'Do your homework!', or the Birth of the Christian Zombies

That first part of the title, that would be me shouting at my screen when I catch some silliness on the Internet (I've got a handful of pet peeves - guilty).

There's a lot of silliness out there, but the one thing that's beginning to get higher and higher on my list of "grrr" things is a misused symbol.

Now... I know that languages change, that they're mutating sponges that could move in Bedlam and look at home. I know that if things weren't changing, we'd still be using Celtic, or Latin, or Greek... or a form of Indo-European - or something. I know. Believe me, I know.

And yet... I must admit it quite bugs me when I see more and more devout, militant, in-your-face Christians place a cross after their names in order to show the world that they are faithful zealots (I have yet to find one person doing this and showing actual Christian goodness and tolerance). 

It's not the first time I growl about that, but I find the phenomenon spreading a bit like a nutty fad in Bigotry-land.

I see where they're going with their pretty obeli; it's their badge. It shows they proudly belong to the club.

But I can't help seeing that sign as a 'symbol (†) used as a reference mark in printed matter, or to indicate that a person is deceased'. And then... my imagination, constantly on warp drive, momentarily stopped seeing these people as silly bunnies who are recycling a symbol, and I started wondering if we may be dealing with a sub-group of zombies who want to recognize one another..................... or warn the world that they're amongst us.

Perhaps we should keep an eye on the recycling Christian zombies... 

[Pockets the plot bunny for potential future use]

[Video] Shakespeare: Original pronunciation

This is absolutely fascinating (let's all e-hug my brother, who sent me the link!). Enjoy!

Apart from the fact that that's really the kind of stuff that makes me purr with happiness (my favourite memory of my time in college was a class at 8:30 in the morning - History of Old English - where I was making puns in Latin with our teacher... I am that kind of weird), I really loved this: 'There's something about working our way back to Shakespeare, rather than dragging him into the twenty-first century.'

Hop! or the Art of Jumping to Conclusions

It's astounding (and really quite scary) to see how quickly people jump to conclusions - and this is when I'm quite happy to be borderline OCD, as it doesn't prevent me from working and living normally, but I check (and double-check) important things. When I post a comment, I make sure that I've read the article properly (and sometimes Paranoid-me does a bit of checking in order to make sure that I'm not being conned into having a strong reaction to some moving topic - yep! I'm that kind of nutty/weird), and I check what I typed.

There are sooooooooooo many bipeds jumping to conclusions now, that I can't decide if our modern gadgets have done something to their brains, or if we get to see this phenomenon more clearly and quickly, and widely, as the Internet allows us to read worldwide reactions at the speed of a demented neutrino.
As well, the number of bipeds rushing to post any comment, just for the rush of being "the first" is somewhat worrying. Life isn't a competition, guys! We're all going to die and return to Mother Earth, one way or the other; typing: 'First to comment!' and adding nothing to a thread is childish - and I'm being veeeeeeery kind.
What's scary, too, is that it's not only young bipeds who are jumping to conclusions. It truly is an intergenerational issue.

What prompted this post was a piece of news that I read (somewhere on the net). It sparked some sexism and some jumping to conclusions, as well.
It was about a High School student who went to her Prom in North Carolina in red jeans and was kicked out by a teacher because that bully thought that she had the right to impose her own Dress Code upon this young lady. The student's mother managed to have the school's headmistress admit that there was no dress code, and that was clearly stated in the article I read.
Now, let's head to the comment section, shall we? Comment #1: "She should have followed the dress code!" (I paraphrase, but that was it).
Other comments were on the side of the victim of academic bullying, but quite a few seemed to be judging the victim - a young woman - for daring to wear trousers (fake gasp!!!) at a dance.
This kind of sexism is quite annoying in 2014. Women are still supposed to wear dresses in some occasions.
I love my skirts, but when it's cold, I wear trousers, and the first to tell me that it's against some dress code would be invited to kindly go to hell and mind "its" own business.
The amount of sexism bugged me, but the fact that some commenters blamed the victim because she didn't follow the dress code (the one that does not exist!!!), that took the cake. All that because bipeds read a headline, maybe a few words in the article, and they jumped to conclusions as they applied what happens in a lot of Proms, where there is a dress code (plus that idiotic belief that a woman must wear a dress in certain situations)...
But then again, just this month, we were treated to a fantastic demonstration of massive jumping to conclusions with this. Some bipeds really need to pay attention if they don't want to look like utter fools all around cyberspace (and perhaps in Real Life, too).
That (very!) strangely reminded me of something a student asked as I was teaching his class how to write a curriculum vitae or résumé that wouldn't be tossed into the dustbin upon reception (though I probably made that association because I somehow think that people jumping to conclusions aren't paying attention to details - or just not paying attention, full stop). About their choice of title (and particularly about its British or American spelling), that student asked, 'Is it really important?' Now, I must say that I wasn't in a good mood and I growled, 'First, do you think I would bother to mention something useless? And then, it's up to you: either you send something that looks professional or you look like a fool. It's your life.'
I can't decide if we're dealing with laziness, sheer stupidity or something else, but I can't help wondering what the world would be like if bipeds paid attention and they didn't jump to conclusions so quickly.

Mobile Addiction

Still addicted to books here, but the mobile addiction in buses and trains is getting worse.

I've been travelling a bit over the past fortnight, and things were properly barmy.

Where I'm parked, it's forbidden to use mobiles in train carriages; if someone wants to use their phone to call someone, they must leave the carriage and use the space between two of them. Pretty simple - and pretty civil.

On the first train I took, almost every passenger had a phone. Most were listening to music or texting, but... a group of unionists on their way back from a demonstration were phoning left and right - and were quite loud, too. They were so annoying that a late teen left the carriage twice in order not to blow a fuse. For once, I didn't give a fig, but the fact that it was men in their fifties behaving like Klingons was odd.

There's really something weird about people and their relationships to their mobiles because, on another train, I had to deal with someone who was absolutely charming, but couldn't help phoning home every half hour in order to argue with various relatives.

Yes, mobiles are useful (and shinyyyyyyyy toys), but when someone's glued to it to the point of ignoring the world around, there's a problem.

Oh, and my adorable brother sent me this: 

The quote is a fake (I know), but I fear there's something true about it when it comes to some (not all, Merlin be praised!) bipeds.

We're probably doomed though... or we're heading towards a massive dose of Darwinism with sheeple getting brain damage (or death!) as they hold their mobiles, but not any bar on the bus or in the tube, as they keep reading their texts on the street (the next one to walk towards me without looking ahead shall be yelled at - in order to warn it that I'm there, of course), or as they drive and phone or text or whatever.

Sewing a Regency (Day) Dress [Chapter 3 3/4: Spot of News]

Nearly there!

I need to make a toile, and I can post (don't expect anything before next week, at best, though...)

See you soon!

Cursed!

Nothing "supernatural", but I'm currently feeling rather unlucky about my various neighbours and their relationship to... noise.

In town, I've had to deal with the A/C unit from Hell, and now the bloke who does the dishes for the plonkers downstairs  apparently needs to listen to Elton John and Celine Dion as he works (from midnight to 1:30AM - when it's not until 2AM)... and the din travels through the chimneys (old building, there are several in each flat) and along the water conduits.

Basically, I'll probably have to phone them in order to tell them to stop their music (they must think they're alone on earth or the village idiot's doing the dishes because there's no way they don't know it's way too loud).

Swell!

I escaped to the country for Easter. To a place where there's nothing.

New neighbours across the garden, and apparently, they're having a party. Inside. And I can hear them.

That's going to be entertaining in the summer if my relatives have to complain about some din.

I've had parties with friends, but the music was never loud, and I turned it off before 10 PM, and, cherry on the icing on that cake, none of us were ever screeching like demented banshees... I sometimes think that I'm wired differently - or something.

I'm waiting for my cat to head home (we prefer having the cats inside at night; there are sociopaths around), and I could be listening to a lovely nightingale, but I cannot as the silly bunnies are louder than that poor bird.

That feels like a curse. A bit.

Down (Recent-ish) Memory Lane & Plot Bunnies

As I was saying in the prior post, I've been exploring video sites most of last night.

I grew up with music, and I got addicted to video music telly in a split second (I'm still somehow mourning MTV).

Amongst the many, many happy memories that I got to revisit last night, there was one that made me very happy, and that even if it did beam into my flat a huge cargo of potential plot bunnies for my Muff&Sherly - The Annotated Edition...

Here's the "guilty" song:

Army of Lovers - Crucified

I could make a list of the plot bunnies, but they'd be massive spoilers.

I'd forgotten how much I love this song (and this video). Has anyone seen the drool bucket?

I'm still writing the short story I mentioned recently-ish, and I'm still working on my fantasy novel, as well.

I must say this is feeding the plot bunnies nicely, and I'm eager to go back to Muff&Sherly's world once the short story's finished...

Being Borderline OCD...

... can work nicely when I look for something.

Since I just have one toe on the "other side", it's not too bad, and that form of weird stubbornness has just allowed me to locate two songs that I'd lost.

Of course, I had to find a website that had a list of all the songs that ended up in the charts in the '90s and '00s (coz, of course, I couldn't remember in which decade they'd been released), and then, I went hunting for the two songs...

It took me hours, but after looking for these for months (probably years), I've got them bookmarked!

Whilst I was looking for these two, I got to listen again to a few songs that I'd forgotten; that was nice.

The songs that momentarily drove me nuts are:

Spooks - Things I've Seen

Truth Hurts - Addictive (finding a video that wasn't blocked outside of the US was a tad entertaining. Thanks chuck, guys!)

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaanyway... If I could manage to find these, that's giving me hope that, one day, I'll find again that novel that's driving me nuts.