The present moment.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I practice mindfulness meditation.

Basically, mindfulness is being aware of the present moment; noticing what you can see, touch, smell, taste, hear and what you are thinking about and feeling without making judgments about any of it. Just noticing it. Jon Kabat-Zinn, who writes about mindfulness meditation, calls it awarenessing, I like that. Mindfulness allows a greater awareness of choices in how to respond to life, though actually choosing what might be a better choice is often where I trip-up.

Anyways, I was watching Youtube vids about mindfulness and this clip came up in my searches. I think that the first three quarters of this explains the present moment wonderfully (I added the captioning).




How mindful are you? Or maybe how mindless? Do you tend to think of the past? Or do you anticipate the future? Have you ever had sexy thoughts about Darth Vader?

Canada Day - Captioned

July 1st is Canada Day, Canada's Birthday, a day during which I avoid public parks like the plague. Being surrounded by a thousand squealing crotch crickets amped on 'free cake' iced with tantrum-inducing red food dye is not my idea of good time. My Canadian beaver and I say 'bah humbug' to all of that and offer the following captioned Canada-ish clip:



;-)

Equal Access... even if it's crap!

I'm hard of hearing and I have trouble hearing the dialogue in many films so I often, though not always, need subtitles or to turn on the closed-captioning. Just 'going the pictures' and seeing whatever's playing means risking a wad of dough cos chances are I will not be able to understand the dialogue, I will lose the plot (haha) and experience ninety minutes of frustration and feelings of exclusion.

Most of the time, this hearing-related, movie-going thing is not much of an issue for me as I prefer my own comfy sofa and a DVD (with the captions on) over going out. Though, once in a while I do crave the big screen.

Even with that occassional personal craving and the knowledge that other people who are hard of hearing or who are deaf/Deaf also would like to see a flic on the big screen, I have to be honest... I have struggled with the idea of campaigning for cineplexes, movies theatres, cinemas to be legislated into providing captioning.

One reason is that I believe that I have personally benefited from having a limited access to all the crap that comes out of the Hollywood machine and similar ilk. I have seen very many subtitled foreign films, saved a lot of cash that would have otherwise lined a megatroncinematicmegacomplex owner's pocket and I've developed other interests away from audio-visual media. And isn't it just enough that the movie houses are not providing a functional product (for me) so I've decided that they aren't going to get any of my money? Aren't there more subversive options available here than accepting that megatroncinematicmegacomplexes have such a grip on our entertainment needs?

I was mentioning this is a friend and she responded simply with: you snob.

Hmm... upsinged!

After I mulled that one over. I have to admit that she is right. Who the fuck am I to decide how other people entertain themselves? And how did I become so arrogant? Still, I think I do have a point, even if many people do not understand what I mean. ;-)

Back to captioning campaigns, I'm still not completely sure where I stand on this, so comments would be appreciated.

Anyways, while reading up on captioning, I came across this post on Sarah's blog (Speak Up Librarian). It's about Bill Creswell - a hearing man who is is "captioning the Internet one video at a time". Good man.

And I found this on YouTube.... :-D