Well, my bit's done as far as the Plastiki is concerned. It's a worthy project, nebulous aims and nominal management aside, and I hope the boat makes it to Sydney. They'll have some trouble getting there, no doubt, what with all the ego involved, but they have a few colorful characters pulling for them so I hope they make the news at the very least. Good luck to them.
A girl at work and I have been playing this game that is as juvenile as it is absorbing; we try to flip one another off in slight and ever more creative ways. It started out as a kind of 'disrespect-you-as-a-joke' sort of thing, but quickly became something much greater when I flipped her off by blowing into my thumb and "inflating" my middle finger. While that kind of junior-high antic is old-hat to me, she'd never seen anything like it. She got so excited that she immediately started thinking of funny new ways to flip me off; she pulled her thumb like a jack to crank her finger up, she put a napkin over her hand and waved her fingers like a magician before quickly pulling the napkin away to reveal her now-erect middle finger, she tied an imaginary string to her middle finger and used it to pull the finger up and down, &c. Ultimately we started hiding slips of paper with a middle finger drawn on them in each other's bags, coats, whatever. She hid a picture of that kind in my paystub. She delivered the coup de grace when she drew a middle finger on the birthday cake she made for me. The whole thing's been hilarious, if a bit uncouth.
All this has made me think of two things - 1) How different people make their 'bird' gesture (with the ring and index finger or without, straight up or wilting back, &c.), and 2) that game in which boys (always boys) form a ring with their index finger and thumb, splaying the rest of the fingers out straight, and display this gesture near their penis in an effort to get their friends to look at it. Once viewed, the 'ring gesture', or 'pussy' as it's sometimes called, entitles the gesturer to punch the viewer (or some variant interaction thereof). I ran a youth hostel for a year and took an informal poll of this 'game' and how it's played among people from all over the world. With only 1 (one!) notable exception, ONLY boys knew of this game. NO girls had ever heard of it, and guys from every country knew the gesture for what it was the moment I made it (most acknowledging this recognition with a pained expression and a shoulder offered for punching). During my 'study' I noted only small variations of display or execution of the 'pussy' gesture, and the only guy who didn't know what it was was from Quebec. Go figure.
So, stay tuned, I'm back on the novel bandwagon.
