demagogue on 1/2/2013 at 12:55

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Gallaudet this was. Nevermind the apocalyptic fire alarms (which were understandable; it just makes for a funny story), it was on K street SE in pretty much the most dangerous neighborhood of DC. We weren't allowed to even walk out onto the front street, for good reason, and a bus had to pick us up just to drop us off at the train station a few blocks away. I understand they got the land like 200 years ago, but sort of unfortunate location today. The deaf chicks were pretty cute though, I remember. Nothing like hooking up via pen & notepad.

Tocky on 2/2/2013 at 06:20

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I take it this was the first week of studies then? Else why not use sign? And I understand dethtoll being there but in addition to knowing every other language you had to learn that as well? Damn you are one dedicated teacher. I remember missing a turn and not being able to turn around until I got to a gas station east of DC. Not only did it have bars but inch thick Lexan with the little slide tray for cash. Rough hood alright.

Yeah, I dunno about fire drills and suicide though. You get one brief blip of life in a eternity of being dead. That trumps any reason I can think of. Maybe reality TV. No wait, that just makes me want to kill the actors.

demagogue on 2/2/2013 at 07:19

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Gallaudet opens up its dorms over the summer to interns and is by far the cheapest respectable housing for a summer. I was interning for one of the more delightfully evil congressmen at the time. Nothing to do with the school itself.

But I was one of the few that actually went to some effort to connect with the actual deaf students there, and going out on the town with them, instead of pretending they didn't exist ... because I'm that kind of people person. A special place in hell goes to one of the other interns that had the terrific idea to have a movie night of "In the Company of Men" on the big screen tv there, close captioned of course. "Fucking evil" is a term that came up a lot that summer, I think. A lot of drinking & laughing too.

Edit: For the record, I did later learn some sign language for the hell of it. It's surprisingly a lot like Japanese in grammar (and that's what got me curious to study it some). Both are like "Topic: shit I want to say about it". So it was a lot easier for me to pick up bona fide ASL grammar instead of the vulgarized direct-transliterate version where you just directly substitute each spoken word for a sign, which is not real ASL as I understood someone explaining it to me. I don't remember much now though.

Yakoob on 2/2/2013 at 18:01

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SubEff - yep, different languages have their own signs, but AFAIK there is also like a more "universal" one the deaf community is trying to push.

I actually learned a bit of Japanese sign when I was on study abroad there, and the culture definitely influences it.

Like the word for "good afternoon" is raising left hand index+middle finger to your face, and then raising both your index fingers up so they face each other and bending them down. According to my prof, in the first part your fingers represent the arms of a clock showing 12o clock, and the second represents two figures bowing to each other as a greeting.

And some words are also taken from their Kanji representations you make with your fingers.

Kaleid on 2/2/2013 at 19:53

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I wouldn't personally recommend it, life is too damned short as it is already.

Doug Stanhope on Suicide, etc.
[video=youtube;v3ZA-_kWGGc]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3ZA-_kWGGc[/video]