I carry a small machined aluminum pill bottle on my keychain that I keep filled with a mixture of ground hot peppers, in case the restaurant I’m at doesn’t have any hot sauce. Habaneros, Serranos and a few others. As we were going through the checkpoint, I was distracted by my friend and stopped paying attention to the Secret Service agent who was going over our belongings, and I looked back at her just in time to see her lift the opened pill bottle to her nostrils.
I said, a little TOO loudly, “STOP!” She instantly set the keys down, neatly and without spilling a flake of the peppers, and at the same time assumed the 1/4 stance to me and put her hand on her firearm, but, didn’t draw it. Behind her sunglasses I could see her eyes lock on me like a hawk. Out of the corners of my eyes, I caught two guys in sunglasses moving to my 4:00 and 7:00 positions, and it was all happening so fast and smooth that I think that the four of us were the only people even aware that something was happening.

I gently put my hands at about even height with my head, and said ” It’s hot peppers – I didn’t want you to breathe them in too deeply.” She didn’t move, just saw her eyes flicker to the two other guys. I asked, “Can I show you ?” and she thought about it for few seconds before giving a nod. People were starting to notice now. I gingerly picked up the keys with one hand, wet my fingertip and stuck it in the pill bottle, letting her see that I had a good dollop on my fingertip, and stuck it in my mouth. She watched me as I turned red and the tears started to well up and the sweat popped out on my forehead.

After watching me for a few more seconds, she handed the cap to the pill bottle back to me and said “Have a nice day, sir” in the flattest monotone I’ve ever heard. The other two guys melted into the crowd, people were staring at me and at the agent and whispering to each other, I grabbed my stuff and went through the rest of the line and found the nearest water vendor.

So anyway, they’re both languages, they’re related in the sense that ASL is full of loanwords and fingerspellings and that English *can* be clumsily signed (essentially transliterated) in ASL, and neither one grew up entirely in a vaccuum here in North America.  Because that’s not usually how language works.

Better?

My sign professor was from France originally.  I had a few people tell me I signed with a French accent.  :)

No… Santorum is Hitler, Romney is Stalin, and Gingrich is just himself. Did I get it? Do I win? 

ASL is based on French Sign Language. English Sign Language is quite different. I think only a quarter of it actually lines up with ASL.

ASL is not based on English. It is its own, distinct language, with its own distinct sentence structure. If anything, it is more similar to Japanese or other character based languages. So someone can have ASL as their first language, and English as their second. But they don’t have to know English to learn ASL.

(Also, where did this political blog claim to be a “newspaper?”)

I think they feel hair loss is a sign of weakness, or loss of  macho, so they go with the shiny penis-dome look.

On the contrary, male baldness is a sign that the man in question is brimming over with so much testosterone that it’s burned a hole right through the roof.