07 September, 2010

hi kids, exciting development

so, because executive dysfunction is TERRIFIED of me and basically cries into its handkerchief when I'm around, I have finished putting new stuff on my website and reorganizing/writing some new bits for the disability section, something I've been planning on doing all summer, not one but ONE AND A HALF HOURS before my first class of my senior year. Come on you guys! Impressive!

Stuff is still uploading, so don't go to it right this minute that I'm posting it or you will be disappointed. But some possible things of note:

Difficult Cider (2010 musical odds and ends)

Lyrics for all the songs on the website

a terrible zine/diary thing I made two years ago, about something I'm trying to write a (somewhat more politicized) post about right now

On Speaking Badly: An Unintelligible Pop Opera

["It’s kind of, like, hard because, especially with speaking badly, because a lot of people speak badly who don’t have a disability, and I can’t really say that speaking badly is my thing, and that, um, it’s a hundred percent, that everyone who does it has a disability. I do think, though, that I can say that I think people have reactions to bad speaking that are unfair reactions, and I tend to think that those reactions come out of some kind of ableism, whether people can see it or not. Um...it’s analogous, I think, to, sort of, kids telling each other 'you’re so gay,' or sort of policing each other’s gender. And I think, you know, that can be going on in situations where all the kids are cis and straight kids, but there’s still this bogeyman. And I really remember, when I was a kid, that other kids seemed to not really even understand that a gay person was a real kind of person. It was just this sort of monster that we didn’t want to be. And, um, I feel like the same thing can be true with disability--even if people aren’t even outright saying, like, 'you talk like you’re retarded,' or something like that, or, like, 'you walk like a gimp,' I don’t know--but even if people aren’t saying those words, and even if people aren’t thinking about it as being about disability...I think that, um, we have a very deep sense that people who talk differently or move differently are not quite right. And, you know, whether that comes from not liking disabled people, or whether that results in not liking disabled people, I couldn’t really say, but, um, it’s definitely a problem."]

and last but not least, THE AWESOME DISABILITY SECTION, which is not that great actually, it only has like three things on it, but those things include:

Hi, I was just wondering why you keep using words like "ASD" and "autism spectrum disorder" and "autism" and "Autistic" about yourself when it's pretty clear that you have Asperger's and not autism at all.

What should I know about ASD that I'm not learning from pop culture?

this has already been up there for a year, but I still think it's like the best thing I've ever written, so: Pulling Rank and Involuntary Assimilation

also I have a suggested reading page which includes a transcript I made of Ari Ne'eman's awesome interview with Madness Radio, which as you may recall I love, cried about, became friends with him solely on the basis of, and so on and such forth.

Now it's 5:46, it's still not done uploading, except I think all the disability stuff is, but not the music. By six maybe it should be okay?

4 comments:

  1. I really liked both the pulling rank and the pop culture essays. And holy shit to the executive dysfunction stuff; I didn't realize having trouble controlling your emotions was part of that, but that was a huge problem for me, especially when I was younger.

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  2. I don't think of that as being part of it--it may just be part of dysexecutive syndrome for people with brain injuries. I mean it is of course also an issue for people with ASD, but I don't think of it as being an executive dysfunction thing but I guess it doesn't matter what you call it. Anyway, I like intense world theory which says that autism is about getting too much information at once and not being able to process it and having fear reactions to everything. For me that fits much more with what my basic deficit is, at the bottom of everything, than some shit about not being able to tell that other people have brains.

    I smile when I shouldn't too, by the way.

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  3. Okay, I had gotten that impression from the Wikipedia article because they mentioned "difficulty in inhibiting emotions" or something like that as part of it, but maybe they did mean it more as it relates to a brain injury.

    I've been a lifelong scatterbrain, so I really wouldn't be surprised if I did have executive function issues. I was originally diagnosed with ADHD when I was 18, though I think I fit the inattentive type more now and from what I remember, stimulants didn't do much for me but jack up my anxiety level (which is normally fairly high to begin with).

    I like the intense world theory too, I think I first found out about it from reading your blog.

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  4. The poem in The Dawn Treader (the little homo one) is just about the best thing ever. Actually, the whole thing is pretty great, but it feels a little mean to say that when you're mostly talking about being sad.

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