Let's talk about the sociological semiotics of the new Mustang commercial:

Ford's put a commercial for the 2013 Mustang up on YouTube. It's completely visual, and I can't think of any good way to describe it, so apologize to my blind friends.

Personally, I LOVE this commercial. I'd like to note a couple things about it.

Let's look at the four Mustang lovers shown. Two of them are male, two are female. One is clearly white, three are less-white -- the woman looks mixed-race to me, the first man looks light-skinned Black, and the girl looks Hispanic. I mean, race isn't always obvious, so I don't know if that's how the actors classify themselves, or if my guesses actually match with their heritages, but at least the commercial doesn't look as racially homogeneous as one might expect.

Also, the little girl is being cared for by a man, presumably her father. So we have the image of a father as caregiver, taking his daughter to ballet class.

Of course, the big moment of the commercial is the subversion of pinkwashing.

And -- this one is a bit more arguable -- but watch the guy at 0.17 seconds into the ad. It looks to me like he's totally checking out the dude in the blue shirt. It's not obvious, and it's possible that he's just sorta looking in that direction, but I like to think that they put a gay man in as one of their typical customers.

Plus, the look on the little girl's face at the end of the commercial is freakin' adorable.

In my experience, this pretty well matches up with the demographics of Mustang lovers. They include everybody.

How much of a language do you have to speak to call yourself "bilingual"?

I've been intending to post this for a week or two, now, and I was just reminded by it by the front-page poll on LiveJournal, about "how many languages do you speak"?

I consider myself monolingual, although I know a couple words in other languages, and have a dilettante's interest in linguistics, so I know a little bit about the different ways that different languages put together grammar, and, off of my speech and rhetoric, I have a little tangential knowledge of different phonemes, including a few that don't appear in English. So I know a little bit ABOUT languages, but I don't know any other languages, themselves.

Anyway, a couple weeks ago, I went to Home Depot to look for a grinding wheel that I could attach to my drill, and then use to sharpen my machete, rather than using a file. It's a cheap machete, so the blade gets knicked up badly whenever I hit a rock, which is often, so I wanted a quicker way to grind out knicks than a hand-tool. The BEST tool for that, of course, would be a bench grinder, but that's kinda excessive for me to own.

So, I went to Home Depot, poked around for a bit, and then asked one of the clerks for help. I started explaining what I wanted, and he wasn't sure, so he pulled over another clerk, who actually knew the section better. The second clerk was Deaf, and the first clerk was trying to enunciate so the second clerk could read his lips, and was having trouble, and he started to pull out a pad of paper.

I stepped in, and started signing. 'Cause I know a LITTLE ASL.

Now, I used a LOT of fingerspelling, some miming, a lot of pointing at stuff. . . but he understood what I wanted, I understood what he was telling me. He was able to show me what they had, but we agreed that what they had wasn't EXACTLY what I wanted, and he suggested that I check out another store that was a bit south of them on Rte 1.

So I thanked him, and that's what I did, where I did, in fact, find something that worked for me.

It wasn't until I left that I realized that I'd just had a conversation in which I was able to express a relatively complex problem, and understand a relatively complex response. I didn't do it grammatically, nor prettily, nor entirely within the bounds of that single language (fingerspelling isn't ASL, in my mind, although there are signs in ASL that include fingerspelling forms). But I did it.

Can I think of myself as bilingual in ASL? I DON'T think of myself that way. But I DID muddle my way through.

Call of the wild?

I was just thinking about this piece of adorableness that made the rounds a few months back. I assume most of you have seen it, but those of you who haven't deserve to.

Sorry about the lack of . . . anything . . . previously. I posted it using an Android app which . . . didn't.