Roads to Safe Places

I hope you get to spend some time with your loved ones and will have some time for yourselves, too, to wind down. 

Crocky's conducting a church service and I chose to stay home in the warmth, lazy that I am, because her choir is in the middle of nowhere. We'll attend midnight mass and listen to parts of Bach's Christmas oratio together, though. I'm looking forward to that, because we don't get much time together this Christmas, what with work and parental visits.

I rediscovered this on Youtube today. It's a French children's series from the olden days on the body which I watched religiously. There were series by the same producers on history, inventions, space, and other subjects. They were fun to watch and taught me more about the different jobs the individual parts of the body have for it than any biology lesson I ever had later on.

So Channel four did a documentary on transsexual children as a part of their Bodyshock series. I have some qualms with that documentary on the "extremes of the human body", because seems to border on being a freakshow rather than a respectful depiction of "extreme" bodies too often for my taste. But so far, so good, congrats on your "extreme" status, maybe it's educational and respectful in spite of that.

A few minutes in, it turns out that it's not - for some reason completely beside me, they decided to use incorrect pronouns because they thought it would make the documentary "more accessible" to the clueless cispopulace.

Yeah, it's so OBVIOUS that it'd be so much LESS confusing to have the Voice Of Authority, the narrator of the documentary, use the wrong pronouns and leaving the doting, supportive parents use the correct ones. Unsurprisingly, people (examples here and here) are quick to point out what is wrong with that and write to Channel four, to which they get the same standard response.

And the response is really lovely. They apologise if "some" people were upset by the use of "biologically accurate" pronouns, but that they felt they were trying to do the right thing, and "almost all" the reviews were "favourable" and everybody loves their documentary a bunch and they were doing the right thing.

I don't know, but I'd imagine that if you're going out and making a documentary about a particular group of people, and the group of people are pissed off about the results, you ought to listen to them?
And maybe, if you talk about how people "will have to get used to using female pronouns" for a person, you ought to take a fucking hint?

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I was honestly surprised that there could be any other answers to this than Margaret Rutherford as Mrs Marple, and had to check the other answers to find out what other people think.



... although Evelyn Hamann as Adelheid is awesome, too.

As linked by bronnyelsp before, there is an awesome documentary on eight people who believe that they are "English through and through". They agree to have their DNA checked, find that a percentage of their DNA hails from somewhere else, hilarity ensues.

( Playlist embedded here )

I'd love to take that test and learn about my genetic history. I suspect that it's mostly Eastern European.

It is so ridiculous that these island dwellers are all so convinced that they are "100% English", and I love how their test subjects all deal with the information that they are not, in fact, "100% English", whatever that means, by trying to explain some part of their identity by their genetic make-up ("Oh, far Eastern, so that's why I like spring rolls!").

I wonder whether that has any long-term effects, if they start feeling a little less hostile towards the particular ethnic group they are descended from. Makes me wish that test was both easily available, 1000% confidential, and required - that should have a positive outcome for some people with skeevy race issues.

"A new way of thinking"? Now, we can't be having with that, indeed.



Best laugh I had since NOM's Gathering Storm ad with their rainbow coalition - the ads this organisation makes increase my suspicion that they are an organisation of IRL trolls who are secretly supporting LGBT people.

I found a video (in German) on my uni. I love how they whine about the quality of the buildings in this video when there are things that make this uni much worse. Admittedly, the mould is quite disconcerting and the Anthropology course I once had in a smelly, damp room in an old basement with dark, wet spots on the walls where the plumbing was getting old was not much fun, but I'd have still gone with the course sizes (very large) and the course organisation (90min of bad student lectures, mostly).

The Craft of War: BLIND from percula on Vimeo.

A Blood elf rogue-ninja-thing tries to kill Lady Onyxia. Boy, I wish it was possible to do that in-game. Niiiiinjas! Also, that song, which is not my taste in music at all, seems stuck in my head now.

Ok. Back tae Scots leid. (Also: I found an example to use in my talk. MelodeonJohn on YouTube is a Scots-speaking user who uploads videos almost daily. I am thinking about using this poem as an example, as his other entries are longer and sometimes express rather odd views. I'm putting far more work into the preparation for this talk than I should, but it's just too much fun to resist!)

Ever since Crocky's gone and I can't watch the series we usually watch together I need to fill my breaks with other fun things. So, in completely unrelated news, the cinematic game trailer of Wrath of the Lich King is out.

High res version on the main page here.

Even though cinematic game trailers don't really reveal anything about the games I love watching them. ( Basic nitpicking... )

Also - what is it with main villains? I know that they tend to favour the same designers, but I don't get what makes them all want to glue cutlery to their helmet as soon as they reach the evil arch villain status:



So, even though it's probably not worth the money, I am going to buy that game. Playing with my brother niaseath, and actually exploring things together with him instead of him yawning through quests with me and predicting what will happen next, or having him talk me through instances is bound to be fun - even though I always slow him down.

Anyway. Mental processes. Translation.

EDIT: Can someone out there explain to me why the UK English version comes with freaking subtitles, while the US American version does not?! It's the same thing, the only difference being the rating systems and the subtitles. Looks like someone's trying to make a point there.

Blackbird is probably my favourite song by The Beatles ever.

What's yours?

It is important that some parents are alerted to the dangers of internet addiction, but I somehow don't really think that the protagonist is to blame for looking for friends elsewhere, seeing as NO ONE (except possibly his girlfriend) seem to mind that he keeps dropping dead.

Ok. Back to trying to find a driver for my external harddrive (there is no brand name on it anywhere, which makes things much more fun). It SHOULD work on XP, but somehow, it is Plug&Play resistant.

Anyway.

Crocky's away, doing her production of "She Stoops to Conquer". (If you're curious, here's a performance on youtube.)

I can't wait to see her act tomorrow!

A lot of stuff we already know, plus a seconds-long sequence to spoil yourselves silly.

Here goes.

Ok, ok. And here:
( Spoil, spoil... )

EDIT: *wipes eyes* OMGWTFBBQ?!!!! LUNA? New LOVE interest?? Did they even READ the novels? What kind of complete IDIOT wrote this shite?

Stumbled upon this on a community, and I was SO absolutely dumb-struck by this video I just had to share.

It's just unbelievable. Made my day even more than the radio commentator's comment on the results of the Grand Prix this morning - "Well, she won - and she is a lesbian, although she is not hot."

Fred Phelp's opinion on the Tech massacre is ... utterly unpostable.

This is just sad.

What on earth must have happened to this man that he could become like this?

EDIT: She is graceful (just look at the T-shirt: "No Homos Need Apply"), pro-immigrants ("Not that I like it"), because "we don't have infrastructure anymore", "there are no people to flip the burgers", and, most importantly, "due to abortion, boneheads are" ruling the country.

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I really like that song.

Ok, back to my useless homework.

Oh, everybody said I would be a really good teacher at the follow-up weekend seminar. The seminar itself was really a waste of time, but it was fun spending so much time with the other guys. There was a fair amount of drama, tears and bitch fights, too.

Do you remember ( these guys )?

Singing along is fun, of course, but its even more fun to watch them in other languages, such as German, Latin Spanish, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Russian, French aaaand, the one you absolutely have to watch, ( Swedish )

Let's hear it: Hipp hurra!
För här kommer bumbibjörnarna
studsar fram igenom sagorna
och vi får följa med!!

I absolutely LOVED that one. Seriously, that's the greatest version EVER.

Oh, and angie_21_237, ( this is for you: )

Yesterday was the last day of my internship, and every teacher told me how well-prepared and how well-thought out my lessons and sequences were, and what a good teacher I am going to be.

They did tell me a few things they want me to keep an eye on (projecting more enthusiasm for tasks at hand instead of being as matter-of-factly as I am, giving more feed-back on student answers, explicitly telling students what's right and wrong about their answers instead of hoping for correction from the group because they're not that advanced, and talking more loudly).

The students all wished me good luck, and the feedback on the feedback sheets I had prepared for them was also very good. Their points of criticism were the same as those of the teacher, but on the whole, they seemed to be pretty happy with me as a teacher, and some of them were really sweet and enthusiastic about my lessons. Whee! Some were not, and I guess I know who they are and I can understand it. One girl was sitting at the back of the classroom and kept not paying attention because she was bored, and therefore she tended to miss the instructions - which is not really my fault, but I think I can understand why she'd not be happy about it.

I did get a few "bad marks" from them for my abilities as a speaker ("You talk to fast!" - "You have to repeat tasks and questions more often!") and some organisational stuff ("We really wouldn't have needed to watch those film scenes twice!"), but on the whole, they were happy with me, and the way they took the analysis of the short story in stride (one that we had dealt with in our A-Level courses, back when I had to do communication myself) and addressed every problem I had wanted them to address was really confidence-inspiring. I hope that they'll all get good grades in the test they have to write on communication after the holidays.

It's so sad that it's over, even though I'm also glad I don't have to worry about lesson plans for a while anymore, or how I am going to get into the room with the photocopier without a key on time. I'm really going to miss those guys, and I hope some of them are going to use the e-mail addy I gave them.

So.I am going to be a great teacher, only that I am not, because my university lost papers relevant for my application. Monday they're going to regret it.

And now for the report on my internship...

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