to suck, climate wise, and thyroid medication or no, he's going to have Issues.

Eventually, we (my mom and I) decided that having our own would be much easier, if a bit more expensive in the outset.  So it's all folded up and ready to go in the garage; it just needs a bungee cord to make sure it stays folded in the luggage compartment.

Which brings me to my dilemma.

In all the years he's been going to Disneyland, the expectation of Patrick (begun by my parents and reinforced by me as he got older) is that he is expected to follow the rules there like any other kid.  Disneyland, I believe, is directly responsible for his patience with lines and crowds (unlike his girlfriend, Chaline).  He is expected to order himself, to walk by himself (I hate seeing adults with disabilities holding someone's hand unless it's an expression of affection), and wait in line just like everybody else, because he can.

He even knows where the companion restrooms are, in the unlikely event that he needs assistance in the restroom.  While CA law allows an attendant of the opposite gender to accompany a person with disabilities into their restroom, he has never been comfortable with this, and is far too old to do the reverse.

Y'see, over the years, it's become more and more common to see groups of kids (usually teenagers) rent a wheelchair which they rotate amongst themselves, so as to use the accessible queue.  Disneyland has responded over the years by enlarging the regular queue, so that most people using wheelchairs must (get to, as some lines are amusing themselves) wait in line with everybody else.

It irks me to see people taking advantage of the (greatly appreciated) strides Disney has made in accessibility.  We've had unfailingly positive experiences with cast members, but I worry that that will change as people grow more resentful of people without visible disabilities using accessible queue areas.

Where am I going with this?

Simple.  

I'm having a dilemma about what to prepare Patrick for.

Should I tell him he'll be able to ride around the park but still be expected to stand in line (if it's indoors -- we're already getting a Guest Assistance Card that says he doesn't have to stand in line in the heat and sun)?

Should I tell him that he'll be able to ride around and use the accessible queue at certain times of day (e.g. until the sun goes down)?

Should I ignore my own sense of he-should-do-what-he-can and simplify everything (and possible cut down our time in lines substantially) and just tell him that if there's an accessible queue, we'll use it?

Any other ideas?  I'm inclined to go with option 2, myself, but that might be needlessly complicated.

Note to Wood Ranch

That table you sat me, Patrick, my mom, my two cousins, my aunt, and my uncle at tonight?  That table might hold seven very friendly skinny people.

Note the "might."

Note the "very friendly."

Note the "skinny."

While it was very nice of my aunt and uncle to take us all out to dinner for my mom's birthday, that was not a nice thing to do to my generally prickly sense of personal space.

GRRRRR!

Well, the good news is that Blogger ate my 3 page long CAPSLOCK OF RAGE about why I HATE WINDOWS!  (I'm normally fairly magnanimous on the subject of OSs.)

The bad news is BLOGGER ATE MY POST!

What to Call a Remake of a Remake?

I loved Escape to Witch Mountain as a child.  I even have the book -- which, in true Disney fashion, has little in common with the film.

Most people probably won't remember that the Disney Channel (or ABC -- I forget which) did a remake of the movie in the 90s sometime, which bore even less resemblance to the original, but which was a cute movie.

Apparently, they're at it again.

Another Non-Spoilery Comment

Having had time to reflect, the casualty that bothers me most is the one that's buried on the cliffs by the sea.

This surprises no one more than myself.

Also -- if you want to take anything from this book, it's the power of a little kindness.

Edit:  There are now spoilers in the comments.  You have been warned.