before i go on, thanks for all the mails lately, they help more than you'll ever really know, cause nobody knows. well, that's a lie cause in truth, three of The Usual Suspect dudes do (the youngest one, thanks to a moment of weakness on my part yesterday – um, my bad, d00d). right, and Stress Counsellor dude. *to self* i should tattoo it on my forehead, actually... hmmm, just a thought.
i love it, that's so me in the morning. anyway, just off the phone with Chris. he named grrls' names to add to TUS and then wouldn't tell me more; he actually refused to play my guessing game. bastard. uh...soz, Babe, that was feigned anger so let's put a stop to that rumor right now. *giggle*
tangentially, yes, i'm a moron (that goes without saying and i'd be first on the queue with my hand up and all, yessing myself to death, if such a question were posed). where was i? right.
OK, my first title was even more insipid and trite but after a line or three, i remembered i'm only blethering away now to put off the point and so, regarding misdirection, dig: in proper ADD form, 'scared straight' zapped me to the remembrance that within some circles, 'straight' is one of the synonyms for 'clean' as in living sans drugs e.g., 'I've been clean for x (number of) years' = 'I've been straight for x (number of) years'.
personally, i know of no such people – apart from two recently met loved ones, and they weren't scared, they chose. anyway, as per usual, i met them thanks to (one guess now) Free A3. right, back to Scared Straight, '...a documentary directed by Arnold Shapiro and released in 1978.
'The subject of the documentary was a group of cocky teenaged juvenile delinquents and the attempts to make them end their criminal ways by introducing them to actual convicts. Filmed at Rahway State Prison, a group of inmates known as the "lifers" berate, scream at, and terrify the young hoodlums and attempt to "scare them straight" (hence the film's title) by showing an ugly, harsh presentation of the realities of prison life. At film's end, the teenagers decide that they don't want to end up in jail...'
*snigger* pussies. i used to be a counsellor at a half-way house in New London, CT and dealt, not only with prisoners who were still so institutionalised that they just couldn't get the hang of the idea that no, if they needed another roll of TP, they most certainly did not have to ask my permission; just grab it outta the supplies room. i think it was at that gig that i perfected the frozen smile.
anyway, that 'scared straight' shit would so not go down with me. i remember my mother dragging me (literally dragging, not by the hair but pretty much nearly) to some therapist way back when, someone who'd had some ex-lifer as a client. he'd been sentenced for murder; he was guilty but out of prison on a technicality.
anyway, he tried to tell me what was gonna happen to me if i kept up my lifestyle. he also had issues with the way i dressed which was the 60s version of how i look now: hiphuggers (as they called them) but not bellbottoms, T-shirt and Cons or boots. 'oh how i laughed...' (and i did, after warning him first and asking his pardon and explaining how i didn't mean to offend him). he even had issues with the beatnik v. hippie thing. *rolls eyes*
i went on, barely able to keep the smirk off my face, went on cause i could see where he was about to go and he didn't know me the way i knew me. he wasn't amused. i couldn't quit LOL and hadda keep reminding him he was wasting his time. he ended up telling the therapist and my mother he'd never met any kid with such strong will power, which killed me cause i never thought i had any of that. will power, that is. still don't, actually. anyway.
what the fuck am i trying to say? right, somehow i'm making a very tenuous connection – it doesn't take much Ⓒ ᵀᴹ – so here are my little furry friends who watch over me from up top the wardrobe. not scared straight but washed clean. yeah, i know i'm stretching the metaphor or whatever but in truth, i know people are like looking for clues. i keep forgetting what D Wayne said about misdirection (and i used to know all that stuff by heart). *snigger* rotsa ruck as they say in NYC. anyway, here're Heathrow and Chelsea yesterday:
Heathrow and Chelsea today:
Chiswick before:
Chiswick after:
yeah, i know the grey fur doesn't really reflect the former filth but believe me, when seen in person there's a big dif. here's Kensington, Oxford and Fawney Rigg.
why two of Fawney? c'mon, y'all know me to be an attention whore right? unhelpful hint: obviously Fawney's a lion. BTW, i still really haven't come up with proper names for these next liddle dudes yet, regardless of what i called them on FreeA3 some months ago.
here's my latest liddle guy, who was named the only thing i think totally fits.
one easy-peasey guess: it's Bear of course, but pronounced in two syllables a la D Wayne's 'I can't see the setlist cos it's covered in bee-yuh'.
*ducks* anyway, all the above was to put off something which i believe way important, but like all other things deemed crucial, especially stuff that applies to me personally with painful obviousity, my procrastination gland blooms bigtime, takes over and then i suddenly realise it's the perfect time to do that research on F W Murneau i've been putting off or dick about with my plush toys and the like (y'all should see the pornographic poses i shot 'em in – just sayin' cause nobody ever will). or else i could talk about their histories and when and how i acquired them (two are real Beanie Babies – did they have them over here?). right, it's established: i'm Princess of Procrastination Nation. naturally the next stop is Hoovering above the bedroom wardrobes complete with fascinating details of same with photos. (nb: the Hoovering is true but the photos bit isn't.)
right, one of the less pornographic ones i took:
OK, let's get down to cases: someone – i wish i could remember who it was; i've been through all my incoming mails but must've trashed it accidentally cause i just can't find it so thank you Unknown Sender. anyway, this week i was sent a really compelling article from The Guardian: It's Not Just Boys Who Are Autistic (my first reaction upon reading the headline was like 'no shit, Sherlock'). as i kinda said in the 'graph above, it was painful, well, in truth rather gruelling, nay, it was excruciating to read. some of the more agonising bits, stuff that truly stung (as in 'the truth hurts muchly'):
'When it was first discovered more than 60 years ago, Asperger's syndrome was thought to be a male-only condition. But now that more and more girls are being diagnosed with it, why do we hear so little about them?...'
blah blah blah and more pertinence, my emphasis bolded: '..."the stuff I was interested in seemed even more weird in a girl than a boy. It was mostly computers and music with me – boys can get away with being a bit obsessive, but it seems more strange in a girl."...
'When Hans Asperger first described autism in 1944, he initially believed that he had discovered a condition that only affected boys. As Asperger himself went on to realise, there are girls and women with autism, and more recently their numbers have been growing, along with the incidence of autism in general. For these women, the diagnosis can be a double whammy. Not only do they have a disorder whose causes are unclear and the treatment of which is still controversial, but it is even less recognised in females.
'Women and girls tend to be pushed to the sidelines of any coverage of autism and Asperger's syndrome, their experience purged from the public eye, making those who experience the disorder even more cut-off and misunderstood than their male peers...
'...Dr Lorna Wing is a veteran psychiatrist who devoted her career to studying autism after her only child, Susie, was diagnosed with a severe form of the condition. She says girls on the autistic spectrum often appear "normal" at first meeting.
"They appear to be more social than boys with autism, but then you notice their sociability tends to be inappropriate," she says. "They might go on and on talking about the things they are interested in, and they fail to notice that you're not remotely interested. They have a poor ability to 'read' people, and that's something that's often very highly developed in females."...
'...more and more women are coming forward for diagnosis who have struggled all their life to "fit in", and who, time and again, have found themselves wanting. For women such as this, having their "oddity" validated, acknowledged and, to some extent, explained, can be life-changing.
'Selina Postgate, 53, always knew she was different: but it was only last summer that she finally found out why. "Knowing I have Asperger's syndrome has changed everything in my world," she says. "It's made me realise who I really am, and why I think differently."
'If the diagnosis had come earlier in her life, Postgate believes she would have been a lot more successful. "I've never managed to do the things I've wanted to do," she says. "I've done very little with my life professionally and I could have done a lot more if I'd understood myself."...
'..."I have achieved practically nothing. Relationships, like jobs, have gone out of the window – I've not had the self-awareness to hold down either."...
it was at that point i began to cry. a lot. when i finally composed myself, i read on and was immediately sorry i did. yeah, boo-fuckin' hoo; i, for one, hate self-pity and i always get angry when i think anyone's feeling even a whiff of it for me.
'...Because autism has probably been underdiagnosed in women, and because study of the condition only stretches back a few decades, very little is known about how it pans out for women in later life. According to Wing, there are plenty of indications that the disorder is exacerbated by hormonal disruption – and while that has been documented around puberty in both females and males, less is known about what happens around the menopause'.
i was sitting here, reading, sobbing and thinking and when i got up to the end of the above, my innermost voice totally, in unison, echoed this next:
'In the case of Wing's daughter, the menopause was to trigger a worsening of her condition...'
one more time, with feeling: NO SHIT, SHERLOCK! *mirthless laughter* ask any of my friends, those to whom i write and those with whom i speak in meatspace and we'll all attest that 'worsening' is like a mild euphemism. but i'll leave off there.
as i said above, my kvelling over my plush toys was my way of totally putting this off, putting off the stating of stuff, had the PTB only been aware back in Olden Times when i went to school, my life would've been waaaay the fuck different. one example: i've never spoken much about playing bass and being lead singer of The Hardeners; that's cause it pains me muchly, i self-sabotaged that one and to this day, don't know whether i did on purpose or not, but hey.
moving raaaaght alawng, apart from read the article, i've nothing much to say tonight apart from the usual and most heartfelt thank-yous, so here we go: thank you Mr and Mrs Ifor The Engine for all your hard work (including bearing up and being gracious due to my total fuckwittery); thanks to Abeizer for the Lost Highway info and illo, thanks to Angie for the txts; in all actuallity your extended comm very much surprised me and actually helped me, somewhat.
lastly not leastly, thank you, Mark, especially today for listening to the latest episode of my rimoaning and being all Mark and patient and stuff, but one thing, dude: i know you're the last person to believe in things like this but our little mix-up with friday's 'All systems go'– it's just more proof of the damage that can happen when Mercury's in retrograde, as it is now.
*ducks* yup, i know you think i'm a dumbass for believing in that stuff even though i really don't but this week alone, with all the miscommnications beween the two of us as well as me and practically everyone else i've spoken to, well, there's at least a kernel of truth in it. and of course, dude, you're gonna believe what you're gonna believe and i respect you (and everyone else) for that; for sticking to their beliefs and wouldn't wanna change anyone to my kinda thinking, not unless y'all have experienced the horrors of missed and mixed messages which've been told me over the last two weeks alone. all this stuff is just too much to be labelled coincidence.
right, big thanks to Chris, who actually cared enough to keep me on the phone for like half an hour just a little while ago. silly boy; he calls himself a 'stubborn Polack' but even he'll admit that though i only have a bit of Poland in my bloodstream, i'm way the hell more stubborn than he ever imagined. and i repeat: Chris, you iz silly to even think i'll listen to you, not whilst we were together and certainly not now. that is, with one caveat that i can say without fear of being called to the carpet. it's gonna take a miracle and since i don't believe in fairy tales, including miracles, it ain't gonna happen. soz, dude. *snigger* this is me.
what's blasting: All My Life by Steve Earle, off Transcendental Blues (buy here).
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