Work and sleep

[sessifet]

A new experience: updating from work!

This is going to be a fun day. I only had 3 hours of sleep last night (which one of you thought it was a good idea to pass the insomnia fairy my way?), and today we're going to have quite a few powerpoint presentations. What joy.

I fear I will have to resort to sugar to keep awake today. I should've brought my jar of G&B's.

Comments

[st-lemur.livejournal.com]

Please don't take this the wrong way, but I've never seen the Buddha look more like a buttplug than in that icon.

[troo.livejournal.com]

Meh. Some people have the dirtiest minds... ;)

I like that icon. Has a wonderful gestalt of a buddha with hardly any detail in it.
The down side is indeed that people who don't have the buddha image as a part of their cutural background might see something else, although I think that most won't see a buttplug. I'm an optimist that way.

[sessifet25.livejournal.com]

O_o

*looks at it*

Well, it appears that the Buddha was right: 'It's your mind that creates this world.' :)

[happydisciple.livejournal.com]

I shall choose to see it as three images of an expanding Bose-Einstein Condensate, showing the tell-tale change in aspect ratio (if it weren't a BEC, it'd only become more spherical over time).

But then, that's me and the things I do at work.

[st-lemur.livejournal.com]

What are you implying I do at work?! ;)

[sessifet25.livejournal.com]

Looking at buttplugs, obviously :P

[st-lemur.livejournal.com]

I look at everything you show me. It's not my fault if you don't label it NSFW.

[sessifet25.livejournal.com]

I'm not going to label Buddha as NSFW, no matter what you offer me :)

[st-lemur.livejournal.com]

But isn't freedom from desire bad for office productivity? (don't tell the anti-immigration right-wingers this, they might get ideas).

Which reminds me. I just found out about Zwarte Piet. That's fucked up.

[happydisciple.livejournal.com]

What's fucked up about Zwarte Piet?

[st-lemur.livejournal.com]

...it's someone walking around in blackface and talking like a Stephen Foster lyric sheet. How is that not fucked up?

[happydisciple.livejournal.com]

Not having heard of Stephen Foster before, and Google and Wikipedia not being immediately extremely illuminating, I can't comment on that.

W.r.t. blackface: don't forget that the Dutch cultural context of blackface is completely different from US, and quite probably UK, contexts. Add to that the fact that there are multiple explanations for the blackness of Zwarte Piet (with the two most prevalent ones being: Zwarte Piet is Moorish (after all, Sint Nicolaas lives in Spain), or he's all sooted up from going down chimneys to deliver presents), and it's not so clear cut.

Nowadays, most Zwarte Pieten (there's many, after all) are portrayed as very skilled, intelligent and athletic, doing all the real work of managing Sint Nicolaas B.V., while St. Nicolaas himself is old, maybe slightly doddering, not entirely in touch with the modern world, and doing the kissing hands & shaking babies-side of the business.

[st-lemur.livejournal.com]

Stephen Foster (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Foster) wrote a lot of still-popular tunes in an exaggerated, caricaturing "dialect" for the minstrel shows of the time:

De Camptown ladies sing dis song, Doo-dah! doo-dah!
De Camptown race-track five miles long, Oh, doo-dah day!
I come down dah wid my hat caved in, Doo-dah! doo-dah!
I go back home wid a pocket full of tin, Oh, doo-dah day!
Gwine to run all night!
Gwine to run all day!
I'll bet my money on de bob-tail nag,
Somebody bet on de bay.

The blackface in and of itself I understand; there's also blackface Morris dancing in the west of England that probably dates back to the 14th century or so. It's the style of it -- what I was reading said that Zwarte Piet's makeup became more minstrelly and exaggerated (red lips, red eyes) in the early 20th century.

Besides, you can't find black people in the Netherlands? It's not complicated.

[st-lemur.livejournal.com]

On which point: Turbo Teen (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UevBVGMap4) (worksafe, and what happens to his mouth freaks me the hell out)

[flippac.livejournal.com]

That's the Buddha?