I am proof that there is no god.
Let's take a look at what Hell is. Hell is supposed to be the most unimaginable pain for perpetuity, and so far everyone seems to think that burning alive is the worst hell imaginable. I can imagine what burning alive feels like. It's pretty fucking brutal, but compared to my life in the last year, I'd welcome having a limb or two burned off while I was forced to remain conscious. Compared to my life in the last year, it would be like an annoying itch. I realize that this is pretty fucking dark. Like 15 feet up a cows ass at midnight kind of dark. But I really want to use words to help put this into perspective.
Let's pretend for a minute that the entire fucking world communicates almost exclusively with body language. No, wait, that's reality. Let's instead see if you can imagine what it would be like to have absolutely no comprehension of body language in real time. If you're extremely lucky, you might catch on an hour or two later, If you're me, you're lucky if you manage to process what it means a week, or a month later, but usually I don't see it at all, and it doesn't matter how much time I have to process it. In addition, your greatest dream in the whole fucking world is to be a social butterfly. All you want to do is be that person that everybody knows, and everybody approaches to say hello to. Not necessarily meaning the center of attention, but just social friendly. The one person you see, that no matter what you have to go over and say at least hi.
No matter what you do, what you say, how you say it, it doesn't matter. Nobody sticks around except your family, and sometimes not even them. There's no fucking drugs in the world that will help you make friends, unless you're dealing them. This is an avenue I won't consider.
In addition, when you don't get what people are saying 'without saying anything at all, just using body language that everyone on the fucking planet speaks except you...' it's entirely your fault because you don't understand. It's always your fault no matter what you say, or how much you attempt to explain how different you are from the rest of the inhabitants on the planet. People walk out of your life, because they can't deal with your inability to read between the lines. People walk out of your life because you can't hold down a job, people walk out of your life because you're broke, people walk out of your life because you can't maintain a schedule, people walk out of your life because your intelligence intimidates them, people walk out of your life because you struggle sometimes and shut down and even though you'll walk through the fires of hell for them, and make every sacrifice you can to show them that they mean the whole fucking world to you...
The few that stick around and befriend you, are awesome, but they die. Natural causes, cancer, alcohol related accidents, murdered in cold blood. In the last year alone I've lost 2 friends, and the way things are looking, I'm gonna lose another one by Christmas. As much as I've smoked in my life, I'm probably gonna die from cancer too, but honestly, cancer is going to be a cakewalk compared to my life.
Now if there was a god, why the fuck would he have permitted me to be made? What purpose does it serve to torment me with things that will be forever outside my reach? I'm not hitler reincarnated, because if there was a god, he'd have made that bastard walk through the shoes of every Jew he exterminated. If there is a god, I'll go to heaven even if I don't believe in him. Because at the pearly gates I'll kick the shit out of him, and he'll shrug it off and say, 'yeah, I deserved that.' Because no matter what the fuck happens to me as a person, I choose to be kind, I choose to be nice, I choose to be the kind of person that everyone wants to know and everyone wants to go out of their way to say hello to.
My life feels like a tiny flame of light in a dark room, and I'm running out of oxygen.
Saturday, November 16, 2019
Friday, April 19, 2019
Abusing Hope
People talk about how terrible it is to bully or be bullied. The thing is about bullying is it makes the victim feel like shit, worthless crap, and something happened today that I want to point out is exactly the same thing as bullying. And there's got to be some kind of punishment worthy of demonstrating just how bad it is to the perpetrators of this heinous activity. It's the same thing as bullying, it's a very specific kind of bullying though, and it's brutal and vicious, and I really think that there should be some kind of consequence for it in the legal system. Some kind of mark you get, or social stigma, or some kind of punishment to fit the crime. And I really think it should be a crime. It really should be a crime to be a horrible person.
There's a thing called Catfishing, but consider exactly what that means. You are pretending to be someone or something you aren't, for your own amusement, and you are initiating a relationship under these false pretenses perpetrating this act from the safe confines of internet anonymity. There's all kinds of Catfishes. There's guys pretending to be girls, girls pretending to be a different kind of girl, and scammers across the globe pretending to be sexy willing vixens in exchange for your credit card numbers.
How is this abuse of hope any different from bullying? You're stepping into a role, filling someone with hope that finally, finally there's someone out there that understands them, someone that will truly accept them exactly how they are, and they start to believe in themselves. They start to think, hey, there's really someone out there for everyone, and then the reality comes in a sharp dose when it comes time to meet in person. Something always comes up, you're pretending to be a thing, but you aren't that thing, and this isn't the same as 'role play'. Role play is a kind of kink where both parties are aware that the reality is both of you are someone else entirely. You each take on a role, and act it out as part of a fantasy. But you're both aware that it's 'role play'. it's not real, it's not reality, and when one party is deceiving the other party, when one person pretends to be the answer to all the prayers of the other, but when reality kicks in, how is this any different from bullying?
I've found there are a lot of terrible people in the world. A lot of terrible people on the internet, and over the years I've learned to never give out any of my personal contact info until I've met someone in person, and learned that they are in fact who and what they say they are. Consider domestic abuse. it's in the same kind of bullshit thing as this subject, it's the abuse of hope, but it comes in as one party stepping into the role of being the kind benefactor, and when they have their victim safely in their trap, they scooby doo into the abusive piece of shit they really are. You've turned their hope for the good person you pretended to be into a trap to keep them entangled for a long long time.
But the people that pretend to be something they aren't, and then ghost their victim when the pieces stop adding up, you are the worst kind of person in the world. Go find a role play group, perpetrate your sinister plans on people that know what they are signing up for. Springing that shit on the unaware public...
And if you're beautiful on the outside, and you know you're beautiful Vanity Smurf, you're a real piece of work on the inside. If you're only beautiful on the outside, eventually it will fade to reflect who you really are. So be beautiful on the inside. Stop getting peoples hopes up, and destroying them for your own amusement. That makes you even uglier on the inside. If you're gonna step up and give out hope to the hopeless, don't do it in such a dirty way, because it damages your personality if you're ok with that kind of behavior. Follow through, be all the things you said you are, be the hope for another person, and teach them how to believe in themselves.
Only in service to life can we find meaning in our own.
There's a thing called Catfishing, but consider exactly what that means. You are pretending to be someone or something you aren't, for your own amusement, and you are initiating a relationship under these false pretenses perpetrating this act from the safe confines of internet anonymity. There's all kinds of Catfishes. There's guys pretending to be girls, girls pretending to be a different kind of girl, and scammers across the globe pretending to be sexy willing vixens in exchange for your credit card numbers.
How is this abuse of hope any different from bullying? You're stepping into a role, filling someone with hope that finally, finally there's someone out there that understands them, someone that will truly accept them exactly how they are, and they start to believe in themselves. They start to think, hey, there's really someone out there for everyone, and then the reality comes in a sharp dose when it comes time to meet in person. Something always comes up, you're pretending to be a thing, but you aren't that thing, and this isn't the same as 'role play'. Role play is a kind of kink where both parties are aware that the reality is both of you are someone else entirely. You each take on a role, and act it out as part of a fantasy. But you're both aware that it's 'role play'. it's not real, it's not reality, and when one party is deceiving the other party, when one person pretends to be the answer to all the prayers of the other, but when reality kicks in, how is this any different from bullying?
I've found there are a lot of terrible people in the world. A lot of terrible people on the internet, and over the years I've learned to never give out any of my personal contact info until I've met someone in person, and learned that they are in fact who and what they say they are. Consider domestic abuse. it's in the same kind of bullshit thing as this subject, it's the abuse of hope, but it comes in as one party stepping into the role of being the kind benefactor, and when they have their victim safely in their trap, they scooby doo into the abusive piece of shit they really are. You've turned their hope for the good person you pretended to be into a trap to keep them entangled for a long long time.
But the people that pretend to be something they aren't, and then ghost their victim when the pieces stop adding up, you are the worst kind of person in the world. Go find a role play group, perpetrate your sinister plans on people that know what they are signing up for. Springing that shit on the unaware public...
And if you're beautiful on the outside, and you know you're beautiful Vanity Smurf, you're a real piece of work on the inside. If you're only beautiful on the outside, eventually it will fade to reflect who you really are. So be beautiful on the inside. Stop getting peoples hopes up, and destroying them for your own amusement. That makes you even uglier on the inside. If you're gonna step up and give out hope to the hopeless, don't do it in such a dirty way, because it damages your personality if you're ok with that kind of behavior. Follow through, be all the things you said you are, be the hope for another person, and teach them how to believe in themselves.
Only in service to life can we find meaning in our own.
Wednesday, April 3, 2019
Autism, The Media, and Dogs...
I have Asperger's. That's a kind of autism, if my blog title didn't clue you in already. A lot of people think they understand it, but honestly, there's three people that really get it. First kind of people are the researchers and doctors that study what it is and how it affects the individuals that have it. The second is the parents/loved ones of the person or persons that have it, and the third are the people with it. Everyone else falls into clueless. Today's blog is kind of a rant, it's one I'm likely to repeat, but I was just kinda thinking, what could I write about today, and this topic came to mind. All three of the things in the title are related on this same rant. The question is, how do I write this so that everyone, with or without autism can completely comprehend and relate to it.
Let's start with what Autism isn't. First it's not sexually transmitted. You can't have sex with someone with autism and suddenly become autistic yourself. Yes there are people that believe this. No I'm not joking. Another thing autism isn't is violent schizophrenia. There's all these conditions in the world, mental deficiencies, psychological disorders, and downright insane people. But there are people that are all these things and they aren't autistic, and there are people that are all these things and they are autistic, which means that the AUTISM doesn't play a part in all of these disorders or behaviors.
Yes, Autistics generally aren't known for their ability to walk a mile in someone else's shoes. But that doesn't mean that we can't learn that ability. I've struggled with this my whole life, and I find myself using the phrase often with someone I've been trying to teach about the world and being a better person in it. Think about it from my perspective. Think about it from the other persons perspective. If someone did this to you, how would you feel?
Which brings me to a very important thing. You can be an emotional eunuch without being autistic. You can be completely oblivious and uncaring about anyone but yourself, and not be autistic. It's called Narcissism. There's a lot of you fuckers in the world. Me me me me me me me, me me me, me me, me. I can say I've been selfish from time to time in my life, but it's not a constant. It's not a defining attribute about me. People that are selfish all the time, are people I can't understand.
Consider the following scenario: You're in a checkout lane at a grocery store, you've allocated yourself time to go in and do a grand shopping trip, and based on my own experiences, when you're finished, you do want to get home and start eating all these yummy things you're trading your money for, but consider this. Big shopping takes time. It's not like a pop in, buy 15 items or less, and get out. It's going to take as long as it's going to take, and it doesn't end until you get the groceries put away at home. Now my question is, are you selfish? Do you want to know if you are selfish or not? You're in the store, and you've probably got $180 worth of groceries in a full cart. You're checking out in the lane where there's one person in front of you, and they are almost finished unloading their cart onto the belt. Behind you is someone with a hand basket with 5-6 items. Unprompted, do you offer to let them cut in front of you in the line?
A truly selfless act I believe requires a personal sacrifice for no reason. In the example above, you are sacrificing about a minute and a half of your time, for a stranger that's probably on their lunch break trying to get in and out as fast as possible. But this doesn't prove that you are or aren't selfish. This only proves how self absorbed you are, and through that realization, you can discover if you are or are not selfish. Because if you observe what the person is buying, if you realize they are probably on their lunch break, and you simply don't give a fuck, and think for even an instant, they should have gone to a different store, you're likely a self absorbed selfish prick.
Autistics tend to be self absorbed for a different reason however. It's not about the value of their time, it's about stimulation. Specifically over stimulation. For the Neuro-Typical, (NT - aka Not Autistic Person) Imagine that your senses have two settings. All the way on, and all the way off. For this example lets use a TV that you're sitting 3 feet away from. Imagine that you can watch that TV with the sound completely muted, or with the volume all the way up, like your eardrums are going to rupture loud. Imagine that the brightness settings are the same way, you can see it barely with the bright all the way up, so bright it hurts your eyes, and so dark you can't see it. Imagine that odors are super intense, like you're physically shoving everything you smell up your nose, and taste is brutally sensitive as well. Lastly, every thing that touches you hurts you. Certain fabrics are like wearing a coat made of pins, and being touched even the gentlest way feels like someone is hitting you with a hammer. When everything hurts, sometimes it's best to just shut it all off and think a while.
So maybe you'll give Autistics a bit more of some leeway, which brings me to my next point.
The Media. But to really explore the damage they've dealt to the public opinion, I have to skip ahead and talk about dogs.
I want to say I was about 8 or 9, and I went to Nevada to visit my grandparents on my father's side. They took us to Toys R Us in Las Vegas, and our budget was $25 each. I don't remember everything we got, but I bought a jigsaw puzzle that I really enjoyed, and my sister bought a red ball, the kind of ball that schools generally use as kick balls, and for the truly sadistic, dodge ball. This was around the time when Pit Bulls were being demonized. This is really important information. Anyways, I was playing with my sister, and we were kicking the ball back and forth in this trailer park, and she accidentally kicked it into the neighbors yard. It was a low fence, and we tried to knock on the door of the house to get the owners to return the ball, it was a low chain link fence, the kind I could step over now being 6'4", and the yard had three pit bulls in it. Here's where things are interesting. These dogs were being trained to grab and hold, grab and hold, and not let go, until given the order from their master. We'd watched them being trained, and they were loose in that yard, and I went after the ball.
I climbed the fence, and these three pits came over to me, and they were the sweetest dogs. They didn't growl at me, they didn't bark, they didn't even try to bite me. I grabbed the ball, and tossed it back over the fence before hopping back over myself. Then later my grandparents found out from a neighbor I guess what I'd done, and I got spanked because I could have lost my life, because pit bulls are dangerous animals, that should not be trusted around children, or anyone else.
People Demonize what they either do not understand, or refuse to. Dobermans, Rottweilers, and German Sheperds have all had their turn at being a scapegoat for people's fears. And then the Pit Bulls. And what pray tell does this have to do with Autism and media? Let's look at dogs again for just a moment. What is the most aggressive breed of dog? Any guesses? It's the Chihuahua. But who's afraid of a dog you can kick for a field goal? So because people either don't understand, or choose not to understand, all these big dogs get a bad name. Someone does something bad to a dog, or treats them in a way that they learn to be aggressive, where they have no choice but to be aggressive, where they are hurt, and scared, and the desire to attack is more as a defensive reflex out of fear. And the worst creatures in existence that act out of fear of the unknown is human kind.
So why is the media on my shit list? Because they demonize whatever and whomever without regard to the repercussions or the consequences. If they screw up, they can issue an apology, but there's a problem with society, and an apology for misinformation just isn't good enough. Not in this digital age when the information is literally available at our fingertips, and the speed at which it is available is increasing exponentially every time technology advances. 10 years ago, our technology was advancing so fast that if you bought a brand new computer from best buy, it would be obsolete in 2 years. Every day new technology arrives that allows us to do things faster and better than before, and the media thinks a simple apology is enough for misinformation, or opinions that have no basis in fact.
We as a society on this planet have a serious problem, and it lies in the education of the people on the planet. What's truly horrifying is that humans have a right to choose ignorance. There's a desire to learn in every living entity on this planet. This kinda delves into Darwinism and warning labels, but honestly, the planet would probably be better off without warning labels. Either learn from your mistakes or the mistakes of others, or die. People make mistakes, but how many times must the media continue to make the same stupid mistakes before they realize that they shouldn't be making 'that' mistake any more. Every living thing learns from it's experience. Trees learn where water is, trees will break into water mains to get access to water. Carnivores learn where to find their prey, and the best ways to catch them so they can eat. The prey learns from the mistakes of their peers, and they learn to survive in their own way. We are both predator and prey, and we can be hunted or do the hunting. There are large predators in the world, large carnivores that will happily eat people. There are large herbivores that will kill you because you piss them off, or they may kill you out of fear, because once upon a time, another human did them harm, and therefore they decide that all humans are bad. These animals are stereotyping us, because they learn from their bad experiences, and they decide unilaterally that one bad human means we are all bad humans. There's a state in the US where calling in Moose to work is a perfectly reasonable excuse. Because a moose in your front yard, or in your driveway, may decide to take offense to your vehicle, and or you, or your pets, and they will stomp you to death. That's right, there's Herbivores in North America that would just as soon kill you as look at you, and there's no malice, or murder in their intent, but it's all a learned response to an experience they had when they were a tiny herbivore.
Want to be a vegan that hates guns? Fine. Live in a city where it's safe, and don't go declaring war on Donkeys because you let your yappy chihuahua out of the car when there was a wild donkey. It's your fault you let that aggressive breed out of your car, and it's your fault that the Wild Ass took offense to your puntable, and it's your fault that Donkey stomped your precious 'Duke' into the dirt. Because we may be the dominant species on the planet, but if you were to sample humanity, depending on where you slice that pie, I'd say at least a third of it is full of dumb ass ignorant people who choose to be so self absorbed in their own little worlds that their perpetual ignorance becomes a way of life. A choice where ignorance of their potential, is a valid choice.
And what's more terrible that freely exercising the right to be ignorant? Living in a place where the choice to be ignorant, is not even questioned or challenged by the people in charge of 'Education'. Some students excel, and some fall in the cracks. Some aren't challenged enough, some are challenged too much, and then there's that happy slice that graduates Magna Cum Laude from the preschool of their parent's choice. Getting first place for participation isn't doing anyone any favors, and just think, some of those people are 'all growed up' and in society at large. And you wonder why certain education systems are absolute garbage. But I've digressed a bit to make my point.
People Choose Ignorance, and then they apologize for it later. Here's the problem. Breaking news story, all eyes in the nation are focused on that live television show, and the reporters callously remark that this youth took an extreme route through life, he picked up a gun, and he chose to kill people with it, and it must be because he's Autistic. I stopped watching the news after that. I just stopped watching the news, or even bothering with any kind of live broadcast. People Shunned me that I'd known for a few years, they just dropped right through the cracks of life because I'm autistic, and I struggle with depression, and holding down a job, and having a purpose, so therefore I'm a violent schizophrenic, and one of these days, I'm just gonna snap and that's gonna be that.
I was raised around guns. I've taken a hunter's safety course, and graduated it. I'm not afraid of guns, but I'm respectful of a tool that could kill in an instant if mishandled. The current education in this country in regard to firearms is disgusting. Having a gun, owning, it, holding it, having it in your possession like it's a demonic tool that will possess you and compel you to open fire in a school. This is all media hype and bullshit. Ignorance of society, Ignorance of humans, The Choice to remain ignorant should be illegal. One of my Liberal friends says that if you purchase a gun, you're purchasing the gun with the intent to commit murder. This is the kind of argument that makes my head hurt. It's the same kind of argument I had with someone else within the last few years who declared in all seriousness that if the United States of America legally permits same sex couples to marry, then the Government of the United States will enforce that only same sex couples may ever get married. The logic behind these ideas is so skewed I simply cannot comprehend how a = b.
Now in the interest of fairness, the gun idea, is a really crude raw boil down of a thought or idea, and I can see the logic of some of it, however, I propose this line instead. Imagine you are in a situation where you require a gun for the safety of yourself or someone else. Imagine you require it to kill a herbivore that has decided that you're 'Duke' and has taken offense to sounds coming out of your mouth, and has decided that you should become one with the Earth in a very literal, brutal and graphic way. Would you prefer to have access to a firearm that you are familiar with using, or hope that the fetal position will some how convey to a Moose that you mean it no harm, even though the last time that Moose saw a human being, it got grazed by a hunter that didn't have enough experience or practice with his firearm to get a shot through the center mass where the heart and lungs are, and it now associates every human it sees as a threat of the highest order.
So this is one of the Liberal view points on firearms. You buy a gun, you are purchasing it for the purpose of murdering something, eventually. Eventually you intend to murder something when you buy a gun. The logic behind this is like choosing to go camping without a tent, food, clothes, or any way to make fire in the arctic circle in wintertime. Liberals can't seem to grasp the concept of being prepared vs being caught by a Moose with a very very bad attitude, or perhaps in the northwest woods when the wolves get hungry and you look tasty. They can't even begin to understand that being prepared for a possibility isn't the same as pre-meditated murder. The irony of this logic, is that Liberal friend owns a shotgun, and knows how to use it for the purpose of defending life, liberty, and property.
Choosing ignorance, you turned that TV on when there was breaking news, and you heard that news caster then say Autistics are unstable and their mental state can't be trusted. But did you turn on the TV later that night when they apologized and stated that the opinions of their newscasters don't actually reflect the views of the station, nor are they even based in any actual hard facts? No, you were asleep, you were living your life, but you remember now that Autistics are dangerous and mentally unstable, and then you take your stereo type out and proceed to make judgements on every person that is Autistic, and thank god for civilized society, because otherwise I can see a possibility where humans go on another witch hunt and deprive an entire slice of humanity of their basic unalienable human rights because some newscaster said Autistic's are dangerous and mentally unstable. And to circle back to another point. Every living thing desires to learn. You in your ignorance learned on breaking news that Autistic's are dangerous people and should never have access to a gun, because they will kill someone with it. It's in their nature, and you know it's true because it's a nationally recognized news media outlet and if they said it, it must be the truth. After all, they do their fact checking.
Most Autistics I know, and I know more than I can count on my fingers and toes, are all very logical people. The comparison has been made more than once that we are almost Vulcan in the way we behave and approach things. Our social graces, or rather lack thereof, are built in. We don't generally speak body language, and we have to learn to speak it because there's a hundred little hidden meanings that we rarely catch during the actual interaction. Later we may reflect on our experience, and log it for future reference.
Using the Vulcan reference, I want you to imagine Spock picking up a phaser pistol and murdering all the people on the enterprise just because he's having a bad time.
We aren't dangerous, or mentally unstable. I do find it difficult communicating with people that aren't autistic. They don't seem to understand that we're speaking words, and they try to read our body language instead, and mistakenly reading that instead of the words we say, even if we repeatedly, ad nauseum, till we are blue in the face tell people to just take our words at the value of the words, and not at the value of what our body language is saying, because more oft than not, whatever body language we're broadcasting is unknown, and we aren't thinking about that, we're thinking about how to communicate with the apes in a common language we should both understand.
So take everything you read with a grain of salt. Believe nothing you hear, and Half of what you see. And for fucks sake, fact check. And while we're on the subject, Vaccinations don't cause Autism. Not getting your child inoculated doesn't mean you aren't going to have an autistic child, it just means you're probably gonna have a dead one.
Ignorance is a choice. Don't make it yours.
Let's start with what Autism isn't. First it's not sexually transmitted. You can't have sex with someone with autism and suddenly become autistic yourself. Yes there are people that believe this. No I'm not joking. Another thing autism isn't is violent schizophrenia. There's all these conditions in the world, mental deficiencies, psychological disorders, and downright insane people. But there are people that are all these things and they aren't autistic, and there are people that are all these things and they are autistic, which means that the AUTISM doesn't play a part in all of these disorders or behaviors.
Yes, Autistics generally aren't known for their ability to walk a mile in someone else's shoes. But that doesn't mean that we can't learn that ability. I've struggled with this my whole life, and I find myself using the phrase often with someone I've been trying to teach about the world and being a better person in it. Think about it from my perspective. Think about it from the other persons perspective. If someone did this to you, how would you feel?
Which brings me to a very important thing. You can be an emotional eunuch without being autistic. You can be completely oblivious and uncaring about anyone but yourself, and not be autistic. It's called Narcissism. There's a lot of you fuckers in the world. Me me me me me me me, me me me, me me, me. I can say I've been selfish from time to time in my life, but it's not a constant. It's not a defining attribute about me. People that are selfish all the time, are people I can't understand.
Consider the following scenario: You're in a checkout lane at a grocery store, you've allocated yourself time to go in and do a grand shopping trip, and based on my own experiences, when you're finished, you do want to get home and start eating all these yummy things you're trading your money for, but consider this. Big shopping takes time. It's not like a pop in, buy 15 items or less, and get out. It's going to take as long as it's going to take, and it doesn't end until you get the groceries put away at home. Now my question is, are you selfish? Do you want to know if you are selfish or not? You're in the store, and you've probably got $180 worth of groceries in a full cart. You're checking out in the lane where there's one person in front of you, and they are almost finished unloading their cart onto the belt. Behind you is someone with a hand basket with 5-6 items. Unprompted, do you offer to let them cut in front of you in the line?
A truly selfless act I believe requires a personal sacrifice for no reason. In the example above, you are sacrificing about a minute and a half of your time, for a stranger that's probably on their lunch break trying to get in and out as fast as possible. But this doesn't prove that you are or aren't selfish. This only proves how self absorbed you are, and through that realization, you can discover if you are or are not selfish. Because if you observe what the person is buying, if you realize they are probably on their lunch break, and you simply don't give a fuck, and think for even an instant, they should have gone to a different store, you're likely a self absorbed selfish prick.
Autistics tend to be self absorbed for a different reason however. It's not about the value of their time, it's about stimulation. Specifically over stimulation. For the Neuro-Typical, (NT - aka Not Autistic Person) Imagine that your senses have two settings. All the way on, and all the way off. For this example lets use a TV that you're sitting 3 feet away from. Imagine that you can watch that TV with the sound completely muted, or with the volume all the way up, like your eardrums are going to rupture loud. Imagine that the brightness settings are the same way, you can see it barely with the bright all the way up, so bright it hurts your eyes, and so dark you can't see it. Imagine that odors are super intense, like you're physically shoving everything you smell up your nose, and taste is brutally sensitive as well. Lastly, every thing that touches you hurts you. Certain fabrics are like wearing a coat made of pins, and being touched even the gentlest way feels like someone is hitting you with a hammer. When everything hurts, sometimes it's best to just shut it all off and think a while.
So maybe you'll give Autistics a bit more of some leeway, which brings me to my next point.
The Media. But to really explore the damage they've dealt to the public opinion, I have to skip ahead and talk about dogs.
I want to say I was about 8 or 9, and I went to Nevada to visit my grandparents on my father's side. They took us to Toys R Us in Las Vegas, and our budget was $25 each. I don't remember everything we got, but I bought a jigsaw puzzle that I really enjoyed, and my sister bought a red ball, the kind of ball that schools generally use as kick balls, and for the truly sadistic, dodge ball. This was around the time when Pit Bulls were being demonized. This is really important information. Anyways, I was playing with my sister, and we were kicking the ball back and forth in this trailer park, and she accidentally kicked it into the neighbors yard. It was a low fence, and we tried to knock on the door of the house to get the owners to return the ball, it was a low chain link fence, the kind I could step over now being 6'4", and the yard had three pit bulls in it. Here's where things are interesting. These dogs were being trained to grab and hold, grab and hold, and not let go, until given the order from their master. We'd watched them being trained, and they were loose in that yard, and I went after the ball.
I climbed the fence, and these three pits came over to me, and they were the sweetest dogs. They didn't growl at me, they didn't bark, they didn't even try to bite me. I grabbed the ball, and tossed it back over the fence before hopping back over myself. Then later my grandparents found out from a neighbor I guess what I'd done, and I got spanked because I could have lost my life, because pit bulls are dangerous animals, that should not be trusted around children, or anyone else.
People Demonize what they either do not understand, or refuse to. Dobermans, Rottweilers, and German Sheperds have all had their turn at being a scapegoat for people's fears. And then the Pit Bulls. And what pray tell does this have to do with Autism and media? Let's look at dogs again for just a moment. What is the most aggressive breed of dog? Any guesses? It's the Chihuahua. But who's afraid of a dog you can kick for a field goal? So because people either don't understand, or choose not to understand, all these big dogs get a bad name. Someone does something bad to a dog, or treats them in a way that they learn to be aggressive, where they have no choice but to be aggressive, where they are hurt, and scared, and the desire to attack is more as a defensive reflex out of fear. And the worst creatures in existence that act out of fear of the unknown is human kind.
So why is the media on my shit list? Because they demonize whatever and whomever without regard to the repercussions or the consequences. If they screw up, they can issue an apology, but there's a problem with society, and an apology for misinformation just isn't good enough. Not in this digital age when the information is literally available at our fingertips, and the speed at which it is available is increasing exponentially every time technology advances. 10 years ago, our technology was advancing so fast that if you bought a brand new computer from best buy, it would be obsolete in 2 years. Every day new technology arrives that allows us to do things faster and better than before, and the media thinks a simple apology is enough for misinformation, or opinions that have no basis in fact.
We as a society on this planet have a serious problem, and it lies in the education of the people on the planet. What's truly horrifying is that humans have a right to choose ignorance. There's a desire to learn in every living entity on this planet. This kinda delves into Darwinism and warning labels, but honestly, the planet would probably be better off without warning labels. Either learn from your mistakes or the mistakes of others, or die. People make mistakes, but how many times must the media continue to make the same stupid mistakes before they realize that they shouldn't be making 'that' mistake any more. Every living thing learns from it's experience. Trees learn where water is, trees will break into water mains to get access to water. Carnivores learn where to find their prey, and the best ways to catch them so they can eat. The prey learns from the mistakes of their peers, and they learn to survive in their own way. We are both predator and prey, and we can be hunted or do the hunting. There are large predators in the world, large carnivores that will happily eat people. There are large herbivores that will kill you because you piss them off, or they may kill you out of fear, because once upon a time, another human did them harm, and therefore they decide that all humans are bad. These animals are stereotyping us, because they learn from their bad experiences, and they decide unilaterally that one bad human means we are all bad humans. There's a state in the US where calling in Moose to work is a perfectly reasonable excuse. Because a moose in your front yard, or in your driveway, may decide to take offense to your vehicle, and or you, or your pets, and they will stomp you to death. That's right, there's Herbivores in North America that would just as soon kill you as look at you, and there's no malice, or murder in their intent, but it's all a learned response to an experience they had when they were a tiny herbivore.
Want to be a vegan that hates guns? Fine. Live in a city where it's safe, and don't go declaring war on Donkeys because you let your yappy chihuahua out of the car when there was a wild donkey. It's your fault you let that aggressive breed out of your car, and it's your fault that the Wild Ass took offense to your puntable, and it's your fault that Donkey stomped your precious 'Duke' into the dirt. Because we may be the dominant species on the planet, but if you were to sample humanity, depending on where you slice that pie, I'd say at least a third of it is full of dumb ass ignorant people who choose to be so self absorbed in their own little worlds that their perpetual ignorance becomes a way of life. A choice where ignorance of their potential, is a valid choice.
And what's more terrible that freely exercising the right to be ignorant? Living in a place where the choice to be ignorant, is not even questioned or challenged by the people in charge of 'Education'. Some students excel, and some fall in the cracks. Some aren't challenged enough, some are challenged too much, and then there's that happy slice that graduates Magna Cum Laude from the preschool of their parent's choice. Getting first place for participation isn't doing anyone any favors, and just think, some of those people are 'all growed up' and in society at large. And you wonder why certain education systems are absolute garbage. But I've digressed a bit to make my point.
People Choose Ignorance, and then they apologize for it later. Here's the problem. Breaking news story, all eyes in the nation are focused on that live television show, and the reporters callously remark that this youth took an extreme route through life, he picked up a gun, and he chose to kill people with it, and it must be because he's Autistic. I stopped watching the news after that. I just stopped watching the news, or even bothering with any kind of live broadcast. People Shunned me that I'd known for a few years, they just dropped right through the cracks of life because I'm autistic, and I struggle with depression, and holding down a job, and having a purpose, so therefore I'm a violent schizophrenic, and one of these days, I'm just gonna snap and that's gonna be that.
I was raised around guns. I've taken a hunter's safety course, and graduated it. I'm not afraid of guns, but I'm respectful of a tool that could kill in an instant if mishandled. The current education in this country in regard to firearms is disgusting. Having a gun, owning, it, holding it, having it in your possession like it's a demonic tool that will possess you and compel you to open fire in a school. This is all media hype and bullshit. Ignorance of society, Ignorance of humans, The Choice to remain ignorant should be illegal. One of my Liberal friends says that if you purchase a gun, you're purchasing the gun with the intent to commit murder. This is the kind of argument that makes my head hurt. It's the same kind of argument I had with someone else within the last few years who declared in all seriousness that if the United States of America legally permits same sex couples to marry, then the Government of the United States will enforce that only same sex couples may ever get married. The logic behind these ideas is so skewed I simply cannot comprehend how a = b.
Now in the interest of fairness, the gun idea, is a really crude raw boil down of a thought or idea, and I can see the logic of some of it, however, I propose this line instead. Imagine you are in a situation where you require a gun for the safety of yourself or someone else. Imagine you require it to kill a herbivore that has decided that you're 'Duke' and has taken offense to sounds coming out of your mouth, and has decided that you should become one with the Earth in a very literal, brutal and graphic way. Would you prefer to have access to a firearm that you are familiar with using, or hope that the fetal position will some how convey to a Moose that you mean it no harm, even though the last time that Moose saw a human being, it got grazed by a hunter that didn't have enough experience or practice with his firearm to get a shot through the center mass where the heart and lungs are, and it now associates every human it sees as a threat of the highest order.
So this is one of the Liberal view points on firearms. You buy a gun, you are purchasing it for the purpose of murdering something, eventually. Eventually you intend to murder something when you buy a gun. The logic behind this is like choosing to go camping without a tent, food, clothes, or any way to make fire in the arctic circle in wintertime. Liberals can't seem to grasp the concept of being prepared vs being caught by a Moose with a very very bad attitude, or perhaps in the northwest woods when the wolves get hungry and you look tasty. They can't even begin to understand that being prepared for a possibility isn't the same as pre-meditated murder. The irony of this logic, is that Liberal friend owns a shotgun, and knows how to use it for the purpose of defending life, liberty, and property.
Choosing ignorance, you turned that TV on when there was breaking news, and you heard that news caster then say Autistics are unstable and their mental state can't be trusted. But did you turn on the TV later that night when they apologized and stated that the opinions of their newscasters don't actually reflect the views of the station, nor are they even based in any actual hard facts? No, you were asleep, you were living your life, but you remember now that Autistics are dangerous and mentally unstable, and then you take your stereo type out and proceed to make judgements on every person that is Autistic, and thank god for civilized society, because otherwise I can see a possibility where humans go on another witch hunt and deprive an entire slice of humanity of their basic unalienable human rights because some newscaster said Autistic's are dangerous and mentally unstable. And to circle back to another point. Every living thing desires to learn. You in your ignorance learned on breaking news that Autistic's are dangerous people and should never have access to a gun, because they will kill someone with it. It's in their nature, and you know it's true because it's a nationally recognized news media outlet and if they said it, it must be the truth. After all, they do their fact checking.
Most Autistics I know, and I know more than I can count on my fingers and toes, are all very logical people. The comparison has been made more than once that we are almost Vulcan in the way we behave and approach things. Our social graces, or rather lack thereof, are built in. We don't generally speak body language, and we have to learn to speak it because there's a hundred little hidden meanings that we rarely catch during the actual interaction. Later we may reflect on our experience, and log it for future reference.
Using the Vulcan reference, I want you to imagine Spock picking up a phaser pistol and murdering all the people on the enterprise just because he's having a bad time.
We aren't dangerous, or mentally unstable. I do find it difficult communicating with people that aren't autistic. They don't seem to understand that we're speaking words, and they try to read our body language instead, and mistakenly reading that instead of the words we say, even if we repeatedly, ad nauseum, till we are blue in the face tell people to just take our words at the value of the words, and not at the value of what our body language is saying, because more oft than not, whatever body language we're broadcasting is unknown, and we aren't thinking about that, we're thinking about how to communicate with the apes in a common language we should both understand.
So take everything you read with a grain of salt. Believe nothing you hear, and Half of what you see. And for fucks sake, fact check. And while we're on the subject, Vaccinations don't cause Autism. Not getting your child inoculated doesn't mean you aren't going to have an autistic child, it just means you're probably gonna have a dead one.
Ignorance is a choice. Don't make it yours.
Tuesday, April 2, 2019
Well it's been a while. A really long while, and I decided I should probably listen to my therapist and journal. Honestly I don't mind making a journal in this manner, as it will at least leave a memory of my passing, although once I eventually die, I doubt there will be anything really memorable at all remaining here. Whatever. I'm here now. Might as well make the best of it.
Right now I'm frustrated with a thing I have no control over. To really put things in perspective I have to skip around a moment. It's important to my thought process. More than a few years back, and to be honest I don't know how exactly it came to be, but I was stressing a lot about a lot and I think maybe I read something, or it was a suggestion from someone, I don't remember, but I figured out a long time ago how to reduce my stress levels. (And to be clear, I'm not taking credit for it, because I can't remember when I started using it, or even if it was my own idea or not).
What I do is I make a list of everything I'm concerned about, everything. From chores to interpersonal relations, bills, repairs, anything I need to do. I then break this list up into two lists. First is a list of things I can control, and the second is a list of things I can't control. Things that go on the second are like, waiting for a doctor to call back, or waiting for someone else to do something before I can move forward on the task. Like right now, I'm waiting to see what my finances are going to be this month before I buy another part my house needs. that's a second list item at this step.
Once I separate what I can do, and can't do, I toss aside the second list. No point in stressing over what I can't control. Then I take the list of things I can control, and I break it down into two more lists. The first list is things that I absolutely have to take care of right meow today, and the second is things I can put off for later, or things I should put off for later. When that's done, I set the second list aside and then try to prioritize the first list. I put them in order of importance, and try to take care of them in order, one at a time, and if I'm feeling ambitious, which to be honest isn't often these days, I'll pick up that second list and break it down further, into things I can put off, and things I probably shouldn't put off, and try to tackle the list of things I shouldn't put off, not in any particular order.
So back to the thing I have no control over that is frustrating me.
I've struggled with depression most of my life. I'm struggling with it now. There's a few parts in my life that are problematic. Like my ability to maintain employment. Specifically I should word that as my inability to maintain employment. Alright, I'll delve into a much deeper post, and for those of you that don't want to wait around... I'm frustrated with a prescribing doctors inability to listen and comprehend. I hate how someone with a phd knows more about my body than I do.
The issue is a medication called Aplenzin. For those that don't know, it's basically another formulation of Wellbutrin. Consider that wellbutrin and it's generics are buproprion coupled with hydrochloride, whereas Aplenzin is buproprion coupled with hydrobromide. While the main component is buproprion, when I take wellbutrin or any of its generics I don't want to eat, and eating anything at all makes me nauseated. So it's something I have to take with food, but then the moment it's in my stomach it's an uncomfortable fight to keep everything, including the meds in my stomach.
While the aplenzin doesn't affect my appetite, and I can eat or not eat when I take it, and other than intermittent aphasia it doesn't have any severe side effects for me worth mentioning. Guess which one they prescribed me. Well Walgreens, you've just wasted your time counting out those pills, printing a label, and putting it in a bottle. I won't be taking any buproprion sr. Personally even if I lose my ability to speak, for the rest of my life, being able to function I think would be a worthwhile trade.
And this is all coming in at the end of a trial of Latuda. Honestly, if I wanted to feel like shit and feel sick all the time, I'd go become a teacher in a gradeschool. Children are walking petri dishes of questionable origin. Take the pill at night because it causes drowsiness, for about 3 hours... and then, I'm wide awake and I have to move, or I swear my skin is going to leave without me. and after another 4 hours of skin crawling have to move or else feeling, I finally get to sleep, but it's a tooth and nail fight the whole way. I've tried taking it in the morning, but that just makes me feel worse, since I have to eat to take the pill.
And then there's that fun side effect of pretty much every anti-depressant. Sex drive becomes non-existent. Eventually my age is going to do that in anyways, and it's not like I have a partner right now, but there's very few pleasures in life for someone that is depressed as it is, and the dr's think that taking away one of them is a good idea when someone is depressed? Honestly, just how far up your own asses are your heads? Does it smell funny to you? Do you enjoy the taste? I just can't seem to wrap my head around doctors that prescribe medication, and big pharma that send these compounds of questionable origin out into the world. And here's a terrible true thing to say about big pharma. If it was really their goal to help people, medication would be cheaper. Each pill of aplenzin at the dose I used to take is now worth north of $500.00. That's $15 THOUSAND Dollars for a 30 day supply. No wonder my insurance doesn't want to cover it.
I read an article recently about willing yourself to die. There's 5 stages of willing yourself to die, and I cover the first 3 all day every day. Stage 4 is waking up and your body saying, hey, it's time to shit, and you say, go for it, I don't care, I'm not moving. So at stage 4 you're willingly lying in your own excrement. I'm not quite there yet. The only reason I get out of bed in the morning, isn't because I don't want to crap all over myself, it's because I don't want to clean it up. And there are some days when that's the only reason I get out of bed, just long enough to use the facilities, and then back to bed.
It's a shitty place to exist, and that's why I'm entertaining the idea to take anti-depressants again. But I just don't know. I just don't know about what to do about my life, or really anything at all right now. There's things on my list that I really need to do today. And I'm not doing them. Every day it's the same task sitting there waiting for me to do it, but I just don't want to. I just don't care to. It's beyond my ability, and I can't force myself to it. Even this trial of Latuda didn't help me get it done.
I want to be social, I want to have lots of friends, but seems I can't even manage that. The few people I try to befriend are more fucked up than I am, and I get burned by them constantly. And I keep reaching my hand out. I don't know what my purpose is, I don't really know why I'm here, but it just feels like I don't have a purpose. There's really no reason for me to be here. I consume resources and make nothing but excrement. Yep, that's my mindset after 7 days on latuda. Great med there. Not only do you get to remain feeling like total shit because of your depression, but it'll help you feel like shit physically as well as causing anal leakage so you're just one step closer to stage 4.
I'm so frustrated. I don't want to live like this, and I don't currently have any say in the matter.
Right now I'm frustrated with a thing I have no control over. To really put things in perspective I have to skip around a moment. It's important to my thought process. More than a few years back, and to be honest I don't know how exactly it came to be, but I was stressing a lot about a lot and I think maybe I read something, or it was a suggestion from someone, I don't remember, but I figured out a long time ago how to reduce my stress levels. (And to be clear, I'm not taking credit for it, because I can't remember when I started using it, or even if it was my own idea or not).
What I do is I make a list of everything I'm concerned about, everything. From chores to interpersonal relations, bills, repairs, anything I need to do. I then break this list up into two lists. First is a list of things I can control, and the second is a list of things I can't control. Things that go on the second are like, waiting for a doctor to call back, or waiting for someone else to do something before I can move forward on the task. Like right now, I'm waiting to see what my finances are going to be this month before I buy another part my house needs. that's a second list item at this step.
Once I separate what I can do, and can't do, I toss aside the second list. No point in stressing over what I can't control. Then I take the list of things I can control, and I break it down into two more lists. The first list is things that I absolutely have to take care of right meow today, and the second is things I can put off for later, or things I should put off for later. When that's done, I set the second list aside and then try to prioritize the first list. I put them in order of importance, and try to take care of them in order, one at a time, and if I'm feeling ambitious, which to be honest isn't often these days, I'll pick up that second list and break it down further, into things I can put off, and things I probably shouldn't put off, and try to tackle the list of things I shouldn't put off, not in any particular order.
So back to the thing I have no control over that is frustrating me.
I've struggled with depression most of my life. I'm struggling with it now. There's a few parts in my life that are problematic. Like my ability to maintain employment. Specifically I should word that as my inability to maintain employment. Alright, I'll delve into a much deeper post, and for those of you that don't want to wait around... I'm frustrated with a prescribing doctors inability to listen and comprehend. I hate how someone with a phd knows more about my body than I do.
The issue is a medication called Aplenzin. For those that don't know, it's basically another formulation of Wellbutrin. Consider that wellbutrin and it's generics are buproprion coupled with hydrochloride, whereas Aplenzin is buproprion coupled with hydrobromide. While the main component is buproprion, when I take wellbutrin or any of its generics I don't want to eat, and eating anything at all makes me nauseated. So it's something I have to take with food, but then the moment it's in my stomach it's an uncomfortable fight to keep everything, including the meds in my stomach.
While the aplenzin doesn't affect my appetite, and I can eat or not eat when I take it, and other than intermittent aphasia it doesn't have any severe side effects for me worth mentioning. Guess which one they prescribed me. Well Walgreens, you've just wasted your time counting out those pills, printing a label, and putting it in a bottle. I won't be taking any buproprion sr. Personally even if I lose my ability to speak, for the rest of my life, being able to function I think would be a worthwhile trade.
And this is all coming in at the end of a trial of Latuda. Honestly, if I wanted to feel like shit and feel sick all the time, I'd go become a teacher in a gradeschool. Children are walking petri dishes of questionable origin. Take the pill at night because it causes drowsiness, for about 3 hours... and then, I'm wide awake and I have to move, or I swear my skin is going to leave without me. and after another 4 hours of skin crawling have to move or else feeling, I finally get to sleep, but it's a tooth and nail fight the whole way. I've tried taking it in the morning, but that just makes me feel worse, since I have to eat to take the pill.
And then there's that fun side effect of pretty much every anti-depressant. Sex drive becomes non-existent. Eventually my age is going to do that in anyways, and it's not like I have a partner right now, but there's very few pleasures in life for someone that is depressed as it is, and the dr's think that taking away one of them is a good idea when someone is depressed? Honestly, just how far up your own asses are your heads? Does it smell funny to you? Do you enjoy the taste? I just can't seem to wrap my head around doctors that prescribe medication, and big pharma that send these compounds of questionable origin out into the world. And here's a terrible true thing to say about big pharma. If it was really their goal to help people, medication would be cheaper. Each pill of aplenzin at the dose I used to take is now worth north of $500.00. That's $15 THOUSAND Dollars for a 30 day supply. No wonder my insurance doesn't want to cover it.
I read an article recently about willing yourself to die. There's 5 stages of willing yourself to die, and I cover the first 3 all day every day. Stage 4 is waking up and your body saying, hey, it's time to shit, and you say, go for it, I don't care, I'm not moving. So at stage 4 you're willingly lying in your own excrement. I'm not quite there yet. The only reason I get out of bed in the morning, isn't because I don't want to crap all over myself, it's because I don't want to clean it up. And there are some days when that's the only reason I get out of bed, just long enough to use the facilities, and then back to bed.
It's a shitty place to exist, and that's why I'm entertaining the idea to take anti-depressants again. But I just don't know. I just don't know about what to do about my life, or really anything at all right now. There's things on my list that I really need to do today. And I'm not doing them. Every day it's the same task sitting there waiting for me to do it, but I just don't want to. I just don't care to. It's beyond my ability, and I can't force myself to it. Even this trial of Latuda didn't help me get it done.
I want to be social, I want to have lots of friends, but seems I can't even manage that. The few people I try to befriend are more fucked up than I am, and I get burned by them constantly. And I keep reaching my hand out. I don't know what my purpose is, I don't really know why I'm here, but it just feels like I don't have a purpose. There's really no reason for me to be here. I consume resources and make nothing but excrement. Yep, that's my mindset after 7 days on latuda. Great med there. Not only do you get to remain feeling like total shit because of your depression, but it'll help you feel like shit physically as well as causing anal leakage so you're just one step closer to stage 4.
I'm so frustrated. I don't want to live like this, and I don't currently have any say in the matter.
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