There’s a Republican Party of Second Life. They had their primary yesterday (I voted for Alan Keyes).
Their party HQ includes this monument:
It’s a quote from Ronald Reagan, and has two poseballs in front, that cause you to pray. Pray at the shrine of Ronald Reagan’s meaningless statement. Wonderful.
From: sevlom@adelphia.net
Subject: CONGRATULATION YOU HAVE WON!!!!!!
Date: November 28, 2007 9:46:29 PM CST
To: undisclosed-recipients:;
Reply-To: halifaxxanga@live.com
Dear Beneficiary,
You have been selected as one of the five (5) Beneficiary of
£280,000, each
by Xanga Foundation in line with our 50th anniversary in charity work
all over the world.For further inquiry and to process your cash
Prize,contact our Bank
secretary with the information your:( Full Name) (Full Address) (Phone
And (Occupation) Mr Kelvin Brooks Email
Enquiries:halifaxxanga@live.com
OK, so there’s a whole bunch of controversy among those who are autistic about this group called Autism Speaks. Autism Speaks is a sort of umbrella group for a couple of other organizations, including CAN (Cure Autism Now).
The trouble is that many autistic people don’t want to be ‘cured.’ They just are who they are, and that’s all there is to it. Nothing to ‘cure.’ This is, of course, controversial, because who among the neurotypical want to be autistic? It takes a big leap for most people to see autism as a not-bad thing to be accepted.
But, of course, it was a big leap for white people in the US to see slaves as human beings. OK, OK, hyperbole. But you get the point. 
So there’s Autism Speaks and it’s subsidiaries, and against them stands an array of rabble-rousers such as the Autistic Liberation Front and Aspies For Freedom. Both of these groups have a presence on Second Life.
Now to the matter at hand: On Second Life, Autism Speaks has been doing a lot of fundraising. They’ve been organizing charity balls, and distributing kiosks to whoever might be interested. But they’ve distributed these kiosks by joining random autism-related groups and then handing out the kiosks en masse to all members. And guess which two groups were included? Yes, the ALF and AFF.
So clearly, at best Autism Speaks has no clue. But they now have YouTube, where they’re showing crappy videos that send mixed messages (“A world that doesn’t judge an individual with autism…” and then “A world where autism is a word in the history books”….? What?). But the biggest irony is that even though they are a group called ‘autism speaks,’ they have disabled comments on their site.
Now, I have a moderate view of all this. I think Autism Speaks is just a bunch of clueless well-meaning people trying to deal with something difficult. But of course, others have a more hard-line view, especially because there’s a lot of money at stake. Everyone wants to give money to help those poor downtrodden children who are so very, very helpless, and their helpless mothers who are at the end of their emotional ropes… Who wouldn’t want to ‘help autism?’
Anyway. Just my rant for today. I can’t offer any solutions.
Maybe read this all the way through to get a better picture of the issue.
101 Uses for Second Life in the College Classroom (PDF).
This via the very useful Ai Austin links page.
You know what I like most about my mom’s iMac with the huge screen that fills your peripheral vision? The fact that if you twist your chair around sideways to put your feet up, you can move the window down to that end of the screen so you can see it better.
But really, I want to tell the story of eating breakfast on the train.
In the mornings, I am a jerk. I’m not just an asshole, I’m *the* asshole. I have no blood sugar to speak of, and I’m at my most touchy, hate-the-world autistic self. All I have to do is show up and people take it personally.
So waking up next to a seatmate I don’t know who is much bigger than me and probably scared I’m queer isn’t all that ideal a situation. And neither is being seated with three other random people in the dining car. And to top it off is the waiter in the dining car, who is a genuinely cheerful person who enjoys what he is doing and would gladly expose a vein on the spot if you needed an emergency transfusion. Confronting people with this degree of genuine happiness and service before coffee should be illegal.
However. He said, “Coffee, right?” and smiled. And I said, “Yes.” and tried to smile a genuine smile, but probably looked like a sarcastic jerk.
OK, so some back-story. On this train there are two groups worth mentioning: A church group returning from LA to Georgia, and a number of Swedes. The church group were black. The Swedes were white. I was assumed to be with the Swedes until evidence showed otherwise.
The church group sat around and talked about Jesus. A lot. A lot of talking about Jesus. Either Jesus or gossip about their town, each other, or people on the train. The Swedes, on the other hand, spent most of the night getting drunk on contraband vodka in the lower level of the lounge car. And, like I said, it was assumed that I was with the Swedes. I have no idea why, because I wasn’t. Perhaps because I was white, or because I was weird or who knows why. And I found this out because…
I sat down at the table for breakfast in the dining car, and there were two women from the church group chatting. They stopped in mid-gossip. I sat down at the table and made grunting noises. One asks, “Did you sleep well?” Of course I didn’t fucking sleep well, you stupid git. But I said, “I’m sure I didn’t sleep more than half an hour. I’m in the coach seating.” This was supposed to be funny. Sort of. She said the following. And what I should have done was to get up immediately and ask to be re-seated. But I didn’t. She said this: “Did you not get any sleep because you had trouble sleeping? Or did you not get any sleep because you spent the night getting drunk?”
Scratch your head for a while. Hahaha. Funny. Maybe. I guess. Or something. Let’s pretend it’s a joke. “Hahaha. Yeah, I spent aaaaaaaaaalll night drinking, and that’s why I’m here telling you I didn’t get more than a half-hour’s sleep.” I tried to make it light. But nevertheless, I felt that my half-hour of real sleep was a heroic act, a true journey through the night where all around are jostling windowpanes, seatmate’s elbows, and the one seat on the whole goddamn train that squeaks, but doesn’t squeak consistently. To have this supreme accomplishment demeaned in such a way was enough to bring out the sarcasm. Had I gotten drunk, I bet my sleep would have been sound and lengthly.
My coffee arrives. Cream and sugar. My boothmates are silent. No doubt they are exchanging looks, trying to figure out how to deal with me. We order food, the food comes, another person is seated with us, his food comes, we all eat in relative silence, with the new guy asking how the various meals are. Good? Worthwhile? Is he taking notes for future rail travel? Beats me. It’s amusing how someone comes along and has no way of being aware of the dynamic.
The table across the way has been empty this whole time. They seat us together while the table is empty in order to… Well, it doesn’t make as much sense as it could. But there you go. The table has been empty, and the south-facing curtain has been closed to keep the low sun from shining directly into the eyes of anyone unfortunate enough to sit at the table across the way. Namely me.
Now, however, a group is seated there. And what is the first thing that happens? She pulls back the curtain to peek outside. But she’s maybe a little self-conscious about it, as if maybe she’s thinking, “Oh, wait, this could get into someone’s eyes, I better close it… But now that it’s opened, I’ll look a little bit longer, but I really should close it again…” Like that. All this from body language. She might re-close it. She might leave it open. My omelette is getting cold while I watch.
I move to speak. Set down the fork so as not to appear violent. Turn to face. Try to smile. And just as the words leave my mouth, “Excuse me, but…” the church lady who all but accused me of being a drunkard chimes in, “Pardon me, ma’am, but could you please…” and I’m speaking, too, “that sunlight is right in my eyes and could you…” and we finish in unison, “…close the curtain?”
Curtain lady is aghast. Stunned. “Well, uh, yes… I was afraid of that…” I say, “Thank you very much.” I turn to look at church lady. She is staring me down with a smug grin on her face. Cat with mouse. She had been watching and waiting for just that moment, and she fucked it up for me. She says, “You have to CO-MU-NI-CATE. You can’t just expect her to…” On like that. A couple more sentences. She was grinning, staring unblinking at me, lecturing me on how to communicate rather than expect someone else to do something for you.
I have been seated on a train across the table from a sociopath. And I’m not just saying this because it was before the coffee had really kicked in.
The dénouement is that her other church lady friend said, “Spoken like a true administrator.” What? Did I wake up on the Surreal Express? I have to say something, so I turn to her and say this: “What do you mean, ‘spoken like a true administrator?’” She points to the sociopath. Gosh, thanks for the clarity. Sociopath administrator is still looking at me like I’m a demon, even though with that grin, she’s the demon here. I say, “Oh, you’re an administrator?” As if this question could clear the scoreboard, and we could just do small talk. She just stares at me.
Eventually, I have to look at the menu and figure out how much money I owe so I can get the fuck out of there without waiting for the waiter.
Happy Buy Nothing Day.
And on a lighter note…
Houston. Too tired to tell stories.
I’m in the ‘Dragon Suite’ at a hotel in Chinatown in LA.
When I walked in, I thought, ‘low-level mob boss.’ Which is unkind. It’s pretty nice for a cheap-ish hotel room. Still, though, if there’s a room in which a RICO sting operation will occur, it’s this one.
I saw the jacuzzi tub and thought, Yay! And then I noticed that you can’t close the drain. Not-yay. That’s kind of the vibe here. Getting on the elevator with me: A man who must have been 80 was with a very large woman who must have been 55 at least, and by large I mean tall, as in a double-take to see if she was a tranny.
She helped me with my key card. You have to swipe your key card in the elevator to get it to work. She laughed about it, “Welcome to the Chinese hotel!” she exhorted loud enough to be heard by the desk clerk and all the staff and all the guests of that racial and/or ethnic background. As she got off, she said, “Are you here with the cruise? I’m having such a great time…” Then the door to the elevator shut, and I said loudly, “Well, I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself.” She laughed and the whole place shook.
I had to wonder why she immediately assumed I was on some cruise that she was on. What, exactly, did we have in common, other than staying in a hotel?
Oh well.
Update: Worst faked orgasm in an adjoining room EVAR. I had to turn up the movie I was watching to keep from laughing out loud. (Movie: ‘Domino,’ also pretty bad.)
And speaking of trannies…. I have no problem with transexual or transgender people. I don’t think the woman I wrote about was trans, and really it’s none of my business. It’s just that she was so very tall, and this was a way to describe her. Here’s another tranny story from this trip:
King Street Amtrak Station, Seattle. I go to check my bags. Wander into a dingy, scuffed-up room, even the marble floors showing sign of wear. A couple guys in blue overalls with Amtrak logos on them milling behind the distressed counter, wear marks where customers have leaned against it for at least two centuries. One turns around to help me. Long hair and painted fingernails… Wait. Readjust. OK. This literal girly-man is going to check my baggage and hoist it into a train. She could kick my ass, but she’s smiling, almost laughing at the time it takes me to figure out. She speaks, “May I help you?” No effort at changing his voice, just a sort of feminine demeanor. Completely cool with herself, and now it’s time for me to be cool with her, too.
Which inspires me, actually.
We do the check baggage thing and I’m on my way.
