thanks

quiet planet hums
my vision; arrays
magnetism
she said, “where are we ?”
Hidden steep mountain
inside
the stone lodge ,
uncovered tactics;
honeymoon,
a cheat sheet
of poetry;
supposedly
on my lap.
friends and lovers
arrived within shadows;
she and i
an elephants calendar  musing
who are you ?
drawn ambiguity
on each table,
Roses.
(without an address)
i couldn’t write.

treasures
not ever been seen?
carved in a cave:
horses and birds,
transparent minerals
sit on the floor
a test
passed by,
up the downstairs
a sky giant
blue feather
headdress,
jazzed the underworld
not hell,
i wanted to greet him.
step by step
up A mountain
the aquifer,
high voltage
forecast (monsoon)

(attention deficit/ hyperactivity disorder)

“do you remember me?”
labor and delivery
(road whys fool !)
holly reason whirling
supernaturally fast
“I didn’t like you at first”
she said
“i  now think different after speaking with
Wind Walker” ?
wing walker
Wind / Cave / Wolf.
Mother bear births
sanctity
____________
at work
voice and name
little girl playing
her friend searches;
what’s your name?
“Silence”
that name is beautiful!
“Thanks”
when do i go there?
i walked on by
the next day she said:
“wait, wait”
to her friend.

(obsessive-compulsive)

]]> http://lovingthetasmaniandevil.wordpress.com/2009/12/01/me-and-my-main-man-ralph/ Tue, 01 Dec 2009 16:33:31 +0000 Maureen http://lovingthetasmaniandevil.wordpress.com/2009/12/01/me-and-my-main-man-ralph/

The Perpetual Male Adolescence Festival (aka Shotgun Season) is in full swing here in Central New York. Mighty Hawkeye has already gotten four does with his bow and one monster buck with his shotgun. At the risk of offending anyone, I feel I must rant.

I spent too many years teaching Lord of the Flies to sophomores. I love Lord of the Flies, can practically recite enormous portions by memory; it was the sophomores that got taxing. It’s been eleven years since I cracked the cover, but one scene always jumps to mind when hunting season rolls around again.

Ralph and Simon have been valiantly attempting to build huts on the beach while Piggy allegedly watches the Littl’uns and avoids asthma. Jack is rapidly devolving into primitive hunting mode, and is intently thinking like a pig, plotting his kill:

“Ralph gazed bewildered at [Jack's] rapt face.

‘-they get up high. High up and in the shade, resting during the heat, like cows at home-’

‘I thought you saw a ship!’

‘We could steal up on one – paint our faces so they wouldn’t see – perhaps surround them and then-’

Indignation took away Ralph’s control.

‘I was talking about smoke! Don’t you want to be rescued? All you can talk about is pig, pig, pig!’

‘But we want meat!’

‘And I work all day with nothing but Simon and you come back and don’t even notice the huts!’

‘I was working too-’

‘But you like it!’ shouted Ralph. ‘You want to hunt! While I-’

They faced each other on the bright beach, astonished at the rub of feeling.”

The Modern Version:

“Mo gazed bewildered at Husband’s rapt face.

‘-they get really careless when they’re in rut. If you sit really still in one place-’

‘I thought we were talking about Eldest!’

‘You have to be downwind, and brush your teeth with baking soda, and wear Scent-lock … ‘

Indignation took away Mo’s control.

‘I was talking about the kids! Don’t you care about their future? All you can talk about is deer, deer, deer!’

‘But we need meat!’

‘And I work all day downtown, which you would hate, and you come back and don’t even notice the 20-year-old bathroom!’

‘I was working too-’

‘But you like it!’ shouted Mo. ‘You want to hunt! While I-’

They faced each other in the kitchen, astonished at the rub of feeling.”

And so it goes.

I did make it to 50,000 words and got a big “You win!” graphic from the National Novel-Writing Month team (me and over 32,000 other people). Ironically enough, my novel is set in a future year when the people of Central New York are literally fighting for survival, and a good hunter is worth his weight in lost college-planning conversations.

And really, I must admit that I love venison, Husband is a fabulous cook, he is an extraordinarily skilled hunter, he is working on the bathroom, and if I were able to live a turn-of-the-last-century life and stay home cooking and baking, I would feel very different about the whole thing.

And much as I revere William Golding and his brilliant analysis of human nature, according to his biographer John Carey, he was “a reclusive depressive who considered himself a ‘monster’, a victim of fears and phobias who battled against alcoholism, and a writer who trusted the imagination above all things.”

There are dangers in trusting the imagination above all things, as Husband is quick to tell me. Imagination alone might lead to a Nobel prize, but it doesn’t fill the freezer or keep the house warm. So, I tell myself, Back off, English geek! Once you publish a book and make some money at your hobby, you can sneer at your husband’s hobby, which does at least feed the family.

Meanwhile, me and my main man Ralph are going to shut up and keep working on the huts.

for aspies, some words, once spoken, stick like goop in the mind – for a long long time, perhaps for ever – haunting the thoughts… NTs (neuro-typicals) tend to find it easier, indeed natural, to shove them aside and not think abt things too deeply or intensely… but aspies tend to go thru everything over and over and over again… obsessing? maybe, but not the way most ppl think… it’s just our slower reflexes and deeper thinking processes – i find it very difficult to kw how to react to things and almost impossible to quickly jump over hurdles and walk away…

the loopy loops again… veronica said he had no emotional honesty – yes i cld feel her sadness, deep disappointment and pain, but i cld also feel her steely inner strength, a kind of strength that i do not have… and her words jangled in my mind all day today… along with his many false promises, all the more bitter because of their sweetness when first spoken enshrouded in deceit, dripping with the thick honey of twisted fantasy – cheap senseless fantasy for one, mistaken reality for the other… loopy loops with mixed voices and multi-timbre…

but that’s asperger’s… behcet’s has a loud looping voice too… and now, it’s ulcers time again… and TMJ from the pain…

while in the background the tune of ‘ha-tikva’ plays…

I am going to ask you to do one thing before you read on, stop and imagine what it would be like if everybody in the whole world was the same. When I was younger, I was very into the TV channel Nickelodeon. One of the shows I watched on that channel was “The Fairly Odd Parents”. It was about a teenage boy named Timmy Turner who lived with his parents and had to deal with his evil sixteen year old babysitter named Vicky. Timmy had two magical fairy godparents who would grant him any wish he wanted. But, they couldn’t violate the rules in the “DA rule book”. In this particular episode, Timmy was being harassed by his neighbor, Dr. Bender the evil dentist and his son because of his buck teeth. They would not give him his playground ball back. In order to stop all of the harassment, he wished that everybody in the world would turn into gray blobs. All of the gray blobs looked identical to one another. This wish eventually caused problems to ensue, which cause Cosmo and Wanda to lose track of who he is. Because of this, Timmy couldn’t wish the world back to normal.

Now, you probably think it was strange for a seventeen year old to remember a Nickelodeon show so vividly. From my perspective, the hidden message of this episode is that people are meant to be different. It showed what a messed up place the world would be if every single person acted and looked the same. I admire the fact that a lot of these shows on TV send a message in a humorous way. Not one single person in the world is exactly the same as another. Unfortunately, the world does not have tolerance for people that are different. Today, there is more discrimination, hate crimes and murders than ever before. Statistics have shown that the top three groups of people that experience discrimination in the twentieth century are Jews, Homosexuals, and people with disabilities. Like I said before, you can’t stop things like discrimination, but people need to learn how to deal with them in a civil manner.

There are three main people that I am writing this memoir for, the first being individuals with Asperger’s Syndrome, which I will talk about later. I want them to know that Asperger’s Syndrome does not mean that they are a “loser”, “freak”, “retard”, “sociopath”, or “psychopath”. Luke Jackson thinks of the “disorder” as a gift in his book “Freaks, Geeks, and Asperger’s Syndrome”. I think that every single Aspergian in the whole world should write a memoir of their life. Even if it is not published, it will be something that family members and friends can keep in their book shelf for a life time. I think that any person who has been through a personal struggle should write a memoir, even if it is something as small as a breakup with a boyfriend or girlfriend, or the loss of a loved one. It helps to write it on paper and write as much as you can about the situation. My second reason for writing this book is so that I can let the people in my life know about the impacts they have made on me. I am going to talk about the positive people in my life, and how they changed me, and negative experiences I’ve had with people. Some of the people I will mention won’t be happy with the things I say, I accept that. I am not trying to get revenge from these people, I just want them to know about why they made my diagnosis even more difficult to deal with. I am also going to talk about the lessons I have learned about dealing with them. I must say that I have handled some of the people I have dealt with inappropriately. I now know that the mistakes I have made with those people affected the way I interacted with my family, friends and peers. My third reason for writing this book is to give educators tips about teaching kids with an Autistic Spectrum Diagnosis. I have dealt with some really good teachers and some really bad ones throughout my eleven years in public school. Some of the bad educators I’ve dealt with still affect my way of learning today, both positively and negatively. I want them to know about the ways they have affected the way I learn and my attitude about life today. This book will take you on the journey of my life with Asperger’s Syndrome, Depression and Social Anxiety. I really hope you find this book informative and inspiring. I am sure that by the end of this book, you will realize that as Luke Jackson put it, it is a gift, not a “disorder” or “disease” as many people call it. It will show that even though kids like me have difficulties with social skills, we will be successful in life. We are not “losers”, “freaks”, “retards”, “sociopaths” and “psychopaths”.

Well it’s been a day and a half today. Jono saw an article in the Irish Daily Mail last week of a lad that had a similar back problem to him. This lad had his surgery and his back was so straight, so Jono emailed the letters page of the Daily Mail to say how great it was but how he was still waiting for surgery.

I was phoned on Friday by the Mail and asked lots of questions. So an article went in today (most of the things quoted I didn’t say….and I’ve also become a Miss!)

Anyway I was so cheesed off today that I decided to go to the Citizens Information in Sligo to see if they could suggest anything about getting surgery for Jono. They did suggest that I went to a local TD which I did and his office took details from me and said they would get back to us.

In the meantime I was speaking to a lovely lady who has offered advice before and has a good knowledge of the health service and she suggested I get legal advice.

After I got off the phone a message had been left…….from Crumlin. I phoned back and was told a date for Jonos surgery has been agreed for December 15th…..as it’s not in writing yet I’m not getting too excited. Jono is thrilled although I told him not to get his hopes up, after all we have been here before.

I am confused as to why there are so many different ways of spelling the term Asperger’s (my preferred way of spelling the name of the ASD, hence why I used it).

I’ve been wanting to write a similar blog-post to this one for a while now, and was “reminded” to create this post a few minutes ago after seeing that WrongPlanet’s Facebook Asperger’s group goes by the name “Wrong Planet Asperger Group” which contrasts from the WrongPlanet forum slogan which uses the Asperger’s spelling.

Asperger’s is very often misspelled as assbergers, assburgers, ass burgers (and various other silly spellings), so the various “proper” spelling of the word don’t really bother me – I’m simply stumped as to why there are so many ways of referring to this autism spectrum disorder.

Whether someone decides to spell it Asperger’s, Aspergers or Asperger, doesn’t matter much to me as long as people avoid using the dreaded assburgers spelling of the word (I’ve actually talked to people online who claim that they really thought the term was spelled that way.)

Posted via web from HikiCulture – A Forum for Reclusive People (and Hikikomori) {hikiculture.com site blog}

So he’s got enough brains to hack into the Pentagon computers, but not enough to stand before a court of law and answer for himself? He has a disease that somehow makes it impossible to do this. How convenient.  If you could bottle this disease and sell it, you’d make a fortune from all the people who want to wriggle and squirm their way out of the criminal justice system.

It’s not as if he’s even denying it, so he’s not looking for a trial. His mum is all over the telly, admitting that he did it. She says he didn’t want to sell state secrets; he just wanted to know about UFOs. So that’s alright then. It’s a bit like robbing the bank and then arguing that you weren’t after the money, you just wanted some of them nice rubber stamps they have for punching a mark on used cheques. This makes no sense at all. It would still be a robbery.

Now we’re told that there’s a new medical report where the doctor doesn’t argue that his disease makes it impossible for him to attend court, the doctor is arguing that it is “almost certain” that he will commit suicide if he has to go to court. Since when have medical practitioners reinvented themselves as clairvoyants? I tell you what, why don’t we release everyone from jail who threatens to commit suicide. That way the jail overcrowding crisis would be over because they’d all be completely empty.

Now we’re being told that Keith Vaz as the chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee, says that “because of the precarious state of his mental health, the committee is of the view that he should not be extradited to the USA”. So Keith isn’t concerned with the suicide threat or the extradition is unfair threat, or the UFO defence. I wonder if he has any idea of what this bloke was up to. Over a period of one year he persistently attacked NASA and Pentagon computers leaving notes such as, “US foreign policy is akin to government sponsored terrorism these days… I am SOLO. I will continue to disrupt at the highest levels.” As an example of his vandalism, on one day, he mounted an attack that shut down Internet access to 2,000 military computers for 24 hours. What’s this got to do with UFOs? He’s so far cost the US $700,000 through his vandalism. What’s that got to do with UFOs?

Meanwhile Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne attacks the home secretary for his decision. “It is appalling that this government places a higher value on a deeply unfair extradition agreement than it does on the welfare of a British citizen.” So he’s not following the UFO line, the mental health line, the suicide line. He’s on the extradition line.

The last time we had an expensive PR campaign like this was from a bunch of investment bankers who were accused of stealing millions of pounds during the collapse of the Enron Company. Their campaign was so successful at persuading people that they were being treated unfairly, regardless of the facts, that a number of Tory MPs publically joined their campaign to argue that they should avoid extradition.  Bizarre!

It’s not for Keith Vaz to decide the rule of law in this country. Nor is it Alan Johnson. It’s not for PR professionals or the tabloid press. It’s not for mothers of sons who have committed crimes, to decide the rule of the law. It’s the job of the courts to decide these matters and that’s where it should stay. The job of the Home Affairs Select Committee is to point out this fundamental principle to anyone who needs such guidance. Maybe the committee should do their job properly from now on.

This Thanksgiving I am not thankful to hear that the Home Secretary of the UK has denied Gary McKinnon his further right of appeal against his extradition to the US. Not thankful at all.

I wanted to blog this ages ago, and I’m not sure why I never did. So this is going to be a mishmash of a post, trying to fit too much in at once. Sorry. But listen, people – the European court can still intervene, so this is the last chance to protest. I’m not sure what the best way is, at this point – the Mail on Sunday has been running a campaign with a petition – though fat lot of good that’s done. Emailing the Home Secretary may be no use at this stage. Twitter, blogs, Facebook. You could do like Chrissie Hynde and Dave Gilmour, and make a record.

Gary McKinnon, in case you’ve missed it over the past seven years, is a vegetarian pacifist UFO theorist from north London who hacked into the Pentagon’s computer systems, looking for signs of a conspiracy, from 1995 to 2002. He has Asperger’s Syndrome, which if you’ve missed that, is a form of high-functioning autism characterised by high intelligence, singlemindedness, and – er – skill with things like computers. The self-described “bumbling computer nerd” became obsessed with this idea that the Pentagon was hiding evidence of UFOs, and technological things to do with free energy. “It wasn’t just an interest in little green men and flying saucers,” McKinnon said. “I believe that there are spacecraft, or there have been craft, flying around that the public doesn’t know about.”

He would sit in his girlfriend Tamsin’s auntie’s living room in Crouch End, with a beer on one side and a spliff on the other, laptop on his lap, and access the US government systems via network administrators who had no login passwords.

Yeah, you got that. Administrators who had no login passwords. He was using a perfectly legal remote access and administration software called RemotelyAnywhere, which is used by schools, etc. As he put it in an interview, basically it was like logging in.

To the Pentagon. Because administrators had not set up passwords.

“From time to time, some Nasa scientist sitting at his desk somewhere would see his cursor move for no apparent reason” – wrote Jon Ronson in an interview with McKinnon in the Guardian in 2005. “On those occasions, Gary’s connection would be abruptly cut. This would never fail to freak out the then-stoned Gary.”

2005 is the critical year, because, although Gary was caught and questioned in 2002, they never applied for extradition until 2005. They questioned him and then let him go. They even left him with his computer. Why is that? Because 2005 is when Britain, alone in the world, signed a post-9/11 anti-terrorist treaty allowing the US to extradite any UK citizen, even without evidence. The treaty, eagerly signed by Tony Blair and his lapdogs, because Donald Rumsfeld wanted them to, apparently gives the UK no say in who gets extradited to the US under this legislation. Yes, the UK has apparently signed away its right to protect its citizens. And it was done without any consultation (of course) with UK voters.

I say apparently. But all the senior judges have ruled that the Home Secretary certainly does have the right to intervene. So he is choosing not to, and using this spurious piece of legislation as an excuse.

But get this, also from the interview with Ronson:

“Once you’re on the network, you can do a command called NetStat – Network Status – and it lists all the connections to that machine. There were hackers from Denmark, Italy, Germany, Turkey, Thailand …”

“All on at once?” I ask. “You could see hackers from all over the world, snooping around, without the spaceniks or the military realising?”

“Every night,” he says, “for the entire five to seven years I was doing this.”

“Do you think they’re still there? Are they still at it? Or have they been arrested, too?”

Gary says he doesn’t know.

Elsewhere in the Guardian:

McKinnon’s search for UFO material on US computers turned into an obsession. As he investigated high-level computer systems in the US, his life in Britain fell apart. He lost his job and his girlfriend left him. Friends told him to stop hacking, but to no avail.

“I’d stopped washing at one point. I wasn’t looking after myself. I wasn’t eating properly. I was sitting around the house in my dressing gown, doing this all night,” he said.

His behaviour showed all the characteristics associated with Asperger’s syndrome – an obsession with certain activities and interests and a level of “social naivety” in evaluating the consequences of one’s actions.

Prof Simon Baron-Cohen, who diagnosed McKinnon with the condition, has said: “We should be thinking about this as the activity of somebody with a disability rather than a criminal activity.”

Then there’s this, from Ronson’s interview…

“I found a list of officers’ names,” he claims, “under the heading ‘Non-Terrestrial Officers’.”

“Non-Terrestrial Officers?” I say.

“Yeah, I looked it up,” says Gary, “and it’s nowhere. It doesn’t mean little green men. What I think it means is not earth-based. I found a list of ‘fleet-to-fleet transfers’, and a list of ship names. I looked them up. They weren’t US navy ships. What I saw made me believe they have some kind of spaceship, off-planet.”

“The Americans have a secret spaceship?” I ask.

“That’s what this trickle of evidence has led me to believe.”

“Some kind of other Mir that nobody knows about?”

“I guess so,” says Gary.

“What were the ship names?”

“I can’t remember,” says Gary. “I was smoking a lot of dope at the time. Not good for the intellect.”

This was November 2000. By now, Gary was hooked. He quit his job as a systems administrator for a small business, “which hugely pissed off my girlfriend Tamsin. It was the last straw. She dumped me and started seeing this other bloke because I was such a selfish waste of space. Poor Tamsin. And she was the one paying the phone bill because I didn’t have a job. We were still living together. God, have you ever tried living with someone after you’ve split up? It’s bad.”

Clearly typical terrorist behaviour and a major international threat. Well, the interview with Ronson is funny, and I like it – because it is very human, and it shows clearly how daft this extradition is (and how very charming, and very London, Gary McKinnon is). Daft, but potentially tragic. The television interview at the top of this post gives the full flavour of the very serious elements of this case – one fear McKinnon has voiced is of being sent to Guantanamo. Being on the wrong side of gung-ho American anti-terrorism enthusiasts is no joke. And it also comes to something when a Labour government is to the right of the flipping Mail.

Other supporters of McKinnon, incidentally, include Sarah Brown, the Prime Minister’s wife.

Lord, this is getting long. I’d almost forgotten about Boris Johnson’s wonderful column in the Telegraph - which we should appreciate, as he gets £250K a year for writing them…

He may believe in little green men (writes our moptop Mayor), but he was not operating as a fifth columnist on behalf of these Venusians. He was not trying to cripple American defences in preparation for an assault from outer space. He was simply following up a weird intuition that UFOs exist, with all the compulsiveness that he has exhibited since he was a child.

In so doing, he has generously helped America to prepare against attack from a more sinister foe. If it was so ludicrously easy to penetrate these encryptions, then what could al-Qaeda have done? Just imagine if America’s defence establishment had commissioned IT consultants to probe their systems as exhaustively as Gary McKinnon. The contract would have been worth far more than £500,000.

McKinnon did it without charge, sitting up all the night, hardly eating, smoking heavily and spending so long tap-tapping in his dressing gown that his girlfriend gave up on him. The Americans shouldn’t be threatening him with jail. They should be offering him consultancy.

Can you remember the last time you had to be around a person who has the worst manners you have ever seen? You and your family are sitting at a restaurant and one of the members of your party burps out loud, where everybody can hear them. Everybody turns around and looks, but the parents do absolutely nothing about it. After it happens, everybody continues with their meals. A few minutes pass, then the child acts up again. This time, he starts asking people inappropriate questions, the questions dealt with the three major “turn off” topics, which are sex, politics and religion. The kid is so loud that people from across the room can hear every word he is saying. Their parents pay absolutely no attention to the child, and everybody else in the restaurant gets irritated. The other customers finally had enough and they complain to the waitress. Because of the kids inappropriate behavior, they ask the party to leave without their money back.

I actually did witness something like this happen, but this time it was not a kid and the parents not paying attention to them, it was a group of college kids and their girlfriends. My family decided to go out to eat at an Applebees, and we did not enjoy our meal because of the behavior coming from these kids. I am surprised that their girlfriends didn’t even walk out on them, I most certainly would not want to be around someone who acted like that. They obviously didn’t understand this unwritten social rule. Manners is a must have skill if you want to have social interaction with people.This is rule # 5 in Temple Grandin and Shaun Barron’s “Unwritten Rules of Social Relationships”.

Temple mentioned something that I thought was pretty interesting and true, the quote from the book states “As a whole, people in our society have become ruder and cruder than ever before. People behave in social settings today in ways that would have been considered really impolite when I was growing up in the 60’s and even in the 70’s and 80’s, and it’s tolerated. Over the past twenty years or so, having good manners and being polite in social interaction — the whole idea of there being a “right” and a “wrong” way to act in social settings– has become less and less important. Fewer parents take the time to instill manners and teach proper social etiquette to their children. It’s having a ripple effect. Young parents today aren’t even conscious of some Miss Manners’ rules, which used to govern society when I was growing up”.

Asperger’s kids are not alone, there are neurotypical adults who show behavior that demonstrate a lack of social skills. A perfect example is a therapist I had to deal with when I was in about first or second grade. There were two times when she wouldn’t show up for our sessions, and she never called us and informed us she was running late. We were supposed to meet two times a week, and there was no sign of her both sessions. The next week she arrived thirty minutes late and said there was “traffic on Route 28″. I have heard from many people who traffic congestion and car troubles are both not an excuse to be late in the work world. I was scheduled to be her first client of the day, and she only lived in Kittanning, which is only about 20 minutes from Sarver. I also noticed that she would make that excuse more often as the weeks went on. That wasn’t the only issue we had with her, there was a major personality clash between her, my mother and I. Instead of teaching me social skills, she talked to me in a very threatening tone. She was only focused on reprimand me for my behaviors instead of teaching me social skills. Her attitude pretty much sounded like “I will fix that f***up if he continues acting like this. I am the boss and he does everything I say.” I told my parents I was sick of her, and we finally decided to discharge services with her. When a child demonstrates inappropriate behavior, their parents and therapists need to explain to them why the behavior was wrong and a more appropriate way of handling whatever the situation was. Parents, teachers and therapists need to also help them understand why their behavior will cause people to not want to be around them. They need to keep practicing until they get it. Repetition is a must in social skills training because later in life they may make a mistake that will help them realize why it was inappropriate. The child may not like every activity their therapist or teacher does with them, but they should realize that he or she may not function well in the work world if they continue to act the way they do. You should also teach the child that teaching them social skills is not a punishment, you are doing it to help them. Just verbally reprimanding them and saying “don’t do that again” won’t change their behavior, they will just keep doing it even more.

Remember what the word “tact” meant? The rule “Honesty Is Different From Diplomacy” goes with this rule as well. Sometimes kids with Asperger’s Syndrome are too honest and the things they say offend people. Here are some basic conversation don’ts that I have learned along the way, Temple did not mention some of these in the book.

1. Don’t ask another person about the cost of their possessions.
2. Don’t talk about the three major turn off topics (sex, politics and religion)
3. Don’t use swear words in public.
4. Don’t use swear words on social networking websites. (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter)
5. Don’t talk about people behind their back.
6. Don’t laugh about people’s age, appearance, weight, sexual orientation, etc.
7. Don’t call adults you don’t know well by their first name. (Use “Mr.”, “Mrs.” or “Ms.” instead)
8. Don’t burp, belch or pass gas any time you are around other people. (remember to apologize appropriately if it slips out)
9. Don’t make comments about another person’s bodily functions.
10. Don’t hug a person unless you are in a romantic relationship, or they are a close family member or friend.

As I have said before, teaching a child manners in social interaction is not a punishment, it is intended to help them function in life. Learning these manners will help them succeed in the social and work world. I hope you found this very interesting and informative, and I hope you will use this as a guide in the future.

we were talking and having drinks at the rooftop, our favourite place, just two friends nattering away abt this and that, but mainly abt our love for music… then we talked abt oliver sacks, his research, his book “musicophilia”… and somehow it reminded me of another brain scientist… whom i had the interesting opportunity of having met and chatted with for 4 hours into the wee hours of the morning… surreal…

i met the scientist at a seminar he was giving… i sat in the front row with my gay friend who had dragged me there becos he was training to be a psychologist… the skinny man wore a leather cap, round small spectacles – eccentricity at its most visible… after i left, he quizzed my friend abt me, and made my friend call and ask me to join them for drinks… my friend literally begged me – he was that desperate to make this connection – and even tho i was dead tired, i did it for my friend…

we had drinks and then he invited my friend and me to his hotel room for a longer chat… i was glazed over with fatigue by then but i stayed becos my friend wanted to stay… then the scientist asked me if i was attached, and i said no… he wanted to kw my views on relationships, and i blabbered something i cannot even remember… then he made me an indecent proposal – go be his girlfriend for 3 or 4 years, embark on a Ph.D at his university and he’ll pay for my studies… after which, we wld part ways and i wld be free to continue with my life as i wished…

my friend’s reaction to this was very different from mine… i viewed it with great amusement and i took everything the scientist said at literal face value… yes even tho i knew it was strange, rather an indecent proposal, since we’d only just met that day, but i did not read anything deeper into it than what he verbally proposed… whereas my friend became incensed, he was offended at the proposal, and said it indicated something very terrible abt this scientist…

i dunno… it is a strange life i hv… an unusual mind, heart, soul and spirit… i still see nothing so deeply wrong abt the indecent proposal… it was what it was, a deal, which i of course turned down… not becos i thought he was some kind of criminal psycho, but becos i just didnt fancy the man, nothing more or less… and i m now musing over my friend’s reaction to this true story of mine – i wonder what it is that he sees, which i do not and cannot?

I’ve not updated my blog much lately. I went through a break-up of sorts and didn’t really want to put the details out in the blog-o-sphere out of respect for both the situation and the woman with whom I was in the short-lived relationship. She is a very kind and beautiful woman, but the situation wasn’t a good fit for me. And ultimately, I realized that my marriage was where I want to direct all of my relationship energy. I didn’t enjoy the ups and downs of dating again, and I realized that I had what I wanted right in front of me. Yes, he has boy parts, but I love him and I don’t need random sex with random people. I just don’t.

I’ve also been working very hard at my therapy. As my last post intoned (rather “screamed”), I’m chin deep in childhood issues. Ironically, I was set to begin my first round of intensive exposure therapy next week and the topic du jour was going to be my step mom. Being the ever-suffering woman that she was she must have intuited my emotional progress and decided that it was time to step up my therapy game. So she died.

If I sound a little narcissistic right now, it might be because I’ve been rapidly studying Borderline Personality Disorders to better understand my step mom.

This revelation, that she was probably BP, came from my therapist and I am in shock of how accurate the diagnosis is. IN SHOCK. I read this scientific article, which was like a detailed description of my childhood, replete with constant verbal abuse; emotional blackmail and manipulation; happy one second, screaming the next, craziness… I can recall this woman, towering six feet tall to my cowering 5 feet, berating me, telling me that I was crazy, useless, unlovable, a bitch. I remember, in vivid detail, the silent treatment for weeks on end with no explanation. Her kicking down my bedroom door because I missed a spot when cleaning the bathroom. Her smacking me in the face for something that I wrote in my diary about her. Her tearing up the only wedding picture that I had of my parents and then denying that it ever happened. Telling me that I was delusional for thinking that she had done that. That I’m literally crazy for making up such a story. That I must have something to hide with such crazy stories. That I had a guilty conscious because I did something wrong.

She built walls between me and everyone else. I was not able to speak to my father, even though we lived in the same house. I was punished for enjoying time with my brother. I was given the silent treatment when I returned home from visitations with my mother. I was cut off from my father’s side of the family. Humiliated in front of them at family functions, but denied access to them outside of such functions. Our phone was on lockdown and I could use it for 10-minute increments and no calls after 8 pm. I was not allowed to have friends over or to visit at friend’s homes. I was not able to participate in after school activities. I was to be home immediately after school and in my bedroom as soon as got home. I was in prison. Until I was kicked out on my 18th birthday.

Where was my father during all of this? Another revelation. I think that my father had Asperger’s syndrome. He shut down completely. He couldn’t fight her. He couldn’t stand up to her. He simply retreated within himself. She broke him and he gave up. Then, in 2001, he killed himself.

Next week I am going to relive some of the highlights of this time under her “care”. How apropos, since I’ll be getting on a plane just a few days later, headed towards the home where so many people were destroyed. I’ll pack it up, tag it for sale, and open the doors for strangers to come in and take the remnants away. I will be the one who removes the last vestiges of the lives that buckled under the weight of mental illness. Where once I had no power, I will ultimately decide the fate of what was left behind. Small consolation. I wish that we could go back to the beginning and start all over again.

Marcelo Sandoval is being taken out of his comfort zone this summer.  Instead of working with ponies at Paterson school, he will be working in the mailroom at this father’s law firm.  This may not seem like a big deal, but it’s huge for Marcelo.  Marcelo is on the high-functioning end of the autism spectrum.  (His “cognitive disorder” is most closely likened to Asperger’s syndrome.)  He is not comfortable in new and unpredictable situations, he likes to have every detail planned, and he often does not understand figures of speech that others take for granted.  His father thinks Marcelo needs to learn what it’s like to live in the “real world.”  Although he may be right, Marcelo is not happy with the decision.

Marcelo eventually learns to accept his role at the law firm.  He must if he wishes to go to school at Paterson next year.  He enjoys working with Jasmine, his supervisor in the mailroom.  She is patient with him, and they become friends with each other. 

One day, while working with a file for an upcoming case, Marcelo discovers a picture of a girl with half her face destroyed.  He and Jasmine work to find the story of this girl and what it has to do with his father’s law firm.  Marcelo’s world is rocked to the core when he learns the truth and how his father played a part in this girl’s suffering.  What will Marcelo do with this information?  Will he help this girl even though it may hurt his father?  He knows he must do what is right, but he’s not sure what “right” really means.  Is it even possible for Marcelo to step so far out of his comfort zone to help a girl he doesn’t even know?  I’ll leave that for you to discover…

In this post, I’ve tried to give a little glimpse of Francisco X. Stork’s Marcelo in the Real World, and I feel like I’ve failed to paint a picture of what this book is really like.  It is an engrossing novel that allows readers to see the thought processes of someone who may not think in the ways we consider “normal.”  I found Marcelo to be a fascinating character, and I loved seeing how he developed throughout the course of this book.  At some points, I thought that more people could stand to think like Marcelo.  Oftentimes, we make life too complicated.  If we just stop and think before we speak or act, there may be far fewer problems in the world.  Marcelo is definitely a character to be admired, and I highly recommend this book to any and all readers.

i’ve been blessed with close loyal supportive friends whom i met in childhood or teenage years… but it’s been a long time since i made real true new friends… until recently… and every experience like this to an aspie girl like me is a new experience… naive? yes, i guess i never lose the wonderment of finding treasure, yet on the other hand i don’t seem to get ’smart’ about people – every person is different and i feel like that chimp in the poster sitting on the toilet bowl with the caption, “just when i figured out the answers they changed the questions” !! yep… but this makes me ever always grateful when i DO find treasure…

and i found treasure in two people… we come from totally different corners of the world… completely different growing up experiences… but somehow there has grown a genuine deeper bond inside… and i they are added to the long list of blessings that i m thankful for each day of my multi-coloured life!

Incredible!

13-year-old Francisco Hernandez Jr. spent 11 days in the month of October wandering New York’s subway system until a police officer recognized him from a missing persons’ poster.

From CNN:

Francisco Hernandez Jr., who has Asperger’s, a developmental disorder that affects the ability to socialize and communicate, disappeared on October 15, after he thought he was in trouble at school, according to his mother, Marsiela Garcia of Brooklyn.

Garcia told CNN that she contacted police when her son went missing, but received little help.

Garcia said she and her husband took matters into their own hands and posted signs and fliers around the neighborhood, in public areas, even in the subway. “Nobody told me nothing,” she said.

The teen was eventually identified by a transit police officer in the Coney Island section of New York, after the officer recognized him from the fliers that had been posted throughout the subway system. He was returned home unharmed.

Today is Wednesday, November 25, 2009.  It is the 329^th day of the year with 36 to go.

Today’s History

In 1963, the body of President John F. Kennedy was laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery.
In 2002, President George W. Bush signed legislation creating the Department of Homeland Security.

Today’s News

Daddy Daycare
An Indianapolis man has been arrested after he left his son in a tractor trailer while he went into a strip club to have a drink.  The child is five years old.  The man left the boy in the cabin of the tractor trailer watching cartoons so he could go inside and have a couple.  When he left the strip joint, he was so drunk that he couldn’t find his truck so he thought someone had stolen it.  He called the police to report the truck and his child missing.  The police informed him that the truck was still in the parking lot where he had left it.  They charged him with child neglect for leaving the child unattended in a high crime area and public intoxication. 

What do you tell your kid when he grows up?  “Hope that didn’t traumatize you, kid, sitting in the parking lot of a strip club while daddy gets his rocks off.”  The report states that the mother came to pick up the child and the husband.  I’m wondering why he didn’t just take his kid home, or call his wife and tell her to come get the kid.  Actually, I’m wondering why she just didn’t leave the husband at the jail, get her kid and just go home.  I hope she doesn’t intend to stay married to someone that would leave her child in the parking lot of a strip club.

Wanderlust
A 13-year-old boy with Asperger’s Syndrome, who had been missing for 11 days, was found wandering the subway.  Asperger’s Syndrome is similar to autism.  The boy had been at school when he ran away because he thought he was in trouble.  When the mother called the police to report him missing, they blew her off stating that many teenage children run away from home.  She tried to explain about her son’s condition.  Children with Asperger’s have difficulty socializing and communicating; they generally won’t ask for help because they are too shy to approach someone they don’t know.  The kid had a few dollars in his pocket and survived by eating lollipops and bags of chips he bought from vending stands.  When authorities found him, he was still in the same clothes he’d been wearing the day he went missing.  The mother says the police didn’t even try to help her until the boy had been missing five days because they thought he was just another runaway.

That’s messed up.  What if something had happened to that boy?  Yeah, a lot of teenagers do run away but the mother told the police that he was retarded and they pretty much blew her off.  Retarded kids run away too but mostly because they are scared and don’t know what to do.  Luckily he wasn’t too retarded because he knew enough to buy himself something to eat and he stayed in the subway system so he wasn’t exposed to the cold.  I know I couldn’t survive 11 days on the streets. 

F– Me Up, Facebook
Authorities believe a posting on Facebook encouraged some bad ass schoolchildren to beat up a boy because he had red hair.  Police found a Facebook posting declaring Friday to be “Kick a Ginger Day,” in which people were supposed to go around and kick redheads.  The red-headed boy at a middle school in California was beat up in two separate occasions on Friday.  It is possible that the Facebook posting was derived from a South Park episode.  The boy was not seriously injured and no one has been arrested.

Kick a Ginger Day…yeah.  That’s all I’ma say about that.

F– My Life, Facebook
A Canadian woman is taking her employer to court after they revoked her benefits due to some pictures she posted on Facebook.  The woman had been on extended leave because she was diagnosed as clinically depressed.  She was relying on sick leave benefits to help pay her bills, but the company stopped paying the benefits when she started posting pictures of her at parties and on vacation.  They said if she was feeling good enough to go to a party then she was feeling well enough to go back to work.  The woman claims that her shrink told her to help battle depression she should treat herself and take herself out.  The photos included Chippendale dancers, a birthday party and a beach holiday. 

More than ever people are using our social networking sites to spy on us.  I’ve recently read a story where a woman was denied her degree after she posted a picture of herself drunk at a party.  The woman was getting her teaching degree.  The school contended that the woman wouldn’t be a good candidate to be a teacher since she was getting trashed.  I completely disagree with the fact that people are using our business against us, but until there’s some kind of legislation against it, we have to protect ourselves.  Although there’s ways around everything, make your social sites private.  I guess whoever “they” are thinks we should be sitting in our houses with the lights off in order to fit into this neat little square of morality “they” have created for us.  A party is a perfectly reasonable place to be drunk, but if there had been children present, than maybe this isn’t somebody you would want to have as a teacher.  There’s a difference.  This woman was depressed, so she should probably get out, get some fresh air, enjoy life to bring her spirits up.  Or maybe, according to the insurance company, she should have sat in the house and slit her wrists, proving that she really was depressed.  People are so stupid.

Fighting Fat
Peruvian police have arrested several members of a gang that have been going around killing people for their fat.  They were using the fat for cosmetics.  The gang confessed to killing at least five people for their fat.  Two were arrested with about $60,000 worth of liquid fat in bottles.  Even though fat has a cosmetic use, there isn’t a huge black market value for the stuff.  The gang would attack a victim, kill him, and then cut off his head, arms and legs.  The organs would then be removed so that they could drain the fat into tubes.  The police are continuing to investigate the disappearance of 60 other people who may have been victims of this fat-snatching gang.

Well, there’s certainly a new way to lose weight:  have a gang member kill you and suck the fat out of your body.  All the Hollywood stars will be jumping on this one.  In the old days, they used to steal your teeth, now they want your fat.

Daddy Daycare, Part 2
A Minnesota man admitted that he spoke only Klingon (a fake alien language from Star Trek) to his child for the first three years of his life.  He said he was interested in whether the boy would acquire it like any other human language.  He said he wanted to understand how children learn languages better.  The wife spoke to the child in English.  The boy is now in high school, but the father had long since stopped speaking to him in Klingon because it was obvious the kid didn’t like it and wouldn’t respond.  He said he didn’t want to make it into a problem.

Uhm.  It already is a problem.  If I was the wife I would have been like, “Either speak a real language or I’m divorcing you.”  What if he had messed up the child’s language learning abilities?  What if the kid never learned how to speak English (or any other language) properly?  What if he developed some other mental issue?  When the boy starts swinging from the rafters pretending he is a Klingon then what?  People just don’t think.

Today’s Thought

Self is the only prison that can bind the soul. ~Henry van Dyke

No one is exactly certain how a mentally ill teenager managed to evade the long arm of the law but that was exactly the case in New York City.

For 11 days, a 13-year-old boy with Asperger’s syndrome eluded the juggernaut that is the NYPD, spending the entire time living in the city’s subway system.

Police discovered Francisco Hernandez Jr. while he was taking refuge at Coney Island subway station.

The boy, whom said that he ran away out of fear of getting in trouble at school, rode the trains while living off of vending machine goodies and water.

In spite of the positive ending, the teens mother has found reason to complain.

Marisel Garcia is adamant that police searched less than diligently for her son, sighting the fact that she is a Mexican immigrant as the reason behind her claim, even though authorities posted fliers around a majority of the city and contacted the city.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I’m heading off to Maryland to spend the holiday with my family.  I’m cooking the turkey this year.

Have a good one!

“do you remember me?”
labor and delivery
(road whys fool !)
holly reason whirling
supernaturally fast
“I didn’t like you at first”
she said
“i  now think different after speaking with
Wind Walker” ?
wing walker
Wind / Cave / Wolf.
Mother bear births
sanctity
____________
at work
voice and name
little girl playing
her friend searches;
what’s your name?
“Silence”
that name is beautiful!
“Thanks”
when do i go there?
i walked on by
the next day she said:
“wait, wait”
to her friend.

(obsessive-compulsive personality disorder )

without brakes
treeless downhill riding
intensification
the next hill up.
people recreating
watering hole
hows the water taste?
funny looks.
Native American calling me
“orange man
go deeper”

my confusion?
hot air balloon
seaside standing waves
nearly vertical up
mechanized vehicles occupied
waiting for the tide;
trapped
particulars
opened vortex.

(anxiety)

It’s not my fault. I have the assburgers.