Caustically Optimistic

great responsibility

With great t-shirts comes great responsibly.  I avoid responsibility. 

Maybe it’s the Asperger’s or maybe its just plain old American misanthropy but I was tempted the other day to lose weight and switch to plain color t-shirts from Gap or Banana Republic.  I realize that t-shirts are great conversation pieces but I don’t know that I ever want to repeat what happened on my monthly day off again. 

I have an irrational attachment to several things, notably and rudely: Doctor Who.  I have several fantastic, mass-produced t-shirts and on my monthly day off I get to wear one.  I do not expect to have them commented upon because I’ve been a Doctor Who fan for over thirty years.  I am not used to having compatriots.  I don’t like it. 

I don’t like it that people talk to me in public on my day off.  I don’t like that people like what I like.  What I don’t like the most is that I am “that guy.”  You know “that guy,” when he (or she, let’s not be sexist) finds out you like Pink Floyd and they have to prove to you that they like Pink Floyd more than you and more than you ever possibly could.  No one likes that person and I don’t like that person, can’t we all like Pink Floyd and Doctor Who, in private?  Leave me alone so I don’t have to be that guy.

 If I were dying of cancer and they were all, “you’re an old bastard but we’ll let you make a wish,” mine would be that Emma Watson be the Doctor and Rupert Grint her companion.  Daniel Radcliffe being there could also happen but Hermione Granger is the end all, be all.  Sondra is allowed to disagree but I really will not set aside my privilege long enough to care what anyone else thinks.  I won’t even pretend.  

So, my shirt posed this dilemma for me because in my professional life (and I use ‘professional’ in the loosest possible sense) its my job to make small talk and care about what you think, on my day off (as I’ve beaten to death: I get one a month) the last thing I want to do is be awkward with other awkward people.  I am not your support group. 

Then, you know, I hated to do it but I had to remember what the Doctor is all about.  I couldn’t be cruel or cowardly, but I could be a sarcastic ass (but alas, this wasn’t the time).  I had to be nice to the uncomfortable man at the movie theatre because that is what the Doctor wouldn’t really do but it is what he’d WANT the humans to do.  Luckily, it was the cinema and they are strict about going the film you paid for at the time you paid to see it and I was given an out. 

I regret few things in life and I do few things with sincerity but one of the things I sincerely regret is being born human.  There has to be an easier planet to live on with sentient beings aware of their sentience. 

 However, if I am going to wear t-shirts that profess my puerile appreciation for great television then I have to live up to that responsibility.  That is, until I lose weight.  

“Sorry about your luck, bro,”

“You’re good with words,” is something that I hear a great deal but I am pretty sure the person saying it to me means, “your good with words.”  Not unlike the phrase, “say something funny,” “you’re good with words,” is a curse: once loosed the mage loses their powers and would be reduced to, “no one can scribble something awkward that makes everyone uncomfortable quite as well as you can.”  If you tossed in, “you are good at speaking in public,” I could tell you about the time my cousin and I stood under the statue of “The Jolly Green Giant,” in Blue Earth, Minnesota trying to figure out why it wasn’t wearing foundational garments and if it were a boy or a girl, instead of telling you something appropriate or heart-warming. 

Almost a year ago my cousin asked me to be a groomsman in his wedding and for the first time in my life when I said, “I’d be honored,” I meant that instead of, “I need to get a second job, thanks buddy,” and I set off to find “the right card” and the appropriate thing to write in it.  If my life were A Song of Fire and Ice[i] my family’s sigil would be the Lacoste crocodile and our unofficial words would be, “Excess is Best” the actual ones would be, “Observe the Forms, Keep It Real.” If there is something traditional or expected it happens, even if no one involved wants it to happen.  We will all talk about how we don’t go about meeting other people’s expectations or try to make other people happy; we are also full of shit. 

So, yeah, it’s implied that as a member of the wedding party that my cousin and I reciprocate a certain amount of felicity if he is going to extend that honor and I am going to risk pthirus pubis wearing rented clothing.  It’s possible I could have slipped by without a card but I’m “good with words,” and “say funny things,” so even if I wanted to I couldn’t.  I sent people hand-written notes all the time to say things big and small, important and ‘why did he waste a stamp on that?’ Even if just in my mind, I needed to send a card aptly expressing my gratitude for being invited and included, and that two excellent people had paired off[ii].  

 The week of the wedding, despite months to prepare, I didn’t have a card.  I have personal stationery and that might have worked in another situation but it wouldn’t work in this one.  So, on a scheduled trip to see a friend and the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan I visited two stationery stores to find the right card and each time had the same interaction.  I had looked here in Kentucky, Louisville (and Lexington) does not suffer a lack of pretense, but I was unable to find the ‘right’ card.  They all made me feel uncomfortable or seemed like all the other cards the couple would receive.  I had hoped that a larger metropolis would help – and usually does – but didn’t. 

When soliciting help for the card I wanted I was brought, both times, to the sympathy section.  Apparently this is humorous and I’ll own the fact that, as someone on the shallow end of the autism spectrum, the quirks of human comedy sometimes escapes me. I had to find the wedding card section on my own both times.  I could have gone for funny, I would have preferred a funny card to the one I selected, but sympathy wasn’t what I was going for.  I don’t feel like my cousin marrying this young lady is a bad thing, she’s kind, patient, smart and funny – virtues that will remain when long after eyes dim and beauty has faded. He’s the best person I know and she’s worthy of that.  And, I’ll admit selfishness: I’m an army brat and I am glad the only friend I have had my whole life is marrying someone wonderful who also tolerates my shit. I’m familiar with friends gaining wives and losing friends, it’s dreadful.   

Finding someone to put up with your shenanigans, weather your storms, and spend the ever elusive ‘free time’ with is a difficult task before making the commitment to the lifetime of hard labor that marriage is. They are clever, committed, and willing to put in hard work.  This will work, giving him a card that said, “Sorry about your luck, bro,” wouldn’t.    

 I was troubled by a view of marriage that was at the core sinister.  You can have the opinion that marriage is an antiquated structuralism bent on controlling women, promoting misogyny, and a vintage view of child rearing: this is America.  You can have the opinion that marriage emasculates, destroys friendships, eviscerates passion for hobbies and sport, and squashes abiding bromances; this is America[iii].  For the love of God (or whatever demon you worship) keep that rubbish to yourself.   In a world where everything is disposable including the people who love you and someone who has been disposed of too many times it gives me no small amount of hope to see two people be brave enough to embark upon that path together. 

So, I went with a blank card at Target that cost way too much but featured a Japanese painting on it that I like, and spent the better part of the evening drafting something that said what I wanted to say without being weird.  It was still weird, my friend Mary edited the card eight ways ‘til Tuesday, and it was still weird.  My cousin read it and looked at me as if to say, “What’s wrong with you?” and so I achieved what I set out to do without the help of the greeting card industrial complex: I expressed my feelings as best as my command of the English language and human emotion allowed.  It would have been nice if there were more cards that expressed, “marriage is hard work, but worth it, both of you are suited to the task, thank you for having me,” and I really wish I had just written that. 

 

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[i] Game of Thrones, read a book, geez. 

[ii] I think we can all agree that it’s high time that quality people stop pairing off with dross; the gene pool has suffered enough. 

[iii] Besides, what kind of male friend are you to not look at them about to do something stupid, foolhardy, or dangerous and not cheer them on or join in?  If I had a misgiving about this marriage it would be that my last and most faithful partner in crime had finally grown out of or perhaps past that.  I could be alone in Never Land.  If you’re really a bro, a dude, a buddy, their actual brother or cousin, then you would say, “this is stupid, double down.” 

 

Five or Eight Things You Should Hear Instead

I spend too much time on the phone at work and while I’m on the phone waiting for someone to pick up I read Buzzfeed.  There are too many lists of things you should never say to different demographics.  I’ve made my own for your reading pleasure but this one is different. 

People say things that demonstrate a marked lack of literacy about what you’re going through, honey, and that’s too bad.  Let me help you off your high horse.  People say things to people because they are insensitive jerks, they’re full of genuine concern but don’t know what to say, or like me they have a neurological impairment that stymies their emotional intelligence.  It’s so difficult to communicate with other humans is that the message you send and the message you receive are never the same. 

Instead of instinctively (and heavy-handedly) sharing and reposting, “Seven things you shouldn’t say to Rainbow Bright Fans” I want you to wrap your head around this idea, “I judge myself on my motives, others on their actions.”  No one wants to be aware of things presented and supported by a pompous ass.  I’ve just told you not to read the rest of this post; did you catch that? I'm always amused how we want everyone to be aware our our trevails but seem oblivious of the tribulations and trials of others.  

Here are eight things you should be hearing instead, these are the messages people are sending: 

1. I don’t understand what you’re going through.
   It’s entirely possible that the person with the ill-considered comment doesn’t understand what you’re going through.  You’re intimately aware of the path your life is taking right now, the rest of us aren’t.  Sure, there’s Matt[i] from college who is ‘that guy’ who says the worst things and repeats stupid he heard on television or on talk radio, or comes from a culture where being ‘that guy’ is celebrated and okay.  You can’t fix that.  You could step down from your high horse and appreciate that they’re trying.  Take the gift of their friendship and support as offered.  Pass on the opportunity to lecture. 
   
   
2. I care.
   Often when someone responds to the heartache, trouble, or just conditions of our lives they’re saying, “I care.”  I’m ill acquainted with social norms of humans but just coming out and saying that always sounds incorrect or poorly timed.  However, when someone says something that arrives in your years as glib or trite remember to accept it as it was intended, not as you heard it. 
   
   Isn't that what you wanted to hear anyway?  
   
   
3. I’m listening.  
   Akin to the idea of “I care” is “I am listening to you talk because I am your friend and/or we share DNA.” Sometimes we say things in response to sharing to let the person know we’re listening.  We’re not trying to hurt your feelings or display ignorance.  You’ve been going on for a minute and I need to signal that I am attending and not asleep.  
   
   
4. I have a similar experience I am working through as well. 
   I haven’t mentioned this to you today: I met Michelle Obama.  I also haven’t reminded you that the person who raised me died.  One of my best friends also met the First Lady; our experiences shared similarities and differences.  Someone would argue that for her it was different and more profound but there isn’t a way to measure that, is there?  Maybe they’re not competing, maybe they’re caring and relating?  Grandma dying was different for all of us who shared her in their lives so I am pretty confident when my friend’s dad died losing the person who raised her was different from losing the person who raised me – I may have stupidly said something without thinking it through and perhaps I shouldn’t have said anything.  I did share Stan’s advice, “Losing someone like that is hard and don’t let anyone tell you it isn’t.
   
   
5.  You’re talking about this a great deal, have you considered a support group?
   I am a pretty terrible human being a lot of the time, as much of it as I can muster in fact.  I do try to listen.  Sometimes I am not the person you should be talking to.  I don’t know what it is like to not be accepted to the college of your choice or to be left at the altar or to lose a baby.  I can listen to you a long time but perhaps share with someone who has been in your shoes.  I know that means you have to admit, “I’m not the only one in this situation,” but I’ve been through some shit in life and I promise you: letting go of the novelty helps in letting go, moving on, or coping.  
   
   
6. You’re talking about this a great deal, have you considered professional help?
   I have, on one occasion, told someone this: straight up, no chaser.  I told them I had been through the same ordeal and after a support group didn’t work I saw a doctor.  Sometimes we don’t want to hear that because of the stigma of getting help for a mental or physical health issue, or even just someone walking us through our problems.  Get over it, if your friends are causing so much vexation that you’re writing and sharing things on Buzzfeed maybe it’s time to throw in the towel.
   
   
7. This isn’t the time or the place for this conversation.  
   One time I was in a sport’s bar with a friend I’ll call “My sister” and she turned around and said, “shut your whore mouth” to some frat boys who were over-sharing in an establishment that is clearly for drinking and eating chicken wings.  It’s the Mead Hall of our day, we don’t want to hear how you hurt yourself making a dildo of yourself and it’s not okay that you brought it to show your ‘bros.’ It’s okay to share with your friends but it’s not okay to share everywhere, at any time you want.  
   
   
8. I am autistic, when I open my mouth things come out.
   My social interactions rely on past experiences or rehearsed responses.  Most of the time when I say things that are terribly, terribly wrong it is because I don’t have the appropriate response in queue.  When our paternal grandmother died my cousin Daniel helped me rehearse being in mourning.  That wasn’t helped by the fact that our grandmother was what the Internet would call “the worst” and wanted me to know I was a disappointment that she never loved[ii].  Sometimes people are inept and should be ignored as well meaning. 

 

Those are the messages people are sending, even if you're missing it (willfully or no). 

I’ve been through some tough shit in my life. It’s not rubbish or crap: it’s been pure, unadulterated, horseshit.  I am maladroit in social situations and rubbish when it comes to saying the right thing and the right time, or simply signaling active listening. I’ve also learned to accept the gift of someone’s friendship as offered and to take the support in the manner it was intended – try to receive the message you were sent instead of the one received.  

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[i] Any resemblance to Matt from college who was a Grade A dick and has his picture next to the definition of “that guy” in any dictionary of slang is purely incidental and a figment of his hubris. 

[ii] For anyone else who relies on practice and experience to get through social situations, “Don’t talk to me like you’re my ex-girlfriend.” Is never an appropriate response to your grandmother, no matter how terrible. 

And, yeah, it mentions unicorns.

I’ve been trying to come up with my response to the ‘debate’ that happened at the Creation Museum here in Kentucky.  Even as I write this I feel like I am banging my head against a wall and not making my point and I’m just thankful that I am not wasting actual paper on this effort.

 

I’m a Christian; I take the Bible seriously and consider it inerrant.  I also consider myself a critical consumer of information and I find science fascinating.  I love physics and geology – even if Sheldon Cooper thinks it is more of a social science than a real science. 

 

I’m also a Christian who is a Hebrew, not in some weird (and frankly creepy) ‘Evangelical’[i] meaning of it but in the sense that my ancestors practiced Judaism and I am the descendant of the Sephardic and Ashkenazi peoples.  Our cousins more interested in genealogy can trace our family back to The Flood.  I’m not sure if being ‘proud’ of my heritage is correct: I’ll paraphrase my good friend Roseanne in saying that I am fortunate to have this heritage because it has always offered my a diverse outlook on faith because people I knew and respect from the early on were different.  A rabbi in our family once said, “In the great questions of life science answers ‘how’ and our faith answers, ‘why.’”  My faith isn’t threatened by science because it is answering a different question. 

 

Also: please, stop using the Hebrew calendar to date the world at 6,000 years old or there about because that’s just when we started counting not when things started.  

 

What disturbs me isn’t the lack of intellectual curiously in those share my faith, I taught too long in public and private schools to clutch my pearls in horror at that idea.   The pride taken in a lack of intellectual curiosity is what horrifies me.  We don’t stop at evolution in our fear and hatred of science but extend that to climate science and our poor stewardship of the planet.  This will be the winter of your discontent but also of your dissonance: this is what global warming (more appropriately, climate change) looks like.  There was a whole Buzzfeed list of vapid comments from Christians in response to Mr. Nye’s presentation. 

 

Debate is the quest for truth through dialog.  Dialog requires listening and respecting not only the opinions of others but their right to the opinions.  Mira Wiegmann once said about these types of debates that it is important in this type of discussion: you cannot debate an idea based on faith because faith is an emotion and a ‘debate’ relies on reason and logic.  Faith, an emotion, takes us further than reason or logic will let us go[ii].  I would venture the guess that secularists who believe in science do so with the same fervor with which we hold our beliefs. 

 

And let’s keep it real, a mechanical engineer debated for evolution against someone who missed the central teachings of Christianity talking about creationism.  It wasn’t like the time Creighton debated Point Loma Nazarene in 2007.  It was a farce.  It was a publicity stunt.  It was a missed opportunity on the part of the Church to not look insipid.    And don’t pull First Corinthians 1:22-25 out, we’re talking about knowing what people are talking about before tearing them down. 

 

There are some things that we Christians need to consider before the next time we debate something with someone in the secular world:

 

First, we can have it both ways.  You can believe in the God of the Bible and give science some credit.  We don’t know HOW God created the world or ordered the Universe but we believe that he did.  Remember who Galileo was treated?  The simple truth is that no expects the Spanish Inquisition (although in Galileo’s case it was Roman) but the rest of the country just puts up with the Evangelical one. 

 

Second, scientists don’t pretend to have all the answers and we can stop pretending that we do.  As the guy how has an answer for everything and knows everything I am more painfully aware than most that it is off-putting.  Few things are as persuasive as active listening and having someone explain their point of view to you.  The best way to get someone away from a bad idea is to have the people talk themselves out of it. 

 

Third, the Bible isn’t a work of science. It does contradict itself in places (or seems to). The Bible also has been used to justify every evil perpetrated by the United States from slavery to the war on terror.  If we are going to beat people over the head with the book we need to own the contradictions and the fact that a book we love has been terribly misused and likely has been used to mistreat the people we’re attempting dialog with.  And, yeah, it mentions unicorns.  Sure, they were most likely talking about rhinoceroses of every variety from Indian to Birthday but it does call them unicorns. 

 

Fourth, we can disagree with people and still treat them with the same respect we expect people to give us.  We don’t do that.  Sure, you can point to the fact that they make fun of us but I’ve found it is easier to find an atheist literate in the Bible than it is to find a Christian literate in science.  It is okay, really, to admit you’re not well versed in a theory and it is also okay to be entirely offended by someone’s point of view, life style, and whatever else but you have to remain decent to those people. 

 

In the future it would be interesting, unlikely but interesting, to see someone literate in the science behind creationism (not just the theology) and someone literate in the science behind the Theory of Evolution to talk together and have an informed discussion.  It would be a reassurance to me, as a Christian, not to have my beliefs presented by someone cartoonish that even Pat Robertson asked to stop talking.  I’m sure the science types would like a scientist, too. 

 

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[i] As a Lutheran Christian I’m very cross at the word ‘evangelical’ being hijacked by the American Taliban who don’t see themselves in the Pharisees from the Gospels. 

[ii] Mira Wiegmann would be horrified to know that I listened to everything she ever said in my presence so don’t tell her.  Renea said she was very smart and I ought to take notes and I rarely ignore Renea. 

Lord Fauntleroy, Duke of Nassau

How many of us have a fantasy of running into that bully from junior or senior high school and showing that jerk how great life has gotten on without them?  I can’t say I’ve fantasized about it but I have run through what I’d do if it would happen.  One of my coping mechanisms with Asperger’s is to rehearse situations from ordering a burrito to meeting the First Lady of the United States – one can never be too ready.  I haven’t really rehearsed about telling them how the grass grows but more plausibly pretending that I didn’t remember them or being courteous in my response to seeing them.  They were a dick but I don’t have to be one now.    

 

One of the luxuries I’ve afforded myself post-diagnosis is contentment.  I am not disappointed about where my life has ended up.  I have peace of mind.  I’d like to think the people who’ve bullied me have grown up and matured past the place where they were a petty little person taking their sadness out on other people or whatever it was that caused bullies and their lieutenants to ‘act out.’ So, when I run into someone who was once unkind I think it best to not act foolishly or shame someone for the way they act as a child. 

 

What I didn’t rehearse is what happened last week when I was at the market. 

 

Without too much background or info dump: I live in a city near where I graduated high school but I only went there one year and I went to junior high school and half of high school on another continent.  Running into people I went to eighth grade with is comparably pretty rare to a standard issue human.

 

I ran into a woman that I apparently was a child with and to whom I was unkind.  She claimed that I had bullied her when we were children and she was happy to run into me and tell me she was a happy, adjusted adult despite my cruelty. 

 

I’ll admit that my tongue is sharp and that I’ll break someone down like a rifle quicker that I ought.  I could argue that this is a response to my conditioning and an excellent defense mechanism but my cleverness is my superpower and I should only use it for good. 

 

I could feel my eyes doing that thing, where they twitch back and forth, looking for something to draw upon to respond to this woman with but I couldn’t find anything.  Honestly, part of me wanted to ask, “what was your name again?” or perhaps act like she had the wrong dude but I was in argyle sweater with a German chocolate bar in each hand, who was I going to kid? I could have just as easily been wearing a nametag that read, “Lord Fauntleroy, Duke of Nassau.”

 

My Asperger’s stunts my emotional intelligence and outward expression of emotion, or presents my reactions inappropriately.  I have a cousin, and I love them, but their picture is next to “sardonic” in the dictionary – mainly because I pasted it there – and I sorely didn’t want to tailor the response to show an appropriate amount of remorse for my sins and happiness that she has moved beyond that horrible time in her life.

 

There was ten seconds of indignation and disgust, but I’m honest: bullying is aggressive and involves an imbalance of power and repetition.  I wouldn’t ever claim to have been in a position of power to cause it to be imbalanced in my favor.  I also wanted to express my contempt for anyone who would let something like that have power over her for over twenty years.  I am, without fail, honest.  This was not a moment for me to admit my feelings or to tell this person I had zero idea who she is.

 

I decided to tell her that I was sorry for being so terrible to her when we were children and offered that I might have matured into someone who wasn’t dreadful but that wasn’t true and that I was glad that she grew past that experience to a happy adulthood and I also hoped she received the catharsis she hoped for in the exchange. 

 

There was this moment where I thought about this person I roomed with briefly at university who I think is a universally disgusting human, and I don’t bear him any ill will I just hold him in low esteem.  I won’t go into what he did beyond when our coach asked if he had ever asked forgiveness and apologized for his actions he said that he had and indeed he never has even to this day.  I have forgiven him because I don’t want to carry someone else’s smallness around with me but I do hold him as contemptible for saying he had apologized when he had not.  However, I do wonder how life (and my time at university) would be different had he actually done that and if I would have been mature about it at the time.  I’ve dealt with worse people in my life and he is small potatoes, I can’t help but also have nothing but scorn for the people who he thinks on as friends who encounter him and repeat his misfortunes in life to me as if that interests me.  I hope he’s grown up and out of being that way but whatever he’s become (or not) I don’t care to know about it. 

 

It was a seriously uncomfortable moment, more uncomfortable than every other interaction I have with humans, because she made the toothy face the entire time that my dog makes when she’s going to snip at someone.  Given that people with guns are allowed to shoot anyone they please I was worried for a little bit that I was going to die at the market. 

 

I’ve had a conflicted self-reflection since then.  I’m trying to figure out if I truly was a bully to this person (which must mean I was the bully of the whipping boys) or if indeed we’re expanding the definition past actual bullies to just any old jerk who made us feel bad about ourselves as children and then I double back to “If I am thinking that then I am just trying to make myself feel better about myself and truly I am evil.” 

I didn’t enjoy a career where I was to treat people well and make the world a better place although I was good at it but I am flourishing in a profession designed for shysters and sociopaths.  They could actually be right and as much as I’d like to think they weren’t they were bearing their teeth in a threatening manner.  They truly have an excellent dentist. 

 

I’m pretty sure that I am a generous person who looks out for his fellow humans and endeavors not to be a monster but one can never be too sure.  We judge ourselves by our motives and others by their actions but I am confident that neither the intention nor the actions of a bully are welcome.  I hope I no longer have the base desire to be awful to someone else just to do it or so that I feel better about myself.  Maybe this is a warning to tread a little more carefully through life. 

 

Someone will read this and comment who I am not a terrible person in any tiny way and I am just swell.  That could be in part because I have probably snipped at them yet or it could be in part that I have changed.  My capacity for cruelty is pretty large. 

 

All I can do is offer my apologies, hope for forgiveness that I probably don’t warrant, and try not to be so offensive in the future.  I always thought of myself as the recipient of bullying (I don’t like to think on myself as a victim, especially as it doesn’t control my life now or then) but not really as the distributor.  That’s something to chew on if bullying is a problem we take seriously and would like to change.  We may be doing it and not even know it. 

Axis of Awkward

I had plans this Saturday night; I swear I did.  Those plans fell apart. 

In other news, my coworkers are all out seeing a cover band.  They’ve been talking about it for two weeks and they’ve been talking about it –around- me, as you did in high school when you were not inviting someone but you wanted to make sure they knew they were missing out. 

I almost never do not-work stuff with coworkers.  It’s not that I think I’m better than them – it’s pretty damned hard to find someone I don’t think I’m better than[i]- but I learned as a teacher that if one wishes to keep one’s job then one ought not fraternize with coworkers.  However, I’ll admit my feelings were a wee bit hurt. 

This makes complete sense because I don’t like going to see music performed live and the only thing that I find more wretched than the sentence, “I’m in a band,” is “I’m in a cover band.”  I would feel less sorry for you if you said, “I was exposed to yellow fever.” That’s mainly based on my belief that, unless your parents go to Playboy playmates for their scientific and medical advice, you’ve been vaccinated against that disease and you’ll be fine.  I don’t know how someone fights back from being in a cover band.  

People I don’t like or don’t spend time with are going to see a cover band covering songs I don’t listen to and I am hurt that I was not invited.  Is this what Libya and Syria felt like when they were left out of George W. Bush’s axis of evil?  One of my coworkers, the one I put post-it notes on that read, “The Worst[ii]” and do everything in my power to overcome my high-functioning autism to let them know I find them abhorrent says, “are you going to the bar tonight with us?”

“No, are you going to the library?” Was the only response I could initially muster to which he replied, “No, why would I go to a library?[iii]” Thirty-two minutes later he came back and asked again and I told him that I was not going to the bar with them and he asked, “Why not?”  

Now, I’m not sure why someone would ask that but the thing I’m even less sure of is why I answered him.  “I wasn’t invited.”  That’s the long and short of why I didn’t go with a middle part about, “I wouldn’t go see that band, why would I go see their cover band?” that I kept entirely to myself because even I know that bit was rude.  Apparently, however, conversely, nevertheless, it is apparently (in some circles) the same thing as being invited to hear something talked about around you without a comment being addressed to you.  I have a coworker still sore with me because I didn’t attend their wedding despite an invitation being left on a counter in a common area. 

I get that I have Asperger’s, or if it makes you feel more comfortable autism, but I am pretty confident that in other circumstances it would be the wrong thing to do to assume that an invitation left on a counter or an event discussed in a conversation you weren’t a part of isn’t an invitation.  I have been wrong before and I am open to the idea that I could be this time, too.  I’m intuitively bad at this activity but I am fairly confident that I am not wrong in this instance. 

I am now reconsidering ever talking about any plans I have at work in my ill-fated attempts at being ‘social’ for fear that when I am in New Jersey this spring someone just assumes I was asking them along or that by simply stating that I’d like to see a movie that I want to see it with them.  I’m in a morass of social skills that are beyond my comprehension.  I need a handbook or an app, something.  

The text messages I’m receiving is giving me the idea I’m a designated driver. For now I'll just keep my place in George W. Bush's "Axis of Awkward." 

 

 

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[i] There was this once incident where someone said, “You think you’re better than everyone else!” and a clerk, a porter, and I each responded together, and completely uncoordinated, “I don’t think that at all, I know that.”  I will admit that naked truth without shame.   

[ii] This is, some days, a 3,476-way tie.

[iii] Indeed 

snow day ideas

Right now I am positive that Pintrest is a veritable cornucopia of ideas for what to do entertain your progeny while school is canceled during the polar vortex.  I will suspend my normal unhelpful, sardonic comments about how I know how to entertain and manage adolescent humans with useful hints on how to keep your family together and avoid cabin fever.  I’ll be fair: it isn’t like when we were kids and you could watch some videos, play a game, or read a book when playing outside somehow became tiresome.  I hope these ideas help you when your own chickens become restless:

 

Eat one of them. 
Seriously, this happens in nature all the time.  Demonstrate your dominance over the herd by eating one of the smaller or weaker ones.  Killing one of them simply won’t do: eating them shows them that you are not only the strongest and adept at treachery while maintaining your hold on the throne but that you’re absolutely unhinged and capable of just about anything.  The surviving children will be on their best behavior for the rest of your captivity and they’ll stay out of your way and be very quiet. 

Teach them to gamble.
Sure, there are a lot of things you could teach your children during your snowbound misery but gambling can utilizes a lot of that common core claptrap so it will not only grease the wheels of school but unlike anything that goes on in school it may transmit a useful, money-making skill to your child.  If you’re clever you can also have them play for chores, if they lose they have to do different things around the house.

Have “the talk” with them. 
Is little Billy getting on your nerves?  Are you finding he can’t leave his jimmy alone?  Sit him down and have the sex talk with him.  He’ll be so incredibly mortified that he’ll disappear for hours and avoid eye contact with you until the snow relents and you can both escape the house.  I’m not one for being puritanical about sex and hoping we can pray our instincts as mammals away but the mutual level of discomfort will hit the house like a wet blanket.  The loud, annoying behaviors of your child will dissipate quickly as their horror prompts them to avoid you.

 

Sure, all these ideas come across as daft or idiotic but unlike the ones you’re pinning left and right, these will work. 

life a rifle

So far, I’ve lived up to all of my 2014 resolutions except the one about drinking more bourbon.  I have included more whiskey but in my effort to learn more about my new home and the local products I have to draw a distinction betwixt whiskey and bourbon.  Betwixt?  One of my resolutions in 2012 was to use more antiquated words and while I can rock the antediluvian with gusto it just makes me look old. 

In 2014 your resolution, what you can do better, is this: stop asking people what they think if we’re going to lose our minds when someone says something we find archaic.  People with certain backgrounds, cultures, value systems, or however you wish to explain it away, will come across as bigoted, homophobic, misogynistic, hateful, intolerant, illiterate, and/or cruel to someone, somewhere.  Everything you do offends someone somewhere and I’d put money that someone is me. 

My contract specifically stipulates that I am not to share my opinions in certain situations – I mention this a great deal because it’s funny AND true – the caveat to that being if someone sticks their hand in my cage and ASKS they should expect to pull back a stump.  I’ll break your ass down like a rifle.  

So, our first thing we’re going to work on as humans is this: in light of the fact that we cannot respect each other’s opinions we’re not going to ask each other and if we do ask each other we’re going to actually live by the “I respect your right to have a bat shit crazy opinion and to say things that make you sound unhinged” mantra.  We say we believe that but we never put it into practice.  

Also, please, stop making stupid people famous or acting like their opinions is valid.  Yes, everyone is entitled to opinions.  Everyone is also entitled to eat food but you cannot tell me with seriousness that all food is good for you; some of those opinions are rubbish.  People who admire the Kardashians and watch shows designed to mock “hick culture” are one ring lower in Hell in Spritopias’ Inferno than people who shop at Walmart but claim to love America. 

While, we’re on the topic: I realize that you went to a Bible College in middle America and have a degree in Bible thumping but so did I and it doesn’t say, “be a dick,” “make Jesus look like a jerk because you are,” or, “discredit an entire system of thought by disagreeing with the entirety of scientific thought because you disagree with evolution.”  How do I know this? I have three degrees from a Bible college in Middle America[i].  Even I get a picture of a fish flopping out of water when I say that, it’s okay.

Jesus had all these hang-ups in the Gospels.  He was pretty stuck on money; I’d guess he was jealous of money.  Huh?  We love money a heck of a lot more than we love Jesus.  He praises the widow who gave all her money at the Temple, speaks about how difficult it will be for the rich to get into Heaven[ii], and the picture I can’t get out of my head from Kindergarten: Jesus throwing the money lenders out of Temple.  When he was pressed he said the commandments could be boiled down to “love the Lord your god with all your heart, soul, and mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself.”  When Jesus stopped the woman caught in adultery from being stoned he drew something on the ground and I am intrigued to know what it was but if I had to guess or just make something up I’d say: it was the Hebrew symbol for “any evangelical pastor too concerned about the gays is going to found in a hotel room with the gigolos and meth in a few short weeks” or probably the name of the person those individuals were bumping uglys with. 

So, please, just admit that you’re uncomfortable around certain people and let’s work together on you not making it about Jesus. Jesus wasn’t uncomfortable around anyone, that’s your hang-up.  He didn’t like the blowhards and hypocrites.  I say that with all the confidence in the world that the tax collectors and sinners in the Bible are today’s car salesmen and nurse practitioners[iii].  I am a horrible, horrible person but with this exception I don’t go around using my faith to underscore other people’s faults (real or perceived). 

If you could work on that I’d appreciate it a great deal and we’d get along better. 

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[i] Yeah, I too think of Middle Earth when I say, “Middle America.”  If I were the Erin from my university days I would label that part of the map, “THE WORST.” But that’s her shtick and there is nothing so vile as someone coops someone else’s shtick. 2009’s resolutions were: use more Yiddish and French in everyday conversation, and bring back footnotes and endnotes now that they’re no longer a pain in the ass. 

[ii] The part where the Big JC talks about “the eye of the needle” He’s referring to the Eye of the Needle, a gate in the wall around Jerusalem that was difficult to get a camel through – and they can do it, but they have to do it on their knees.  When people who think they can out Bible thump me talk about this verse I can impeach their credibility because they don’t know this, they think it’s a metaphor.  It was a literal example, not an allusion to a camel getting through a sewing needle. 

[iii] I have nothing against nurse practitioners but all the ones I know get into fantastic trouble with me, all the time.  I love it. 

only zippers are more unwelcome

I like to get things in the mail so when I was invited to send a company a rather large sum of money to receive samples in the mail once a month I was on it.  Everyone likes getting a package in the mail filled with surprises and since so far you’ve been a disappointment I had to go this route.  I knew the products in the box would be fancy or useful or both but I had no idea that they’d be exciting beyond, “this isn’t an invoice!” 

 

My first box came today and inside of the box were samples for an Italian shaving cream, English cologne, deodorant wipes for smokers, and a pair of skivvies that retail for forty dollars (U.S.).  Before the 9/11 attacks I used to send all manner of things through the post to that one friend from childhood for the amusement of the people who rifle through and x-ray our packages and parcels as they migrate around the world.  I have never sent another human being, no matter how close, a pair of underwear. 

 

Thankfully, they sent the correct size.  I don’t know what to infer from that but I am going to imply that the NSA did me a solid and made sure that I received the correct size.  I should probably be alarmed or excited, one or the other. 

Well, these underpants were the immediate cause of excitement because they’re for exercising and we all know that for the next couple of days everyone is going to be at the gym.  These skivvies, however, have a special pocket on the outside.  There was a QR code for the underwear that I could scan and a website I could look them up on to learn more about the product.  

On my trek from the kitchen to the media room to my office so that I could either scan the QR code or Google the underpants pocket I decided that the only logical explanation for the underpants pocket was that it was for prophylactics.  What else would fit in this pocket?  My iPod Nano would fit there but there wasn’t an egress for the headphones so I went back to the idea of a pocket for prophylactics. 

I was flattered by the assumption that I would have use for a prophylactic but anyone who has met or dated me is well aware that I use my personality for birth control and have no use for the miracles of latex science and engineering.  Investigation reveals that the pocket is for keys. Keys: something else that I do not use any longer.  There are buttons and apps and remotes galore but there are no prophylactics and there are no keys. 

If memory serves, keys are sharp and made of metal.  Why would I want a sharp, metal object so close to my privates while exercising and moving about with vigor?  How is that a good choice?  I stand with my nonsensical prophylactic answer to this question because I tried and the collection of fobs that replaced my keys didn’t fit into the garment. However, the argument that it is for keys resonates with me just as well as the argument that you’re reading Playboy for the articles.  I have no idea what I’ll do with the pocket but I do know fobs won’t be bobbing in there and for good or ill neither will prophylactics.  Knowing that, and unwilling to let a pocket go unemployed, I began to wonder what I could use that pocket for.  

I would like to point out that I am grateful the tiniest pocket isn’t the one that ought to house my genitals.  I am not so depraved that I’d need to spend forty dollars to be humiliated (at least not yet).  Also, I've eschewed faith systems and religions that codify what one wears and sets out specific underpants.  I have also be unable to find a job that requires a uniform that would take me.  These new, magical underpants were begining to make me fear that perhaps I'd be joining a strange cult, a cult that required expensive underpants that cost more than a full tank of fuel in my car.  

I just don’t know what I’d be doing that the pockets in my pants and blazer would be so incredibly full that I would say, “Oh, there is a pocket in my man panties!” Instead of saying, “perhaps I should carry a briefcase satchel purse.”

In all the literature worth reading when the question is put before you of what to do about a situation you consult a wizard, a rabbi, or a dragon.  I have a dragon on staff so I consulted her and we came to the best use for this pocket: having both worked retail and having both been traumatized by people who use their bosoms for pocketbooks the only logical and good use for this pocket is as a wallet or coin purse.  The Dragon and I came up with some other good uses for the pocket but the idea of holding money there made the most sense.  Make your own life choices; I will respect them.  I will remind you that the practice is as off putting as humility.  

I must now, once a week – give or take with the laundry rotation – walk the earth in these underpants (and perhaps other clothing) with money in the pocket.  I’ll find the women who paid the Dragon or I with money from their cleavage and pay them for their goods and services (whatever they may be) with money from my underpants.  The Dragon will film the reactions and we will report them back to you, oh Internet. 

Sure, we could keep a chap stick, a roll of quarters (okay, dimes), or chocolates in that pocket but I think using it as a wallet is both progressives and entertaining.  When these magical underpants return from the laundry and go on their first adventure I’ll let you know.  I’m sure, just as I am not the only person who enjoys receiving a package in the mail, that I am not alone in the idea that the above described shenanigans are a good idea.    Pockets in one’s underpants: only zippers are more unwelcome. 

no one will stop me

I wish people would make their resolutions for the New Year with what might actual happen in their year: eat a lot of junk food, argue with people on Facebook, look at new and more disgusting types of pornography on the internet, drink unto sickness more often, or pass gas in confined places.  It’s the first of the year and I didn’t yet get to the gym and I ate garbage all day long.  I haven’t been to the gym in a month and I used to go every day – even if I was out of town.  I used to eat ‘well’ every day but in anticipation of starting anew in the ‘new year’ that I just let it go, go, go. 

 

I did make bigger decisions about this year last summer.  This was the year I was going to finally make it up to Quebec. This was the year I was going up to the Pacific Northwest.  This will be the year that I learn to finally roll with the punches. 

 

I do want to stop arguing with people on the Internet.  I look at the postings like I used to look at Oreo cookies.  Did you know the singular of cookies is cooky, not cookie?  Most people don’t know that because for real, who eats one?  It offends my religion.  I am not going to change anyone’s mind.  I will just ignore their ill-informed posts.

I’m going to watch more television in 2014; I may even buy one.  I am still going to exercise and tomorrow I am going to do my level best to steal a bicycle from work.  I ride the bicycle around the parking lot.  However, my lack of television watching makes me a rather boring human being and if I watched more television I could get through more conversations with people I have nothing in common with because we’d have television in common. 

It’d be great if this was the year I learned to shave properly, or bought a house finally and painted the doors to resemble the doors of the TARDIS, or hit puberty, or stopped giving people the impression I was a homeless person but I won’t hold my breath on that because the halitosis is overfuckingbearing. 

I’m going to pretend like I am going to stop drinking Diet Coke but I may as well say, “I’m going start peeing in a seated position.”  I will drink more beer, I swear to God I will, and bourbon.  This is Kentucky and I will drink bourbon.  I will put bourbon in my Diet Coke, and maybe in my beer.  Bourbon, bourbon everywhere!  I am going to go where they make all the bourbon and if I can get away with it I will kiss the people who make the bourbon.  Forget teachers and police officers and fire fighters: distillers are the people who make the world better. 

Also, this year I will stop assuming that it is my drink before drinking it. 

I am going to lose weight because I don’t know whom I think I am kidding but vests aren’t slimming any more than skinny jeans make you skinny.  My boss doesn’t like me to wear bowties but I don’t think I have to run my sartorial choices past him.  Sure, he signs the checks that pay my bills and keeps me in argyle but I will defy him in this. 

I will stay away from tequila.  Staying away from tequila means staying away from waking up with your hands tied to a headboard by your own underpants.  Knowledge is power.  

I would say, “I will spend more time with my friends,” but then I would have to make friends and I think instead I will just join dating websites, put my classmate Chris’ photo up as mine and snare people into dates they’ll think are relationships when I really just would like to hang out or go to a movie without feeling like a complete weirdo because I’m at Harry Potter and the Extremely Long Camping Trip by myself.  It’ll be like the time we engaged the services of a prostitute to clean my apartment only more pathetic. 

I will ask my clients questions whilst wearing latex gloves with both my hands in their mouth, like the dentist.  I will assume they’re giving me the answers I want and we’ll proceed with life in a lively and happy manner.  I will stop believing everything my best friend tells me, masturbating is NOT cardio.  He’s smarter than I am but that doesn’t mean he is always right.  I will throw more potential clients out of the showroom shouting, "Lord Jesus, it's a fire," because ain't nobody got time for that.  

I’m going to write in my tiny notebook instead of expressing my frustrations to people or saying caustic things to people.  Mainly, because people don’t stop being frustrating because they’re brought up to speed on their behavior and most of the people I insult have the insult explained to them and this makes me sad.  What good is crafting a clever retort if you’re the only one clever in the room? THESE ARE THE PEOPLE FOR WHOM THEY PUT SIGNS UP THAT REMIND THEM TO WASH THEIR HANDS AFTER RELIEVING THEMSELVES.  WHY ARE WE ASSUMING THEY CAN READ? 

I will not wash my coffee mug until Scotland wins the Quiddich World Cup.

 

 In 2014 no one will stop me.