sapphoq is here

Two Brain-Damaged People

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 17:05:17 GMT

Dad has come to live with us. He has some dementia and some aphasia. So now there are two brain-damaged people in the house-- me, and Dad.

Now I know that the official words for my brain damage is "t.b.i." or "traumatic brain injury." The reality is that traumatic brain injury equals brain damage. My brain damage was acquired after the age of 21 in a motor vehicle accident. It is brain damage nonetheless. One physical therapist from Sunnyview Hospital in Schenectady tried to tell me that "brain damage" sounds like one is "damaged" somehow. Yes, my brain is damaged. Why not just call it what it is?

Dad has some restlessness and is wanting to do housework and fix up the house when he is not sleeping in front of the television set. Last week, we decided to stain/waterproof the back deck. First we had to locate the two buckets of stain and the brushes. That wasn't any problem as my friend Ed had given us those things and they were sitting by the back door. Then we had to wait for a sunny day. That happened.

It was a very sunny day. And hot, considering that we live next door to Alaska. So Dad insisted that we wear long-sleeved shirts. The stain getting on our skin would ?eat it? stain it? At any rate, on went the hot shirts. Then there are the latex gloves-- same reason. We started working out of one bucket but then that went to, "Here's another bucket spike. You use your own."

There was lots of staining, doing and redoing. I redid some of Dad's area and he redid some of mine. Two half-gallons were left when we got done. Between us, the stained deck was definitely personalized. There are some drips and dots from my work. And some heavier stained areas from Dad's work. With two brain-damaged people staining a deck, the results will be interesting. A guarantee.

Yesterday, Dad decided that we should put together a clothes rack with vinyl bag hooked onto it for the clothes he has that he no longer wears. This particular clothes rack/vinyl bag thing was manufactured in mainland China. And I swear whoever wrote the instructions hit the "from mandarin to english" button on babelfish. To complicate things further, Dad dumped all of the numbered poles out of their respective bags. The first attempt came out with two longer sides and two shorter sides. There was a break then during which I hoped in futility that Dad would forget about this particular tortorous clothes rack/vinyl bag thing. Didn't happen.

After some "Divorce Court" on teevee, we went back upstairs for a second go 'round. This time we managed to get the vinyl bag installed but then the poles kept pulling out of their holes. And so this clothes rack/vinyl bag thing stands loosely in a corner looking more like a modern art structure than anything remotely functional.

Because of my difficulties with multi-tasking, perhaps I would have had a shot at putting the thing together if left alone in a cave far away from human civilization. No chance of success yesterday. Dad kept up a running commentary as we were working. And between my t.b.i.-related perception problems and Dad's dementia-related perception problems, shoving poles into holes at flush 90 degree angles was not a task destined for fantastic results. Husband said he will "look at it" today.

I think there is something to be said for joining a nudist colony and forgetting about clothes and things like that.

sapphoq healing tbi

Meme

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 03:39:23 GMT

* Post at least 3 things you've done in your lifetime that you don't think anybody else on your friends list has done.
* See if anybody else responds with "I've done that."
* Have your friends cut & paste this into their journal to see what unique things they've done in their life.

1. My friend B.B. and I went swimming nekkid in a water reservoir in New Jersey
many years ago before I developed a sufficient ecological conscience.

2. I swam nekkid across Pharoah Lake.

3. My friend Peggy and I went swimming in the ocean one September morning at
6 a.m. after a night of drinking at the Stoned Pony in Asbury Park and sleeping
it off in the car. After swimming, the nice gas station man in Belmar let us use
the restroom there to change out of our dripping wet clothing into dry clothing.
(We didn't swim nekkid but it was still very cold water and fun!)

spike

Link

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 03:30:46 GMT

http://www.kl3z.com/data/myvidz.delta.html

The Rigging of Failure

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 05:08:22 GMT

a big shout-out to the unknown damsel

The stoopid saga of VESID sucks carries on. The job handler/job developer/employment consultant whatever has transferred to a different job herself. The VESID-sucks counselor (my third) is apparently absent from work due to personal/medical whatever. Consequently, I have once again attained the status of limbo without the use of drugs.

As damsel has pointed out in a couple of comments over at Blogaholics, VESID-sucks has as a modus operandi the rigging of failure. Specifically and anecdotally only (based on googling various and sundry terms such as "VESID sucks" and "VESID horror stories" and "VESID complaints") one problem is the mindset to shove us into a job any job without much regard to anything. The other problem is the tendency of VESID helpers to declare many of us as being somehow falling short in the intelligence department and the blatant advice to lower our goals. Of course, if picking up pins with a tweezer and putting them in a container is a measure of anything at all-- the stoopid it burns-- then lots of people should automatically settle for a two year community college degree or a secretarial course or a job in retail or at a supermarket packing groceries. Sigh.

Anecdotally only, a good friend of mine was advised by his O.V.R. testers in another state that college would be an "impossible" goal for him to reach as well. Friend is brilliant. Friend went on to achieve 4.0 in college courses. See, the rub is that if any of our employment situations, college enrollment in courses or a pursuit of study, etcetera is not in line with what VESID sucks (or O.V.R. sucks) assumes is "realistic" based on our putting pins into a container using tweezers, they don't have to support it. In other words, I can be denied job coaching if the lousy little part-time job I have demands that I do something that VESID doesn't think I should do or am capable of doing. And folks who wish to obtain bachelor degrees or more can be denied needed funding by VESID or O.V.R. because the rigors of academia are a far stretch from what their stoopid testing shows that those folks should be able to do.

Could it be funding? The organization that is supposed to provide me with job development and job coaching services is getting paid more than three thousand dollars for one year of their non-services. (Just as soon as I provide a doctor's note indicating that a temporary exacerbation of vertigo into a two-week "attack" is now resolved for the time being and I can "return to work" which I don't have, my non-services can resume. Just as soon as someone figures out that I am on their caseload that is.)

VESID stands to benefit financially by talking people down into two years of college or a secretarial course versus bachelor's level studies and more. And VESID benefits financially by setting their counselors' objectives to get the disabled customers working (at anything) as soon as frickin' possible. To hell with our aspirations. To hell with what we want. To hell with MEANINGFUL employment. No love, VESID sucks, no love.

The three thousand bucks VESID has wasted on my non-employment this past year could have been used to send damsel to her very much wanted and sought after bachelor's degree. Ah, damsel wasn't even eligible for financial aid from VESID sucks and they made her take those stupid tests anyways. Those of us who are not totally broke don't get to have our tuitions paid. Books and twelve cents a mile was the last I heard. At the price of gas these days, twelve cents a mile is a bad joke. Considering that the professional VESID helpers are getting around three times that amount for their mileage, it is an insult.

Another two friends recently found themselves as "trainees" or whatever the fancy word is at a local sheltered workshop. Apparently, those of us who are judged severely disabled do get encouraged to spend at least twenty hours a week at one of those places. It's part of the process of getting the disabled into jobs. The two friends were told that this was now their best chance at gaining supportive employment down the road. Other avenues-- community college courses or a job developer calling them up on Fridays and nagging them-- failed to produce a job of any sort for my two friends. Who exactly refers the VESID failures to sheltered workshops? I still have not found the answer to that question. Neither the VESID sucks counselors nor the job developer have admitted to initiating referral. I asked. I searched the website for clues. No clear information was given. But I digress.

It is LEGAL to pay a disabled "trainee" less than the minimum wage at such places. Way less. The assumption is (based on "timed studies" often conducted with staff volunteers) that a disabled worker cannot possibly be fast enough or good enough to make the minimum wage. The disabled worker in a sheltered workshop is subject usually to piecework, pro-rated of course. If the disabled "trainee" is lucky enough to qualify for training off-site (welding or warehouse loading or potato peeling or newspaper insert stuffing or cleaning), the disabled "trainee" still will not receive minimum wage. Under the law, the workshop is not required to pay it. In effect, the "trainee" is furnishing part of the salary of the on-site rehab counselor (separate from the VESID counselor), part of the salary of the workshop supervisor, part of the salary of the off-site trainer, part of the salaries of all of the staff people who come in contact with the trainee. And of course, part of the profit of the sheltered workshop comes from the trainee's pittance because the workshop is able to low-ball other businesses when it comes to bidding.

Meanwhile, the absence of vertigo attacks is the least of my concerns. I continue to have serious problems which concern me far more than the fact that my world drifts to the left 24/7. As usual, anything worth having is worth working for. And I shall have to force my damaged brain to think of other options to reach my goals and other people who can point out some ways to proceed. There is a word for those people who are willing to help yet aren't professional helpers-- natural supports. All of this leads me to tentatively conclude that VESID sucks must therefore be the unnatural supports.

Oh yeah and VESID sucks: fruck you.

sapphoq healing t.b.i.

Monday Meme

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 20:27:57 GMT

http://www.blogthings.com/whathandgestureareyouquiz/

I am...

You Are a Peace Sign

Your life philosophy can be summed up as, "Take it easy."

Your greatest wish is to have a world with less conflict and suffering.

In your everyday life, you are empathetic and caring.

You do your best to keep the peace, even when other people aren't cooperating.

What Hand Gesture Are You?

Spike's Wishes

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 17:12:29 GMT

Spike's Wishes for All of Us:

Oh that today we not afraid of our essential solitude!
That we are able to extract what joy there may be in life today wherever we may be.
For life is sacred and we don't really know how long we have here.
Let us celebrate life deeply.

Wherever we are, that we don't have too many regrets over what could have been.
That when we are stuck, we remember that we have options even if we do not know recognize them yet.
Knowing that all of us are capable of great things that go unacknowledged,
That we will find those great things and do them anyway.

Oh that we embrace all of who we are!
That we love carefully and selectively and honestly.
That we do not negate our selves for the benefit of others
who would use and abuse us.

To know as much happiness as we have known pain,
as much love as we have known hatred,
as much comfort as we have known heartbreak.
That we keep striving until we can strive no more.

spike

*posting from a library in the middle of nowhere maine.
*will be back in civ Sunday night.

Trolls, Threats, T.B.I.

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 07:53:33 GMT

The pagan community on the internet is not united by any means. There are various factions and splinter groups. That is an average thing. A bunch of pagans together in one room can certainly fight like liberals and fundamentalists. Or, like frogs and snakes. That is probably average also. No biggie. I've been on the internet long enough to have my own opinions about cyberbullies and even to have acquired my very own cute little chicken trollette. That is no great woop either. I became interested in the study of cyberpsychology as a result of interpersonal conflicts on the web. And as I continued to force my brain to think in my own process of healing t.b.i., I grokked a few things about my own behavior and decisions:

1. I have acted like an ass at times on the interwebs. Oh well.
2. I made my apologies and amends. To the best of my ability, I endeavored to offer no excuses for my poor behavior.
3. I moved on.

I don't begrudge my detractors since I certainly have acted like an ass at times. In one instance, I was playing the part of an undercover reporter and that was the height of stupidity. I was deceptive. I was dishonest. People from various sides of that particular dispute were pissed at me for good reason.

In that particular scenario, I took responsibility for what I had done and endured the fallout. I learned from it. And I have to thank my good friend Jer for helping me think about the situation with clarity. Folks displayed various levels of acceptance as is their right. There are still snarks thrown in my general direction from time to time. To that I say, "Whatever." If I am going to champion freedom of electronic expression, I have to be willing to risk running into some expression that I don't approve of. Oh well. I don't have to engage in mental masturbation today. I know how to use the back button. I can put on my big girl panties and move on.

Unlike a few pathological relatives of my childhood who did their best to infest my being with the soul-sickness of not-good-enough, I do not intend to live out the rest of my life apologizing for my own stupidity of a year or two ago. I don't trouble myself with the notion that I am somehow not good enough for or less than any particular person or group of people. It is rather meaningless to me. I have moved on. I am writing about this today because I am making some connections within my own self about my own self.

* * *

Lest any of you misunderstand, the assumptions about me and the snarks do not fall under the category of cyber-bullying. People can fight, disagree, blow up at each other, call each other names, and all sorts of other stuff without that falling under pretend labels and pretend diagnoses. People do not always understand or approve of my choices. I don't have to explain a damn thing to anyone. I am free to associate with the people that I choose to associate with. I am free to go where I go and to do what I do as long as I don't impinge upon the rights of others. Others are free to do the same. Not everyone wishes me well and I don't give a damn about that anyway. The stuff of conflict is not automatically classified as cyberbullying.

The encyclopedia at P.C. magazine defines a cyberbully as "A person who uses the Internet to harass or intimidate someone else." Someone who calls me a troll or stupid or insane or a toxic fluffbunny or a fucktard is expressing an opinion. Their opinion may or may not have some validity. I am free to engage them in some ritualized name-calling or to respond or not respond in any legal way that I choose to.

The folks at tech target add the word "threatening" to the definition of a cyberbully. Sameer at the Cyberbullying Blog points out that the behavior is repetitive. There is a pattern. It is more than one occurrence. Someone e-mailed three requests to me to close her e-mail box on one of my domains. I have an off-line life. I hadn't checked my e-mail box there in a while so I only got the messages yesterday.

The first e-mail (dated June 29) states that there will be mythological salt pits in my future if I contact the young woman again. The second (dated July1) makes an unflattering inference about either my size or some quality of mine. She asks me in the second e-mail to delete her and in the third (dated July 2) to remove her. I know she meant for me to close her e-mail box but the choice of words was amusing to me. I did as requested. I have no intention of contacting her again. As long as the young woman does not continue to threaten me with mythological salt pits in my future or other stuff, we are both free to carry on in the absence of the well-wishes of the other.

The above example falls short on the repeated part of threat inherent in the definitions of cyberbullying. Here are some things that do qualify as cyberbullying:
cyberstalking,
maintaining a website that is designed to harass someone or threaten them,
posts on a website or forum or journal or blog that tell someone to watch out because the poster or friends of the poster may show up at any time,
making up lies about someone and publishing them on the web (e.g. the teen who killed herself on account of some stuff that was posted about her on MySpace and the teen who killed himself after being harassed on Bebo more recently),
texting someone for the purpose of intimidation,
making repeated fun of someone with social difficulties brought on by Asperger's on internet forums,
provoking someone in an e-group into rages and then mocking the rages,
sending someone tons of spam or bogus e-mails,
repeated racial slurs used in a chatroom against another participant.

The thing about traumatic brain injury, as well as many other disabilities, is that we are more vulnerable whether we want to acknowledge that or not. We may be more vulnerable to cyberbullying because of errors in our judgment. We may be too quick to trust others on-line, too eager to expose personal information, too fast to offer up our struggles. We can participate in flame wars without understanding what we are getting into. We can become too casual about what we publish on our websites or blogs. We may wind up communicating via instant messenger with folks who do not wish us well. (In the early days after my brain injury, a woman began to call me every day. Mate was baffled by the sudden appearance of a new close friend in my life and did not understand the almost daily lengthy phone conversations. I didn't remember who this woman was or where I knew her from. Eventually, I discovered that the woman was the daughter-in-law of a friend who just liked to talk to people on the phone).

Below are a few websites referenced in this post and a bunch that aren't. I recommend the "Are you a cyberbully? Quiz," the cyberethics site for those who like academic stuff, the Donna Williams poem, and the "Shrink the Cyberbully Game" by virtue of their being different than the usual offerings.

The other stuff may help you decide what to do if you are being cyberbullied. Inclusion of the links do not imply the endorsement of any of the websites endorsing this post nor does it imply that I totally agree with every freaking thing said.

sapphoq healing t.b.i.

http://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia_term/0,2542,t=cyberbully&i=40624,00.asp
Definition.

http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci1023061,00.html
Definition.

http://www.cyberbullying.ca/examples.html
Examples of cyberbullying.

http://www.cyberbullying.ca/info.html
Suggestions on handling cyberbullying.

http://cyberbullying.us/blog/?cat=13
A blog noting laws being passed in the United States.

http://www.wrcbtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=8706000
Suggestions for parents.

http://groups.msn.com/stayingsafeonline/cyberbullies.msnw
Acknowledges that cyberbullying happens to adults too. Some simple advice.

http://deathby1000papercuts.com/2007/12/cyber-bully-quiz-are-you-a-cyber-bully-3/
Are you a cyberbully? Quiz.

http://www.bullyonline.org/workbully/attent.htm
Attention seekers from Bully-Online.

http://www-usr.rider.edu/~suler/psycyber/psycyber.html
Cyberculture-- pretty cool stuff here.

http://cyberethics.cbi.msstate.edu/mason2/
Privacy from a cyber-business perspective.

http://cyberethics.cbi.msstate.edu/
Various links about cyberethics.

http://smg.media.mit.edu/people/Judith/Identity/IdentityDeception.html
Identities, trolls, etc on usenet groups.

http://www.copyscape.com/
Search for copies of your pages on the web.

http://adequacy.org/
Archives of a site where trolls gathered proudly.

http://www.urban75.com/Mag/troll.html
Writing: an excellent troll how to.

https://groups.google.com/group/alt.troll/msg/bc2e71e19c590d8e?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&as_umsgid=36a7593e.22750214@ruble.net&lr=&hl=en-us
Usenet trolls.

http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mtroll.html
Definition.

http://www.jfo.org.uk/info/new/troll.htm
Classification.

http://forums.station.sony.com/mxo/posts/list.m?topic_id=12200012985
More extensive classifications of trolls.

http://www.reuters.com/article/wtMostRead/idUSN0343424320070705
Griefers. [They are on Second Life also].

http://redwing.hutman.net/~mreed/
Classifications of flame warriors *the pictures are priceless.

http://blog.donnawilliams.net/2008/01/21/cyber-bully/
Poem by Donna Williams.

http://curezone.com/forums/troll.asp
Trolls on the Curezone forums [original aol article not on aol anymore.]

http://rkcsi.indiana.edu/archive/CSI/WP/WP02-03B.html
Study on trolls in a feminist forum.

http://www.emoderators.com/papers/flames.html
Flaming, 1992.

http://www.searchlores.org/trolls.htm
More on usenet trolls, attacking in waves, use of the word "sockpuppets" to mean one person
posting to a board under different names in order to agree with themselves!

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/04/bot_herder_profile/
smurfs and bots

http://www.mcgruff.org/Games/cyberbully.php
shrink the cyberbully game

Labels: cyberbullying, flamewars, t.b.i., threats, traumatic+brain+injury, trolls

Sadness

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 01:35:25 GMT

I am sad.
Commie Journal feels not full to me.
I hope that more people will come here.
I am going to stay regardless.
Because I consider nebris and shamangirl to be my friends.
And because I believe in Commie Journal.

Is there anybody out there reading this?
Le sigh.

In other news, I have found that my beta fish either has a sense of humor or is willing to eat anything that moves.
Today as a cory catfish swam around him in the up-down direction, the betta reached out and jabbed the cory
gently in what I perceive of as the fish's tummy.

The other day, the beta darted over to the fattest firebelly and jabbed it in the tummy, then darted away backwards.

Oh and for good measure, VESID SUCKS.

spike

Wafergate by Owlmirror

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 10:48:21 GMT

[http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/fyi.php#comment-980385]
Below is an excellent rendition of Wafergate which has been LOLCatified by the Illustrious Owlmirror.
(sapphoq reviews says: full of win!)

The following was copied and pasted from Owlmirror's comment over at P.Z. Meyer's science blog:

Being aware of All Internet Traditions™, I think we all know that no Internet Phenomenon is complete until it has been properly LOLCATIFIED.

Thus, we present for ur lolz:

WAFERGATE

CEILING CATLOLIC IS WATCHING YOU MASTICATE

Act I, Scene I
University of Central Florida, Catholic Chapel

PRIEST: JEBUS HAS A FLAVR!

PARISHIONER 1: I CAN HAS JEBUS CRACKER?
PRIEST: YES, YOU CAN HAS JEBUS CRACKER.
PARISHIONER 1: NOM NOM NOM

PARISHIONER 2: I CAN HAS JEBUS CRACKER?
PRIEST: YES, YOU CAN HAS JEBUS CRACKER.
PARISHIONER 2: NOM NOM NOM

PARISHIONER 3: I CAN HAS JEBUS CRACKER?
PRIEST: YES, YOU CAN HAS JEBUS CRACKER.
PARISHIONER 3: NOM NOM NOM

WEBSTER COOK: I CAN HAS JEBUS CRACKER?
PRIEST: YES, YOU CAN HAS JEBUS CRACKER.
WEBSTER COOK: YAY, JEBUS CRACKER SOOVENEER!
PRIEST: WAIT, WHUT?
WEBSTER COOK: KTHXBYE

PARISHIONERS: NO! YOU NO CAN HAS JEBUS CRACKER! NOT YOURS!

WEBSTER COOK: FEETS DON'T FAIL ME NOW

PARISHIONERS: OMGWTFBBQ!!!!!
PARISHIONERS: NOOOOOOO! HE BE STEALIN OUR JEBUS CRACKER!!!

Act II, Scene I
Diocese of Orlando

GONZALEZ: HALP! JEBUS CRACKER IS KIDNAPPED!
SUSAN FANI: STEALIN JEBUS CRACKER IS HAET CRIEM!

Act II, Scene II
Catholic League

DONAHUE: STEALIN JEBUS CRACKER IS TERRIBLE HAET CRIEM!
DONAHUE: EXPUL-SION-ATE! EXPUL-SION-ATE! EXPUL-SION-ATE!

Act III, Scene I
University of Central Florida

EMAIL TO WEBSTER COOK: WE SAD
EMAIL TO WEBSTER COOK: WE WANT JEBUS CRACKER
EMAIL TO WEBSTER COOK: WE MAD
EMAIL TO WEBSTER COOK: WE WANT JEBUS CRACKER
EMAIL TO WEBSTER COOK: WE FIND YOU
EMAIL TO WEBSTER COOK: WE RESCUE JEBUS CRACKER
EMAIL TO WEBSTER COOK: WE BRAEK IN
EMAIL TO WEBSTER COOK: WE RESCUE JEBUS CRACKER
EMAIL TO WEBSTER COOK: WE KEEELL YOU
EMAIL TO WEBSTER COOK: WE RESCUE JEBUS CRACKER
WEBSTER COOK: DO! NOT!! WANT!!!

Act III, Scene II
University of Central Florida

WEBSTER COOK: DO NOT WANT JEBUS CRACKER. TAEK IT.
PARISHIONERS: YAY! WE CAN HAS JEBUS CRACKER!
PARISHIONERS: WE GET COPS TO GAURD JEBUS CRACKERS NOW.
WEBSTER COOK: WTF?

Act IV, Scene I
Pharyngula Headquarters

PZ MYERS: WTFBBQ!!!
PZ MYERS: CATLOLICS GO APESHIT OVER JEBUS CRACKER!
PZ MYERS: IT'S A ~~GODDAMN~~ FRACKIN' CRACKER!
PZ MYERS: TEH STUPID, IT BURNZ!
PZ MYERS: WANT CAN HAS JEBUS CRACKERS!
PZ MYERS: DE-SE-CRATE! DE-SE-CRATE! DE-SE-CRATE!

PHARYNGULA: LOL
PHARYNGULA: SAD CATHOLICS ARE SAD
PHARYNGULA: CONCERN TROLLS ARE CONCERNED
PHARYNGULA: ANGER TROLLS ARE ANGRY
PHARYNGULA: HATE TROLLS ARE HATIN
PHARYNGULA: SOCKPUPPETS ARE SAD+CONCERNED+ANGRY+HATIN
PHARYNGULA: WTF! SOMEONE IS WRONG ON TEH INTERNETS!
PHARYNGULA: THEY SEE US SCOFFIN, THEY HATIN
PHARYNGULA: (Repeat above 1000 tiems)
SCIENCE BLOGS PHARYNGULA DATABASE: AAAAOOOOOGAAAAH! OVERLOAD!
SCIENCE BLOGS PHARYNGULA DATABASE: ERROR 500 SERVER ERROR!
PZ MYERS: WTF! NEW THREAD.

Act IV, Scene II
Catholic League

DONAHUE: DESECRATIN JEBUS CRACKER IS WORSE THAN HAYT CRIEM!
DONAHUE: EXPUL-SION-ATE! EXPUL-SION-ATE! EXPUL-SION-ATE!

Act IV, Scene III
Pharyngula Headquarters

PZ MYERS: WILLAIM DONAHUE IS DEMENTED
PZ MYERS: PHARYNGULA! HALP!
PHARYNGULA: PZ MYERS IS TEH AWE SUM!
PHARYNGULA: SAD CATHOLICS ARE SAD
PHARYNGULA: CONCERN TROLLS ARE CONCERNED
PHARYNGULA: ANGER TROLLS ARE ANGRY
PHARYNGULA: HATE TROLLS ARE HATIN
PHARYNGULA: SOCKPUPPETS ARE SAD+CONCERNED+ANGRY+HATIN
PHARYNGULA: WTF! SOMEONE IS WRONG ON TEH INTERNETS!
PHARYNGULA: THEY SEE US SCOFFIN, THEY HATIN
PHARYNGULA: (Repeat above 1000 tiems)
SCIENCE BLOGS PHARYNGULA DATABASE: AAAAOOOOOGAAAAH! OVERLOAD!
SCIENCE BLOGS PHARYNGULA DATABASE: ERROR 500 SERVER ERROR!
PZ MYERS: WTF! NEW THREAD.

Act IV, Scene IV
Pharyngula Headquarters

PHARYNGULA: ~~SECOND~~ ~~THIRD~~ ~~FOURTH~~ FIFTH VERSE, SAME AS TEH FIRST
PZ MYERS: HEY! SOCKPUPPETS! GET OFF OF MY LAWN!
PHARYNGULA: (REPEAT SUM MOAR)

TEH END.......?

Posted by: Owlmirror | July 12, 2008 4:37 PM

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/fyi.php#comment-980385

Howling over Hosts 7/13/08

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 05:42:26 GMT

Crackers over Crackers 7/13/08

"Once we all realize that none of us knows
what the hell any god might want or say,
and most especially not semi-literate, bigoted morons
who can barely speak, once we stop pretending
our books and mythologies are sacred enough to die or kill for,
or that we have the right to change anyone's mind by force or fervor,
then we might awaken to sunshine and laughter.
Until then, everything you know is bogus."

Thus Spake Guru Greenbaum, June 15, 2005

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

“It is hard to think of anything more vile than to intentionally desecrate the Body of Christ."
saith Catholic League president Bill Donohue over at:
http://www.catholicleague.org/release.php?id=1459

because oh noes, a Catholic student at the University of Central Florida was taking a communion wafer back to his pew http://www.wftv.com/news/16798008/detail.html in order to show a non-Catholic friend and then got man-handled by a woman who ceased only after the student Senator Webster Cook put the thing in his mouth.
He took the wafer to his dorm room for a week where it resided in a plastic baggie.

Bloggers weighed in pro and con, including the illustrious P.Z. Myers (and the Catholic League is now after his yob for it) who called the host a frackin' cracker and promised to do bad things to any communion wafer sent to him by readers.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/its_a_goddamned_cracker.php#more

In turn some politician in Virginia became concerned for the safety of Catholics slated to attend the Republican convention in Myer's home state of Minnesota and wants extra security to protect them from him. (Gasp!) http://www.catholicleague.org/release.php?id=1460

The upshot was that student Cook returned the wafer after receiving death threats.
http://www.wftv.com/news/16806050/detail.html

To answer Bill Donahue regarding:
“It is hard to think of anything more vile than to intentionally desecrate the Body of Christ."

radical sapphoq says:
Yeah Bill, here's one.
Roman Catholic priests who RAPE little boys and girls.
Roman Catholic Dioceses who then move the priests to different parishes in order to COVER THE RAPES UP.
Oh, that's two.

Hey, I was raised a Roman Catholic.
I've never had to endure any man of the cloth groping me or trying to sex me up at a young age.
I did endure at least one nun in school not believing me when I tried to tell her that my mother was drinking alcoholically and violent.
Water over the dam.
I survived my childhood and teen-aged years.
Okay, so Webster Cook was in violation of Roman Catholic protocol by not eating the wafer before returning to his pew. And putting the wafer in a plastic baggie and keeping it for a week in his dorm room was probably distasteful or even lacking a certain amount of tact expected of a student Senator.

Webster Cook was insulted by being manhandled at a Mass.
Bill Donahue and some Roman Catholics somewhere are insulted that he took the wafer away.
I am insulted that priests have gotten away with kiddie rape and molestation.

Here's a memory from the archives:
I was forced by my alcoholic violent vindictive mother to attend a Roman Catholic High School. At that school, I was introduced to drinking, drugging, cheating, heresy, and a tad of groping teen sex. I also had a best friend in high school.
One day, my best friend in high school showed me a cache of communion wafers. She said she knew where they were kept in the school chapel. She invited me on a raid and I went with her. That raid was the first of many that both of us went on together. We always had something to snack on-- those little communion wafers.
Readers, be outraged if you will.
1. The statue of limitations has long since run out on this one.
2. The priests. And uh, (tm) who is thinking of the CHIL---LUMS?

Let the comments begin maybe.

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 04:43:36 GMT

Thus Spake Guru Greenbaum, June 15, 2005

Google Search Meme

Sat, 12 Jul 2008 03:28:59 GMT

snagged from merlinwon:
a friend at El Jay.

Type in what the questions ask you into google search and use the first thing that comes up as your answer.

1. Type in "[your name] needs" in the Google search:
2. Type in "[your name] looks like" in Google search:
3. Type in "[your name] likes" in Google search:
4. Type in "[your name] says" in Google search:
5. Type in "[your name] wants" in Google search:
6. Type in "[your name] does" in Google search:
7. Type in "[your name] hates" in Google search
8. Type in "[your name] goes" in Google search:
9. Type in "[your name] loves" in Google search:
10. Type in "[your name] has" in Google search:
11. Type in "[your name] gets" in the Google search:
12. Type in "[your name] eats" in the Google search:
13. Type in "[your name] can" in the Google search:
14. Type in "[your name] drinks" in the Google search:
15. Type in "[your name] makes" in the Google search:

and my results

Spike needs to give "Carpocalypse" to another station.
spike looks like a bubble about to burst
SPiKE LiKES blends sensible design fundamentals with exceptional creativity.
SPIKE SAYS, "The Man Is Not My Father!"
Spike wants the girl.
Spike does [the] right thing.
Spike hates chickens.
Spike goes to Venice.
Spike loves Luke.
Spike has wide economic impact
.Spike gets more macho.
Spike eats a worm.
Spike can copy word revisions.
Spike drinks at home.
Spike makes [her] bones.

Modded

Spike needs...another station, [another selection, or to change the channel].
Spike looks like a bubble about to burst.
Spike likes the sensible, [the practical, the logical].
Spike says, "This man is not my father."
Spike wants the girl.
Spike does the right thing.
Spike hates chickens [who lack guts and fortitude].
Spike goes to Venice [in her dreams].
Spike loves Luke.
Spike has wide economic impact.
Spike gets more macho.
Spike [has never] eat[en] a worm.
Spike can...revise [words].
Spike drinks [diet soda] at home.
Spike makes [no] bones [about it].

Revised

Spike loves Luke but she wants the girl.
She makes no bones about it.
It is the girl she wants, not Luke.

In her dreams, spike sweeps the young woman
off her feet and they fly off to Mexico for a holiday.
Or perhaps to San Francisco, San Diego, Montreal.

Spike has been accused of being macho,
called a bull-dyke, or a chicken before
but she does not shrug from doing the right thing.

She is sensible, practical, and logical.
She knows that when it comes to straights
the fantasy is better than the reality.

She stays home, drinking diet soda
and watching a corny movie where the heroine says,
"This man is not my father."

Sighing, she changes the station.
Then she takes out the latest manuscript
and revises the words. She dreams

of making a huge splash, an impact.
She dreams of making it big
in books and in love.

Marriage for All

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 23:46:37 GMT

I think that the government should get out of the marriage business completely.
I think that anyone who gets married in a church, circle, synagogue, temple... that should be called marriage regardless of the genders of the folks involved.
I think that anyone who gets married before a judge...that should be called a civil union.
Both words should be interchangeable with the same rights and responsibilities.

But failing that, then YES absolutely-- screw this civil union/domestic partner crap.

MARRIAGE FOR ALL REGARDLESS OF REAL OR ASSUMED GENDER OF SELF OR PARTNER
It's the right thing to do.

love,
spike

Link

Sun, 22 Jun 2008 16:32:09 GMT

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/bored_with_the_internet.jpg

Click on it. You know you want to. It takes you to a cool comic strip site.
"Bored with the internet" is about Live Journal. The rest of the comics there are very cool too.

spike

Autism in the News, Second Life

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 00:18:57 GMT

Friday. Today is Friday. Friday it is. It is Friday today.
Friday is the day that mate and I go to the bookstore.
I got a Richard Dawkins book (passing nod to all those who hate him for being uppity, crass, and an atheist) which talks about evolution. I am studying my ancestors.

To those who don't know, I am technically an atheist along with being a witch, bisexual, woman, newly Discordian (yes dearheart, you do have to eat a hotdog without its' bun in a park on a Friday)-- Hail Eris, and an evolutionist. Oh yes; and hater of VESID (VESID sucks)-- I did promise an obsession free entry today didn't I, lover of my mate, the internet sleezy as it is at times, my dog and cats and frogs and trees and woods, defender of separation of church and state, supporter of civil rights for all civils.
So shoot me.

In the news: an autistic girl in Canada. Seems the educational aide went to a psychic who asked her, "Are you working with a girl whose name starts with a V?" (yes). "She is being sexually abused by a guy between the ages of 23 and 26." The school did the only logical thing-- Children's Aid Society was called. (Americans: think Child Abuse Hotline or D.S.S.).
Mom was then presented with a list of "behaviors" that could possibly constitute signs and symptoms of sexual abuse. Mom protested. Victoria is severely autistic. The Children's Aid Society fortunately was not willing to put stock in a psychic's tip. The report was taken and then quickly dismissed. Mom has sought legal advice regarding the possibility of lawsuit. Meanwhile, Victoria is not going to school. Mom is not going to work. The two are home together all day.

http://www.nationalpost.com/most_popular/story.html?id=597195

http://toronto.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20080618/
psychic_abuse_080618/20080618/?hub=TorontoNewHome

http://www.shortnews.com/start.cfm?id=71516

http://timestranscript.canadaeast.com/newstoday/article/329416

http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5hM0zeYRJKc_mp6Lk1JVDqVLIdwSA

http://www.barrieadvance.com/barrieadvance/article/108266

What stupidity! The "for entertainment only" psychic prompted this whole thing. And as almost always, it is the kids who suffer. Victoria was in a self-contained classroom with five other kids. She is non-verbal, entering puberty, lacks inhibitions. The principal interpreted licking a table and gyrating against staff bodies as being indicative of sexual abuse. Some people don't have the sense they were born with.

The psychic shold be prosecuted as being fraudalent, the teacher's aide should be fired, and Victoria should be going to school somewhere.

For dinner tonight-- pizza from a restaurant. Hooray. It was delicious. On the teevee, court teevee as usual. This morning-- dog and I walked our two miles. Mate has been ordered to walk two miles a day by his heart doc. Since he hasn't been or he is slowly working up to it (we will see) I've decided to do it for him. Perhaps he will have some benefits via osmosis.

I visited buddies on multiply tonight. The journals: live, commie, and insane-- will be done tomorrow. The miscellaneous ones: myspace, 360, paganspace-- Sunday.

I'm still doing second life stuff.
http://www.secondlife.com/?u=492430f4263844fdb2cb9ef952ebf4a1

if for some strange reason you feel compelled to join up. Don't bother getting the paid account. Leave me your secondlife name in your comments and I will contact you to give you the url to my secondlife home where you can stay for free.

I am learning 3D building and scripting there. Not to put too fine a spin on things, my buildings all resemble something that someone with brain damage would create. (Well, I do have brain damage. It's called "traumatic brain injury" in polite society.).

Tomorrow is run through the house wildly picking up crap and sticking it somewhere out of sight day. My dad wants to come up on Sunday if it isn't raining.

There. A semi-average post.

spike

Alex, Asperger's and PublicMisEducating

Sat, 14 Jun 2008 01:55:29 GMT

The family of Alex Barton, the little Aspergian misbehaving five year old kindergardener, has decided to sue the school district for his treatment by teacher Wendy Portillo. It is reported that although he enjoyed talking on television, Alex is still evidencing signs of trauma. An attorney from the Liberty Legal Institute's Dallas branch office states that the suit is not without merit. Public opinion as expressed at the end of another article-- published by the T.C. Palm on June 7, 2008 range from "Oh noes Alex will have to goto court and that sucks," to "Give 'em a buck and be done with it," to "Yup, there is a case there." The blog Thinking in Metaphors over at
http://autisticnation.typepad.com/thinking_in_metaphors/2008/05/wendy-portillos/comments/page/2/
is the place to go for a better understanding of the legal issues involved.

Autism, along with many other disabilities, continue to be misunderstood by the general public. Now I know that the general public does not have to understand every disability. But kids in a regular classroom should have the benefit of some accurate information. The real bother of the whole thing is that while "inclusive education" is the current buzzword, kids in general are not given any explanations about the conditions and disorders that may be effecting a few of their classmates. Thus a good friend of mine was left recently to explain Tourette's to his nine year old son. Nine year old was accused of not demonstrating an, uh, inclusive attitude because he had yelled "shut up" when a classmate kept cursing in the classroom one day. Apparently some regulation or concern about private medical information prevented the teacher from offering any useful information. The same reg or concern prompted the teacher to claim (erroneously in my estimation) that my friend did not have a right to explain Tourette's to his son either. Talk about insanity. If kids cannot talk about their differences, how are they ever going to come to an understanding of those differences? In my estimation, "Don't ask, don't tell" does not work when it comes to building community.

Now we have a teacher who decided to have a bunch of five year olds tell another five year old what they don't like about him or his behavior. Uncool for any child to have to go through. That teacher needs to find a different line of work. And in light of the lawsuit, the Florida school system would do well to inservice all of its' teachers on autistic spectrum disorder. Autism is indeed a broad spectrum of disorders. The three that illustrate a wide range of intellectual prowess and behavioral manifestations are classic (Kanner's) autism, Asperger's, and pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified (P.D.D.-nos). [There are two other disorders included in the spectrum which probably should be moved to a different category.] Having been forced to sit through a few "sensitivity training sessions" myself, my own prejudice is that they don't do much. I still hold that the information should be offered to teachers as well as to the students and their parents. It is at least a beginning. Furthermore, any teacher who works in an inclusive classroom ought to be dually certified-- in special education as well as in elementary or secondary education (or whatever their primary field is).

The general assumption that "all people with autism" are screaming self-stimming innocents and perpetual children is one that I personally am a bit tired of dealing with. Just last night on secondlife dot com, my avatar tried to explain to someone who was annoyed with my adopted cousin's verbal behavior that yes indeed Aspergians can be verbally obnoxious just like anybody else. The avatar to whom this short explanation was directed had protested, "He doesn't have autism! Autistics don't provoke people." Interesting how any of us can suddenly know more than the neuropsych people who have spent years in testing and observation and diagnosing of a variety of disorders and conditions.

Autism in all of its' manifestations is not something that needs curing as the Autism Squeaks parents would have us believe. Nor is it something that should be celebrated in all of its' aspects. If the Aspergian bank teller wishes to keep his job, he needs to attend to matters of personal hygiene just like the rest of us. An autistic adult who is not able to communicate her basic needs or desires certainly has a tough life journey that not many of us would envy or want to emulate. Similar things could be said of any disabling condition or disorder. There was a time when I thought that traumatic brain injury was the worst thing that could happen to me. Then it did happen through the actions of a driver who really should not have gotten stoned before getting behind the wheel of his automobile. Traumatic brain injury is not the worst thing. And autism is not truly the thing that needs curing. The worst thing is ignorance and it is ignorance that needs healing.

radical sapphoq

References:

http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/2980678/29447288

http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2008/jun/07/alex-barton-family-plans-to-sue/

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-0612autisticboy,0,5446826.story

http://www.libertylegal.org/

--
Posted By sapphoq to * radical sapphoq at 6/13/2008 07:41:00 PM

Face to Ass with the Past

Sat, 31 May 2008 02:56:30 GMT

Mate and I were at the registers at the bookstore tonight. This in itself was unremarkable, considering that both of us are obsessed with bookstores and that our combined obsessions require our presence at some bookstore or other at least once a week-- even on vacations. I am not on vacation. I just haven't worked in over four years due to the car accident I'd had while on a lunch break at Running Sores, my last odious human servitude employer.

I walked past her backside. She was at the register closest to the exit. I sighed inwardly. I had no desire to say hello to this particular witch daughter of Abraham, chronically unhappy woman boss of the bosses. Her smoldering coal-colored eyes were concentrated on the associate as she was handed her own purchase in a crisp green package with gold words on it. I noted her hair, still the color of the darkest charcoal but now with a sprinkling of a gray storm sky. She held herself the same way as I remembered-- stiffly. Her torso gave way to her chunky rear end a bit too soon as her spine suddenly ran out of space. A certain indentation at the boundary of back and posterior was missing. She didn't see me or was doing an excellent job of pretending not to see me. I found that I did not want her to recognize me. A rash of swear words sprang to my throat. I held them back with the gravest of difficulty.

Mate was dawdling. I swept past both mate and my former adversary and sprang out the door to freedom. I continued my deliberate breakaway to the dark burgundy mundaneness of mate's car. As we drove away, I saw her getting into her own fiery steel machine. I did not deign to offer another glance. After all, two can play that game of non-recognition. Strangers. We were strangers after all and perhaps always had been.

The memories came crashing back. Boss of the Airhead boss, chronically unhappy woman with short practical fingernails that belied her poisoned fangs and a way of being. It was she, witch daughter of Abraham who didn't give two shits when my grandmother lay dieing in the sterile hospital room but who expected me to sympathize with her on the loss of a fat spoiled pet dog with which I had no natural or unnatural bond. It was she who had insisted on those dreaded Monday morning meetings weekly. Under the guise of concern about my performance as the house manager of a residence with three permanent staff out of a slotted twelve and thirty six on-calls filling out the difference, she harangued me over things like someone being two hours late on a Saturday. That particular on-call knew she was supposed to be there at six. That particular on-call sauntered in at eight, claiming that was when I had told her to be there. Obviously, I was the one who had to held accountable. There was no question about that. The on-call woman could not lie, would not lie. It was I who was responsible for all of it. Never mind that in spite of the chaos of scheduling staff, my people got to go out into the community and got to go on vacations.

I had just come from the hospital that morning. I was at the hospital every morning, every evening after work and sometimes dropped in at night. I had to make the end-of-life decisions for my beloved grandmother that my aunt turned out to be incapable of. I fought with the doctor who wanted to give her a C-T scan for cancer of the lung-- what treatment did he reasonable expect to be able to offer a ninety two year old woman even if it came back positive? I fought with a cousin who thought that a shot of B-12 would fix her right as rain. I fought with the nurses about the necessity of the morphine pump and the futility of a feeding tube.

My grandmother was screaming through the morphine that particular Monday morning about not wanting to live anymore with such physical pain. I informed the boss of the boss that I didn't give a shit about the on-call woman being two hours late on a Saturday under my current circumstances. I walked out. Back at the house, she called me on the phone and sent me home for a week with pay. I didn't want to not work that week. She said it was her last inch of compassion and me going home would eliminate the necessity of her gossiping about me. "I don't care if you talk about me," I told her bluntly after having screamed at her on the wireless phone in the parking lot of the residence about the fact that I didn't fucking care about staff being late on a Saturday with my gram in the hospital and all of that. "You do anyways," I said. "So what?" She was angry. I was angrier. My day staffer-- one of three permanent staff-- hid in the medication room, saying nothing much at all to me as I hurled the phone back onto its stupid black receiver and left.

Returning to work the following week, my gram died on that Wednesday before Memorial Day weekend. I left work, curtly informing the Airhead boss over the phone of the one hole in the schedule that Saturday and would she please take care of it. She didn't. The following Tuesday, the boss of the Airhead boss, chronically unhappy bitch harangued me about that hole in the schedule. "I told the Airhead about it before I left. I had to leave. My grandmother had just died." The chronically unhappy bitch witch daughter of Abraham raised her eyes slightly at the Airhead boss. True to form, the Airhead boss did not admit her own lack of responsibility that day. No surprises there.

When the Airhead boss ran into me at a gas station several months after the accident, I deliberately turned my back on her and walked away. "Don't turn away from me," she yelled after me. Bloody hell, she had turned her back on me. Which was worse I could not tell. The pretend recognition by the Airhead boss or the cold iciness of the bitch boss of bosses. I've had to decide not to care as I bit back the curses that waited for both of them. It hurt too much-- this loss of my career coupled with the insulting demeanor of the professional helpers over at VESID sucks.

I was not blameless. The two of them-- the witch boss of bosses chronically unhappy woman with her snooty way of being and the Airhead boss who was resentful because I would not go out drinking with her and the rest of her underlings my co-managers of group homes-- knew there was a problem but they were picking on me about the wrong problem. I was burnt out. I needed a change, a different job, a new start. I resisted that knowledge. I took out my hostility at Running Sores with the computer that suddenly appeared in the medication room one day. I spent hours on that computer instead of balancing the residents' money ledger or attending inane meetings at their various day programs. I'd send my day staffer to the meetings instead-- instinctively knowing that she would take over the reins of leadership for that house when I would be gone-- and I would kick back with a diet soda and the computer. The techie who was responsible for the running of the computer network failed to install any safeguards against what staff might do with a house computer. On that computer I learned things that I could not admit to anyone at Running Sores. It was not the staff scheduling that I should have been in trouble for. My real sin was left unnoticed. When pangs of guilt hit me, I would go to the local office supply shop and purchase another ream of printer paper to replace the paper purchased by Running Sores that I was using at a furious rate to print out my latest discoveries.

We had made an unholy triad during the last year of my employ at Running Sores. The witch bitch boss of bosses and the Airhead boss and I could not see eye to eye about much of anything at all. It was madness, this intricate dance of ours. It is madness still that in spite of everything, there are days when I want to go back to working at Running Sores. This madness should not be a surprise. Even the VESID sucks literature on-line admits that those of us with traumatic brain injuries may need a return visit to the last job as a way of excising the demons that insist that what we previously knew could still work, would still work. The nice man who did my neuropsych testing wrote in his report that I may need to be reassigned at Running Sores and that VESID sucks should provide me a job coach. VESID sucks would do no such thing. It was the shrink who saw that I was incapable of returning to the madhouse of Running Sores, even without knowing of the details of my last year there. I am glad that the shrink is familiar with the machinations of traumatic brain injury, that he could see what I could not see and cannot admit to even now.

"Doing more of what doesn't work doesn't work," is what I remind myself of ala Nathaniel Branden on an almost daily basis. I cannot bring myself to be civil to the various bosses of Running Sores on chance meetings at a bookstore or a gas station. I am flunking out of VESID sucks due partly to my own twisted hostile hotheadedness caused by my traumatic brain injury. I remain unemployed and unemployable. As yet I cannot forgive the players at Running Sores for being human. Can I forgive myself?

sapphoq on life

Voted Out of Kindergarten-- Alex Barton

Wed, 28 May 2008 05:52:43 GMT

The blond-haired little boy stared back at me from a photo distributed on the w.w.w. [w.w.w. = world wide wasteoftime]. In a parody of democracy in action, Alex Barton was voted out of kindergarten for the remainder of the school day last Wednesday. His crime? Having a neurological condition called Asperger's and some associated behavioral problems. The teacher-- a Wendy Portillo-- cajoled her class into voting. And reportedly had children describe what they didn't like about young Alex. One reported adjective was "disgusting." Two kids voted to keep Alex in the classroom that day. The majority voted that he be excluded. Alex who was just returned to the class from the principal's office for his behavior spent the rest of the school day in the nurse's office. Needless to say, Alex has not been thrilled about his experience.

Although folks on both sides of the issue have resorted to name-calling, what I find even more repugnant are the public comments which support Wendy Portillo in her actions. Her excuse ran something like teaching the children about tallying. I wasn't there but I have an opinion anyways-- bovine fecal matter to that. Was the teacher lying about the whys and wherefores of her ill-advised election activity a la Survivor fashion? Nah, she was just being reckless with the truth.

Yes, I know how difficult it can be to maintain reasonable discipline and order in any rowdy bunch of human beings. Been there, done that. Yes I am intimately acquainted with the cluster of symptoms which comprise Asperger's. Of course I know how aggravating it is to herd cats.

I also know the frustration of living with atypical neurology.

I do not belong to the Autism Squeaks camp. [Autism Speaks but not for me, a curebie organization of unhappy parents]. I don't understand why forcing eye contact is such a big deal to neurotypicals, don't wish to blend in, will not give up my passions, and certainly will continue to celebrate diversity. I hate all clothing that is not cotton. I detest polyester and nylon in particular. I don't use makeup or wear high heels. I used to stare at the dust specks illuminated by the sunlight pouring through a window. I was clumsy rather than graceful and the last to be picked for any gym class team. I have been accused of staring too long, daydreaming, having obsessions with the things that are of intense interest to me, being intense or too intense or thinking too much about weird things or the wrong things, eating food in a specific order rather than varying what is on the fork from bite to bite, eating the same thing for breakfast daily, not making small talk, not caring about small talk or the lives of celebrities, being a geek or a space cadet or pedantic, not fitting in. And worse, daring to be content with my own company and my own internal focus and my own way of being.

No Child Left Behind. One Child Voted Out.

radical sapphoq says: A huge phooey to Wendy Portillo. As an adult and as a teacher, I cannot believe that she didn't have other options for dealing with a misbehaving five year old.
While I support reasonable discipline and consequences for one's actions, I abhor what happened to Alex Barton. I sincerely hope that he will find a new classroom where he is valued for who he is, a teacher who knows about the issues that people on the broad autistic spectrum face and who has a better arsenal of tools for keeping order in a classroom.

Bev over at Autism Square 8 has an excellent list of who to write to should anyone feel so inclined:
http://aspergersquare8.blogspot.com/2008/05/not-special-support-alex-barton.html

Educate yourselves if you wish to. Here is a partial incomplete list which includes two news articles from the same newspaper in Florida and some other bloggers who are blogging about this crapola:

excellent thoughts about this whole mess
http://lastcrazyhorn.wordpress.com/2008/05/25/the-golden-rule/

Laura Hershey
http://crip-power.com/2008/05/27/thoughts-on-alex-barton-and-the-way-we-organize/

the politics of exclusion
http://qw88nb88.wordpress.com/2008/05/25/mend-the-link/

Amanda
http://ballastexistenz.autistics.org/?p=538

an interview with Alex Barton and his mother
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/05/27/earlyshow/main4130288.shtml

two Palm Beach Post articles-- links working as of 5/28/08
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/treasurecoast/content/tcoast/epaper/
2008/05/27/0527slteacher.html#comments

and
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/treasurecoast/content/tcoast/epaper/
2008/05/23/0523slclassvote.html?cxntlid=inform_artr

Labels: Alex Barton, Asperger's, broad autistic spectrum, No Child Left Behind, One Child Voted Out, Wendy Portillo

Legacy

Sun, 11 May 2008 17:34:49 GMT

Her voice is papery thin, frailer than I remember, like her bones where shining out of her blanched skin last time I seen her. The message is the same. You have reached this number. Talk to the machine. Because you sure as hell aren't going to talk to me. You are my first-born. I despise the man who contributed the other x chromosome. You are grown. I cannot scream at you or beat you into submission. My legacy remains, tainting you forever. For that I thank all of the demons in hell and a few of the angels in heaven.

I manage to choke out a proper greeting. Say something inane. Here is my phone number. You can call me. I am grown. You are still my mother even though I have rejected your legacy and moved beyond it. I love you. Maybe I will come see you sometime. It's been awhile. Happy Mother's Day. I hang up. Mother's Day is a day of mourning. For what could have been.

She wanted. She always wanted. She wanted my love, demanded it, could not recognize it. I was a terrified child. I could not name the terror to my own self. I told anyone who would listen for a minute that my mother drank too much. No one listened. And she drank on and on. The scotch. After marrying again, the wine. The pretensions. She wanted to be Italian. She really tried. The only spices she knew were salt, oregano, parsley, and sometimes a bit of basil from the garden. She doled them out sparingly. She said pepper was made from little grounded up rocks. We didn't have a pepper shaker. Bacon had to be burned to a crisp in order to be rendered edible. I was a child. I did not always remember everything I had to get at the store. By sixth grade I was doing the laundry at the laundromat and all of the supermarket shopping. I learned to ask the produce man or a lady customer who looked nice to pick out the ripe tomatoes for me, to tell me which of the bunches of bananas I should bring home. I was a child. I didn't know how to do many of the things that were required of me.

When she was angry, her voice took on a vibrancy that is gone now. She screamed. She yelled. She threw a bottle of tonic water at me once in high school. She threw me down some stairs once, after dragging me on my stockinged knees across the carpet. She was the queen of humiliation. She pretended to call my nursery school teacher and screamed into the phone the horrible thing I had become. Years later, I realized that the nursery school teacher had to be dead. She called me a frig. Frig was her favorite word, a baptized substitution for the word fuck. You are a frig. Frig frig frig. Hit her Tony. I always thought of him as a jellyfish, yielding to all of her orders. He was. I was too. Not to be, well perhaps I would not have survived my childhood and adolescence.

She baked cookies. Sugar cookies from a recipe torn out of a magazine. They were good. She made drop cookies and cookies with melted chocolate pieces too. Mainly though, it was the sugar cookies. With lots of butter in them. She made a Polish rum cake once. She dumped an entire bottle of rum over it after it came out of the oven. The cake was so thick with rum that pressing the fork tines against it would yield a flood. In my blackened innocence, I thought an alcoholic drank wine at home. So as soon as I could, I drank beer out. I had forgotten about the beatings, the vindictiveness, how she made my poodle disappear one Sunday when I was visiting my dad. I'd forgotten how at restaurants she would delicately eat the seafood or spaghetti and delicately lift the elegant shining stemmed glass to her painted lips, pretending all was right with the world and that she had two shining daughters from the same father and those two daughters loved her more than life itself.

Every year for two weeks we went down the shore. There would be a house near the ocean, or once a cramped motel room which I hated for the lack of privacy. There were other kids there, down the shore on vacation with their parents. I learned to walk barefoot on the hot tarry street, how to smoke a cherry cigar once, how to dig under the overturned lifeguard boat at night and have a child's seance. J.F.K. if you are here, give us a sign. And the candle would blow out and we would dig back out of there with a quickness. We went to Bingo as a family, to the beach as a family, to a restaurant, to the boardwalk. My little half-sister and I rode the rides, were treated to custards, walked and walked and walked holding hands in front of the two parents who were busy weaving a public fantasy. I learned how to panhandle on that same boardwalk with a younger summer child vacationing down the shore. Mister, I need a dime to call my parents to come pick us up. And so we would collect enough money for a five dollar bag of weed. Then we would walk the three miles back to our beach along the shoreline, avoiding the gate where we were supposed to pay. The beach where we stayed lacked the rides or the matrons of the gates demanding payment. The cars at our beach had parking stickers instead. And there were gazebos instead of rides. And the overturned boats.

I swam out once, way beyond where I was supposed to be. The lifeguards sent a boat out after me. I was fine though, a strong swimmer in my element. The saltiness and the fresh air and the sun invigorated me. By time the boat got to me, I had already turned around and was halfway back. They did not insist that I get in the boat. They didn't yell at me for doing such a stupid thing when I'd arrived back on the sand. My mother hadn't noticed, or pretended not to. A small crowd had gathered to watch the aborted rescue. My mother continued sunning herself, reading a paperback all relaxed as if nothing potentially dangerous was happening. She didn't say a word to me when I got back and flopped on the beach towel. The music pouring from the tinny transistor radio didn't miss a beat. And I learned that silence can be as fracturing as a beating.

If I had to choose one word to describe my mother it would be vindictive. My mother is still vindictive, even in her senior years. The thing inside her that made her give away or abandon my dog and call me a frig and be late for the wedding pictures still exists. I do not pretend to know how it got there. That doesn't matter now. The knowledge of her vindictiveness does not comfort me. Yet it is better to know an unpleasant-- even cruel-- truth than to ignore it and pretend. I do not pretend that everything that is wrong with me or toxic about me is purely the result of her essence. I will not pretend that there weren't good times. It's just that the good times always ran into the bad times, that there was never any escape. After my physical escape, there were years of learning how to escape mentally.

When my mother dies, I will mourn. I will mourn for what could have been and not for the woman she was. I will grieve for a long time and I will carry on. Life is like that. Happy Mother's Day.

spike q./sapphoq remembers

Yes I am still alive

Sun, 11 May 2008 03:01:21 GMT

I am still very much alive.
I just haven't been blogging.
I went exploring the virtual eye candy/waste of time that is secondlife.
That is the short version.

For the longer version, goto http://healingtbi.sapphoq.com
Or the short version may be satisfying enough.

Greetings all.
spike

Whatever Happened to SpamBob

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 02:53:25 GMT

I don't know what happened to SpamBob, the site that allowed you to create an email addy with the "@SpamBob.com" (or .net if you wished it to be forwarded).

The great folks at BugMeNot have partially filled in the gap. Goto http://email.bugmenot.com/
to created a non-password protected email addy "@bugmenot.com."

I will miss SpamBob although I applaud BugMeNot for branching out in their services.

spike

It's Commie Caturday

Sat, 01 Mar 2008 17:03:18 GMT

Oh yeah. spike

F5 for St. Tippy's Day

Sat, 01 Mar 2008 03:28:33 GMT

http://asylums.insanejournal.com/thefridayfive/

xo_tara_xo of insane journal's asylum The Friday Five says: Something's gone terribly wrong with the F5 entry.

I keep putting in the questions and all that come up are the answers. So I look to you for the questions...

Answers
1. scrambled eggs and bacon

2. 11:34pm

3. *$%#@!

4. Banana Peel

5. Jello

Alrighty then, here are my questions:

1. What breakfast do you never eat anymore?
2. What time do you think you will go to bed tonight?
3. What do you think about working for a living?
4. What do you never put into banana bread?
5. What can you fill a bathtub with to make it an inviting place to have sex?

spike

Don't Panic Folks. Antidepressants Still Do Work. 2/28/08

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 00:19:04 GMT

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/568939_print <--- That is the link to the print-friendly version (easier on the eyes to read) of an article regarding the literature review in question that has been popularly and erroneously reported by the press with inflammatory headlines such as "Gasp! Oh noes! Anti-depressants do not work."

[N.B. http://www.bugmenot.com/view/www.medscape.com will yield several user names and passwords that one can utilize to view the article.]

According to the Medscape article Study Identifies Bias in Favor of Publishing Positive Antidepressant Trials written by Marlene Busko, "The team identified the phase 2 and 3 clinical-trial programs for 12 antidepressants approved by the FDA between 1987 and 2004, which involved 12,564 adult patients. They also determined whether the FDA judged the studies to be positive or negative with respect to primary end points."

Actually, the literature review (which was published in The New England Journal of Medicine on January 17, 2008) maintains that S.S.R.I.s are more effective than placebos; however not so much more effective as the public has been led to believe. In other words, this review says yeah the stuff works but maybe the difference between the drugs and the placebos are not as great as the public has been led to believe.

a).The FDA uses the data that is favorable to the purposes of the FDA (in deciding to license a drug for use).
1). Negative results are sometimes used by the FDA as showing positive results.
2). Negative results are sometimes ignored by the FDA.

b). A bias may exist in reporting or people do not always have access to negative research study results.
1). Peer review journals may not accept negative research studies' results for publication at a similar rate to the acceptance of positive research studies results.
2). Some researchers for whatever reasons may not submit those studies.

In terms of the numbers of test subjects, in many cases more people were used in the discounted research studies than in some of the studies that were reported/factored into the FDA decisions to license a drug. The discounted studies often had a higher reliability factor than the ones that the FDA based their licensing decisions on.

This particular study was a review of the literature available rather than its' own research study using . The reviewers found that a bias exists in the public reporting of results rather than that the "antidepressants don't work" as incorrectly reported by the popular press.

The team was quoted in the Busko Medscape article as saying:
"Each drug, when submitted to a meta-analysis, was superior to placebo. On the other hand, the true magnitude of each drug's superiority to placebo was less than a diligent review of the literature would indicate."

There was no mention in the original literature review of the distinction between those who are clinically depressed and those who are experiencing situational depression. The purpose of the original literature review was not to take a side on the shrinks rule and N.A.M.I. mommies know best vs. the anti-psychiatry debate.

The reporting of this literature review by the popular media (e.g. newspapers) has been absolutely horrible and inaccurate.

spike

cross-posted to some other places.

Which Historical Lunatic Am I? meme

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 06:17:25 GMT

Which Historical Lunatic Are You?
From the fecund loins of Rum and Monkey.