Ann Coulter, The Disability Community is Coming after you!

Damn. I had almost an entire post written, and then My ipod decides to crash without saving it! This woman is able to spread her filth because the rest of us except her listeners don’t give a fuck. Well, if we want to send a message loud and clear not only to her but more importantly TO THE REST OF SOCIETY that this kind of crap will no longer go unchallenged, ITS TIME TO START GIVING A FUCK!!!!!!!! Get on social media, write letters to her sponsors, write to newspapers! LET US BLANKET THE NATION WITH OUR OUTRAGE!

Its more than just some dumb woman spewing hate. She is showing her hatred for an entire group of people (nothing new there) but let us make the result much different! Silence no more!

Athena

This Side of Typical

Or, like I like to refer to you, Cunty McCunterson.

Wow.  just…wow.  You know, I “get” that you get your attention by using shock value.  I understand that every fucking thing you say really has no meaning, or weight, or substance.  I get that you are just some lonely woman who needs the attention, good or bad.  Usually bad. I get that.  And I would give you a patronizing pat on the head any day of the week for that.

But really?

*sigh*  after last night’s debate, you did it.  AGAIN.  

And now no doubt you will trot out a little dog and pony show telling the world you should have used a different word.

Well, I’m going to stand by mine.  Cunt.

First off, it was the most OBVIOUS play to distract from Romney’s obvious loss with your stupid words.

But the second, and most important point.  By…

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When Waiting Really Sucks…….

…..And Threatens to Drive You Insane……..

Well folks, that’s where we are right now. Waiting. To begin another chapter in our autistic lives. In my last post, I talked about a program in Connecticut that might help us get back in academia where we belong….and help us with the non-academic bullshit that goes along with being a college student and just plain being alive…..independently.I’m obviously not talking about breathing…..I’m talking about being able to hold down our own fort…..a place of our own…..basic housekeeping……meal preparation…..that kind of thing.

The meeting went very well……I was amazed. I’d had……maybe…….four and a half hours of sleep the night before…..(I hate how I can never get to sleep until very late….the night before something big. Like this meeting.)

But apparently I was very focused during the whole four hours Dad and I were there…..first there was the meeting with Dad, myself (I, Andrea, was the one present for the meeting.) and the Vice President of admissions. She talked about the different programs they have, what each can do for me, things of that nature. Then I went to see a staff person have a meeting with students. Then I, another student, and the VP walked to a nice Chinese place for lunch. It was hot as hell that day…….91F. Yuck! Especially in April. Double yuck!

I’ll write another post about the meetings in more detail perhaps….later.

The main point of this post is…….well…….honestly……to bitch about how much waiting sucks. It’s gonna be another three months AT LEAST before we can start……..one of us made a countdown and put it on our wall. Today we can cross three days from that countdown. Small victory. Yay.

More apologies for an unfinished March Disability Blog Carnival…..time ran away from us…….

Another update: Ivan is doing considerably better than he was at the time of my last post. It’s still up and down somewhat, but much better overall.

Take care, all.

Andrea the Integral

“We were all struck autistic…” Really???

One or more of us were reading PoopReport, the internet home of the Intellectual Appreciation of Poop Humor, when we came across something very strange indeed.

It came at the tail end of an entertaining story entitled “Barnburner”

It seems a bit far-fetched, that everyone except for the author farted simultaneously, but okay, if he thinks it happened that way, fine. The truth or otherwise, of his story is a separate issue. The reason we’re writing this post at all, is his terribly incorrect and stupid use of the word “autistic” at the very end. What we think he meant to say, is something along the lines of “dumbstruck, speechless, or some other word that would describe such utter surprise as to be temporarily mute.

“Struck autistic” just ain’t it, brother. I (Andrea) found it very idiotic and highly offensive. As did the rest of us. Ivan was laughing because it just sounded so STOOPID. But it’s really not funny at all. It’s just as we said, offensive and dumb. And what was even sillier…….was the flame war that ensued in the comments section of the story when I and someone else pointed out the offensiveness and idiocy of the author’s word choice.

Read them for yourself and find out…..even if you’re not really into stories about scat, you can just skip the story and read the comments.

To quote a great science blogger, Orac….the stupid, it burns. And this time it happened in a barn. (the last sentence is mine, not his)

Andrea the Integral and Ivan

Random update crap

This post is basically to let readers know that we’re still around………other things have taken precedence over blogging for now.

We have a friend over. She comforted Ivan the night before when he was very down and distraught saying that he had no direction. Last friday I had a kind of meltdown in front of my Differential Equations professor……..he said that he was tired and needed to wake up, I said……..”well, if you ride your bike across my neck, the sound will wake you up!”

Thank goodness he’s not the type to freak out…..

Bleh, I’m tired……..4 hrs sleep sucks…….I’m going home for lunch……..and then coming back to do…….my math homework. The other math………multivariate calculus. One would think that the second time around would be a lot easier…………I hate Webwork! Freaking problems on the computer to do……..I just end up forgetting about them until the last minute and then there’s no way I can do all those problems in just a couple of hours. I don’t  have that kind of attention span and focus.

The Integral, who better start living up to her name

Feeling like a tired old man-Part 1

The title of this post says it all. We cannot come out to our parents about being multiple, and there are other things about our autism that we can’t share, or don’t know how to or even don’t want to.

The net result is frustration on both sides. Mom telling us she cannot rely on us for anything…..over and over, tell us that enough times and it’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy. I guess this is the final result of so many times being spoken to in an accusatory tone by her….she does that to EVERYONE in the house at different times. Dad and sister are not immune to her accusatory tone, and they both function much more closely at her level than we do. Dad just yells and tells her to shut up. Sister sort of acts like a pushover….yes ma’am, no ma’am, anything you say, ma’am. She doesn’t literally say that but she has a way of just shutting Mom down, we don’t even fully understand how it works. Unfortunately no one would believe us if we told them part of the problem is being accused so many times or spoken t0 in an accusatory tone, even when things were going well. We’ve had this on and off issue with Mom ever since grade school! And we live at home, also another major problem. Sister can get away during the academic year because she goes to school in CT and lives there. We’re not so fortunate. We love our university, but we hate living at home, and parents have said that we have to first prove that we are capable of “behaving responsibly” first before they will let us move out. Um, hello, DOES ANYONE ELSE SEE A PROBLEM HERE?

We’ve been in this environment for so many years off and on, it’s started affecting our ability to take responsibility and even study, since Lord only knows when, etc.

We don’t really expect NT’s to get this at the same level as autistic people, but we’ll be grinning from ear to ear temporarily if they do. Our parents sure don’t, and every time any one of us tries to even bring this up indirectly, Mom invariably claims that “we’re just blaming her and not looking at ourselves in the mirror.”

This isn’t the whole story. I don’t have the stamina or time to write it all out at once, because I cannot afford to fall apart in a public place, and I have a project to work on.

Ivan

What we’ve been up to lately

We’ve taken a hiatus from blogging….not much interesting happens on break from school. 

Actually Athena and I did go to New York City the weekend after New Year’s………bad, bad idea. Our parents decided that we and they and our sister should go……..there were so many PEOPLE EVERYWHERE! Not the best weekend vacation…..but we did have some great dinners there. And the hotel we stayed at, the Roosevelt, on 45th and Madison, was very nicely decorated for Christmas….we met a family friend who now lives and works in the city…..for dinner. Athena and I came down with a cold on the trip, so Friday afternoon we decided to take it easy until dinner time. We’d been ordered to follow our mother and sister into a store to get some new pants for us……..that store was incredibly crowded….even my sister commented on the number of people. I was trying to remain present……Athena definitely wasn’t there, I sent her away as she would have been even more miserable than I…….and I couldn’t deal with a lot of crying in front of family and that many people, so I relieved her of having to be there. Hell, I have somewhat more tolerance than her for overload (well not so much that, but I react more “age-appropriately” than she does. I don’t really buy into age appropriateness stuff most of the time but…..I can’t figure out another way to express it.) and even I was having a hell of a time in that store. Our mother and sister kept having to repeat stuff over and over….it’s like I wasn’t hearing much of what they were saying. That’s what it seemed like to them anyway…..I heard noise, like words, but the amount of time my brain needed to process those sounds was much much longer because of the crowd and the freaking LOUD ANNOYING OVERWHELMING MUSIC. 

I hope that doesn’t trigger anyone reading. Just don’t go to NYC immediately preceding, or following, New Years or Christmas or any other major holiday, unless you have relatives there and have to go for a reunion, or you happen to enjoy large, loud crowds everywhere. We surely DO NOT. Ivan didn’t come with us because the Evil Red Fairy (any woman reading this knows what that means) came to visit us just before we left. So he took off. Good for him, he didn’t miss anything at all. He has much less of an interest in going to big cities anyway. We just go because our family goes…..I and Athena don’t care all that much about it…..Athena likes to see things. She loves Central Park but is always sad when we go there because she cannot roll around in the grass or splash in the water….the things she really wants to do. I or Ivan will ask her significant other (Dean; he’s much more than a boyfriend to her, and he’s an older gentleman…..so boyfriend isn’t really an appropriate word. He’s over 30, let’s put it that way.) to take her to Central Park on vacation and maybe he will let her do some of those things….he is very good about letting her be herself around him. The last time they saw each other, Ivan and I both stayed behind while she went……that means, we were completely absent from the surroundings. Even in our absence, we knew she was enjoying herself. At some level there is still communication between us, even if one or more of us is not present at all for certain events. We all grew up closely connected. We still are, and we generally communicate very well with one another. In a plural being, the different personalities do not have to fight all the time. Most of the time that’s what singles might think of, but that’s definitely not always the case. We’ve been meaning to write an entry on plurality and democracy, but it hasn’t happened yet. 

We’re quite upset about the situation in Gaza. Getting into who started what first is not very helpful, so we won’t go there. Truth be told, we don’t know all the relevant details to comment on that in the first place, even if we wanted to. It’s just a very sad situation. Hamas is a democratically elected organization, and they were elected because the Palestinian people believed that Hamas was doing more for them in terms of providing security, food, electricity, and the like, than any of the aid organizations that were in the area. That was probably true. There is a major social services component to the movement that is Hamas. We in the states hear mostly about the militant elements, but how are we to know whether or not the media want us to believe an exaggerated story?  There are a lot of things we don’t learn from our American media. I’ve heard things on the news in Europe, while on vacation, that I’m sure I wouldn’t have heard the same way had I heard it in this country. That’s just the way it is in America I guess. And it’s becoming that way elsewhere too. That’s very unfortunate. Maybe society should learn to deal with things directly as they are…..we autistic folk could teach them that if they wanted to learn. Then the media would not be forced to sugarcoat and embellish stuff the way they do now. (embullshit? I like that word better, even though I made it up just now, because I think it more accurately reflects what goes on. People put fluff and crap, and bullshit into their stories sometimes to get published and make money.) 

Wow, that’s a long rant! I guess we had a lot to say after being away for so long. 

Our sister had said something about “you’re not a baby anymore” to Athena about her reaction to being overloaded by something or tired out…..we’re still trying to come up with something of a response to that, to be posted here when it’s ready. 

We suppose that’s all for now. We’ve missed blogging, and reading others’ blogs. 

Please donate to autistics.org

Click on the paypal link that matches the currency of the country you live in. I’ll inquire about other methods of donation and post the response later. 

Athena and The Integral

what……….the……………HELL!

Omg. OMIGOSH!

Well, I’m really not all that surprised that Senator Straight Talk has sided with people who are against vaccines based on the irrational fear that they cause autism. I AM very disappointed though…………I thought he’d do better than that. I used to like him……….but I guess I was naive about what his views really were. He just wants as many votes as he can get…….I guess.

I have just barely dipped my feet into blogging so I’m not able to back this up with links……….

http://www.scienceblogs.com/insolence

is a great blog by a surgeon/scientist whose aim is to debunk as much quackery as possible, among other things.

This is just INSANE……..

I personally think that Sen. Barack Obama may be wavering on this issue of “vaccines cause autism” because he’s already in hot water over comments by his former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and the autism and vaccines thing is somewhat of a “controversial” issue for some people (for those who know better, it’s not………it’s just plain false, that vaccines cause autism.) He probably wants to deal with one controversy at a time…..which in my humble opinion is a wise thing to do. He did NOT say vaccines cause autism, and he did NOT say that they don’t, either.

 

There’s MORE insanity now! The vaccine crap was just child’s play compared to what’s going on in the news lately. Blatant racism, crowds chanting for bodily harm to individuals, inciting all manner of personal attack, character assassination, blatant lies, and every possible type of slime politics you can imagine. Some of us in this great nation are really “packing on the pork” with all of this shit flying everywhere. They’re drinking it in like cheap beer at a football game. I’m not a great writer….there are others like The Plaid Lemur, who has written a brilliant, balanced piece on the issue of whether or not Senator McCain is trying to get Senator Obama out of the picture before November 4th.

 

Folks, this isn’t crazy or farfetched anymore. Sure, it’s 2008, so SUPPOSEDLY we’ve all gotten over racism already. Not so fast, not so fast! We’ve never had an African American candidate so close to becoming president EVER in the history of this nation. That’s a huge change…..which has apparently brought racism catapaulting back to the surface. Let me make something clear….being white does not automatically make someone a racist. I feel I have to point that out, not to insult anyone’s intelligence, but in this day and age of hypersensitivity to political correctness, I felt it necessary to spell that out. If anyone who reads this is interested in reading more of my posts, he or she will be able to find more about why I write the way I do. (in short, I’m autistic, I think differently, I’m also a member of a plural system….multiple personalities….etcetera) 

 

Anyhow, that was way off-topic…..I started this post because I was fuming mad over the whole vaccine-autism brouhaha that candidates were buying into…..during the primaries. That’s an issue specific to autistics and others who believe that autistics have rights to represent themselves, are against a cure, and are trying to counter the misinformation concerning the supposed link between autism and vaccines. I never finished the post because life got in the way. It happens a lot with my writing, actually. I’ll start something, leave it because of being busy or simply forgetting about it, and then come back months or weeks later, and suddenly realise that the post is now relevant for a totally different reason than what I started with. The title, “What…..the……HELL” is very, very apropos today, because I’ve just seen video proof of horrific racism and fearmongering. 

 

Here’s another article, this one courtesy of Illseed,

apparently the United States is not the only nation affected by the Racism Plague.

Brief summary: a man got shot three times for wearing an Obama shirt. Yeah, this shit is for real. He was just in a shop, minding his own business. 

 

And here is something else from the Plaid Lemur……

the McCain-Palin Mob video and blog reaction 

TPL has more also…..visit the blog. 

 

I can’t stomach this topic for one more second. Seriously. I had to fire off this rant and now I’m done.  

 

a very aghast Ivan

Ivan’s pissin’ again

I don’t mean taking a piss, I mean………..I’m &*^%*^& irritated. I have no one reason for being so irate, I guess it’s a bunch of things that I cannot disentangle enough to deal with any one problem or issue effectively. The Integral has often said that I make it almost a career to be mad at things, and she’s not all that far off. However, I like to think that at least HALF of the time, it’s not intentional. I will admit that I do have a tendency towards furor. For a period of years in our lives, I was “the angry one.” It fell to me, to carry the emotional baggage of being teased in school, of having our parents and sister misunderstand us time and again, of dealing with frustration at not being invited to nearly as many people’s homes as our social-butterfly sister (this was several years ago, back when we all thought we actually WANTED all of these things……as much as we thought we did. Times have changed since then), and many other things. Family gatherings were a point of contention, as we didn’t get to talk to other people much because we couldn’t follow the flow of conversation. We’ve since gotten better at it, but in our teenage years and prior to that, communication within a group was very, very frustrating, to put it in the mildest possible terms. I guess those experiences over a number of years would give a person, single or multiple, somewhat of a tendency to being irritated. It’s hard to get out of that rut, of things piling up and then the mind reverting or regressing to a mass of frustration, that cannot be channeled productively. However I see my writing this entry as something productive, even though it’s not helping me study for my Calculus exam tomorrow, it is helping somewhat, to clear my mind.

Being this mad doesn’t help Athena either….she feels it too……..a true empath if I ever knew one. We’re family to one another. Like a brother and two sisters. We take turns being the sensible one. I wish we could all be sensible at the same time. It happens sometimes, but not often enough. Oh well, we have to pick our battles.

Ivan, who feels better after venting his feelings. He rarely admits that.

frenzied words

I have a calculus exam tomorrow. I’ve only gotten through……………45% of the material. Maybe not even that.

Our apartment is a wreck, again. That tends to happen before an exam and after we go away somewhere for any length of time. We’d gone to philly last weekend……….school trip. Well………small group. Honor Society officers. Athena and The Integral went, Aunt Flo had sent me off for the week.

We need to do groceries again.

Laundry needs to be put away. Sigh, the chores never end. There’s always SOMETHING or other to be done around here.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH FRUSTRATION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh well, c’est la vie……….

Ivan, for all of us

Oh, and we didn’t have meds for adhd until Monday……….ran out over the weekend. I tell ya, it gets better and better!

Angst…How Irritating!

Okay. I’m having an “angsty” moment again (it’s happened umpteen times before…..I could seriously count hairs on my head)…and again, I can’t pin down one or even several specific reasons for that. I guess all members here are prone to being irritated over little things or even nothings every so often. It’s a constant, that one or more of us will get upset, troubled, or just plain furious over something we often cannot define or create a “closed form verbal expression” of a reason or reasons. When that happens, needless to say, it’s very irritating!

And being irritated about being irritated certainly threatens, and sometimes results in, sensory overload of some sort. I would suggest including lots of thoughts flooding one’s mind at once as a form of sensory overload….if it’s not considered thus already. For me, and The Integral and Athena as well, brain overload (flood 0f thoughts) causes anxiety, which elicits a physical response of something like an adrenaline rush, probably. It can get to a point where whoever is around and experiencing it, feels like he/she wants to run away as fast as possible, at the same time as being unable to move, or “freezing” in place, something mentioned by a blogger we read regularly. I intentionally did not mention the person by name, as I do not currently have permission to do so (I haven’t asked yet, and I’m not sure when I will. I have so many things to do I can hardly keep track of them all, never mind blogging. I’ve been trying harder to get my thoughts out so I can move on to the other things instead of feeling “constipation on the brain.”)

For us, and maybe for others who experience “frozen moments,” I believe it results from the mind/brain being so consumed and overwhelmed with the flood of thoughts, that even “simple” commands like telling one’s feet to move, are impossible, for a certain period of time. The brain simply does not have the resources to instruct body parts to move, and the result is, no movement. That is highly frustrating as well, and certainly can result in angst/irritation, this time for a tangible reason. This intermediate reason for irritation is readily apparent sometimes, but then the process continues if measures are not taken to de-escalate the overload. And so on and so forth. It’s like a computer going into an infinite loop, whatever that means in computer-lingo (I know what it DOES to the computer eventually, but I don’t exactly know what pathways are involved in it.) The result for a computer in infinite loop is operation system shutdown.

Now I’m hopping off of this circular train….before it starts going faster and faster and………..it pins me against a wall like a gravitron.

Ivan