Category Archives: rant

I’m ready for this day to be over.

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annoyedcat

1. I’m getting sick. I’m feverish and achey and coughing. I hope it’s not the flu. Or Ebola.

2. I got screamed at today by my boss for a really stupid reason.

3. I got a phone call from my neighbor this morning that the power company truck was here to shut off my power. I paid my bill in full on the 17th. Turns out it was a mistake–it was someone else who’s power was supposed to be shut off. But I had to spend all day between jobs on the phone trying to straighten everything out. The power was on when I got home and my roommate said it was never shut off at all.

4. The Paul/Michael saga continues. Just as I expected, Paul now knows what a malignant piece of shit my ex is. I talked to him again last night for along time, and he agrees with me now that Michael is a thoroughly evil d-bag. Since Paul told him to move out, Michael’s been hacking into Paul’s Facebook account and posting messages on his wall that make him look bad. Paul has kids in Florida and wants custody of them, and Michael is doing this to sabotage him because he knows Child Services checks Facebook now. He’s doing other sneaky things too and Paul doesn’t trust him.

This almost made me laugh: Michael told Paul he was doing HIM a favor when he moved in. He actually said, “I LET you have me stay here.” LMAO!

But I’m worried about Paul. I haven’t heard from him all day.

For awhile I thought Michael had called the power company and asked my power to be shut off because he knows Paul and I talk. But actually it wasn’t that. I wouldn’t put something like that past him though. He’s incredibly spiteful.

I’m worried that when Molly gets out in 2 days she might be mad that Paul kicked out her father. She needs to go No Contact with him but I know she won’t. Michael told all her friends Paul is “too controlling.” On Facebook.

I don’t know if I’ll post anything else tonight. I’m sick and tired. I don’t feel like writing much. I might later.

I did just get a text from Paul a second ago. He’s driving Michael into downtown tomorrow. At least there’s one worry I can check off my list.

One good thing. My stats are still up. I know why too. Haha.

The “War on Christmas”? Bah humbug.

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waronchristmas

Certain Christians who celebrate Christmas (not all Christians do) have lately been bellyaching via blogs, bumper stickers, and various memes that there is a “war on Christmas” going on. Even some conservative Christian politicians have been bloviating about this alleged “war on Christmas.” Where are the tiny violins?

I find it all a bit mystifying because if anything Christmas is more in your face today than it ever was before. The holiday season used to start the day after Thanksgiving; now it starts the day after Halloween, and even Thanksgiving has been insidiously taken over by a day celebrating the spirit of greed called “Black Friday”–which now has edged into “Black Thursday,” meaning many stores are now open on Thanksgiving so people can stock up on cheap TVs and other appliances to give their holiday shopping a head start.

You can’t get away from Christmas. Everywhere you turn, it’s buy this, buy that; give this, give that; host a big holiday bash or else; and you’re either a Scrooge or a sucky parent/lover/friend/employee if you don’t blindly obey these messages that are blasted into our ears 24/7 for an entire month or more.

If you don’t have the funds to give extravagant gifts or host lavish parties and holiday dinners with all the trimmings or the time or desire to decorate a 10 foot Christmas tree and bedeck your entire house with exterior lights, you are made to feel defective–and Scroogelike. And it’s getting worse and more in your face every year.

So Christmas itself is having no problems. I don’t see any war against it going on.

christmascartoon

I think what the “war on Christmas” actually refers to is cards, banners, signs, and greetings that say “Happy Holidays” or “Seasons Greetings” instead of the more Christian-centric “Merry Christmas.” Those who complain about the war on Christmas are objecting to the political correctness of those attempting to be all-inclusive–because after all, America is a melting-pot nation that includes Jews, Muslims, atheists and people of other faiths besides Christianity. “Seasons Greetings” is convenient and covers at least the Jews who celebrate Hanukkah and African Americans who celebrate Kwanzaa (who probably also celebrate Christmas). In fact, I know a lot of Jews who celebrate both Hanukkah AND Christmas. Christmas has become more of an American holiday than a religious one–and a handy excuse for Big Business to rake in big bucks.

“Seasons Greetings” has been on Christmas cards for as long as I can remember (and I’ve been around quite a while), but it didn’t seem to me that anyone minded that until the past 10-20 years or so. Personally, I think it’s petty and stupid to make such a big deal about it. “Seasons Greetings” or “Happy Holiday” doesn’t exclude Christians, but for some reason certain Christians think that such a greeting is a sign of hostility against them or Christmas itself. I think there are far more important things for them to be worrying about besides the printed message on a holiday oops Christmas card that will probably be tossed in the trash the week after New Years’ anyway.

Here’s a news flash: There is no “War on Christmas.” It’s all in your head.

Take your office Christmas party and shove it.

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officeparty
Get out of my face with your absurd fake smiles and stupid Santa hats.

So tomorrow night is the annual office Christmas party. I will not be attending. It’s not like I have some high level job where my presence is expected or necessary anyway. I doubt anyone will even notice my absence or care.

As an Aspie, I have never been able to tolerate the forced upbeat perkiness and all the small talk and chit chat about nothing in particular that abounds at these events. Too much social input coming in from all directions overwhelms my oddly wired brain, causing it to short circuit. I wind up in a state of near panic and to compensate, I become mute to avoid reading a social cue wrong and say something out of context that causes people to look at each other knowingly and roll their eyes at my social ineptness.

I feel like the old Saturday Night Live character Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer, whose mantra was “your world frightens and confuses me.” The world of neurotypicals, a world of people who love to socialize in groups, attend parties and engage in small talk, has that effect on me.

yourworld

Whenever I’ve attended one of these things, I leave as exhausted as if I just spent the day digging holes in dry packed mud. Because I’m nearly silent at these events, people don’t even attempt to talk to me. More often that not, I wind up sitting there at the table alone, picking at my plate of stuffed mushrooms and baby carrots, feeling as self conscious and awkward as the school geek in a roomful of popular kids, because I can find no one to talk to and apparently no one really wants to talk to me either.

Small talk is utterly boring to me. Aspies tend to like “deep” talk, but I learned that serious, in depth conversations about things that matter is verboten at parties, especially office parties, where you are forced to spend an evening acting like people you probably wouldn’t give the time of day to if you didn’t have to work with them are your best friends. It’s all so fake and stupid to me.

I don’t get jokes a lot of the time, especially if they’re inside jokes that, because I don’t have close friends at work and am not part of a clique, I haven’t been filled in on the background that makes these jokes funny to others. It’s hard to laugh at a joke you don’t get. But you must laugh anyway so people don’t think you’re cold and unfriendly or worse, didn’t get the joke, which implies stupidity. But telling jokes is de rigeur for office Christmas parties.

The other thing that drives me crazy is everyone talking about their upcoming holiday plans. Most neurotypicals have lots of friends and love to talk about the gifts they are buying and the parties and other events they will be attending with those friends. Most people also have loving families and nearby relatives and all the talk about what toys they are buying little Isabella and Caleb at Sam’s Club makes me want to stick hot pins in my eyes. Being a person with hardly any money to buy gifts for anyone in a world that seems full of people who are living in two income households and have disposable income to throw around drives me mad too.

The only way I could cope with this type of an event would be if I had a few drinks ahead of time, but that wouldn’t be worth it either and besides, I’d still have to drive. I don’t really need a DWI on top of all the other shit I’m dealing with.

I’m no Scrooge, but you can keep your office Christmas party. I have better things to do, like socialize with my cats who don’t give a damn how awkward I am, or write more blogs posts.

People treat me like I’m stupid

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stupid

I wonder if it’s common for people with Aspergers or high functioning autism to come across to others as lacking basic intelligence.

I get that from people all the time and I hate it. In social situations, such as at work, where I have to interact with neurotypicals (NTs) who I don’t know too well, I’ve noticed people patronize me, they repeat things to me as if I didn’t understand them the first time, or just respond to me in a condescending way, as if they’re talking to a two year old. I am paranoid but I don’t think it’s my paranoia because they don’t act that way to everyone

I think people’s behavior toward me is because as an Aspie, it’s so difficult for me to process the things people tell me in a normal way, especially when I’m forced to deal with people in a group setting. I am also almost silent due to my shyness and unwillingness to get involved in social conversation. That probably makes me seem a little dim too.

I don’t hear that well either (I have only 20% hearing in my left ear due to having severe ear infections as a child), so that makes it even harder for me to understand what people say. I often have to ask them to repeat what they just said, which irritates both me and others. I’ve told people I have bad hearing, because being asked to repeat something annoys people less if they know there is something wrong with my hearing.

I find social chatter and small talk overwhelming and it’s not fun for me at all. It’s a lot of work for me to process all that. Of course there are some people who just intimidate me anyway (probably narcs) and I totally clam up around them and act really stupid and inappropriate when I’m forced to talk to them or ask them a question. Socializing is just so difficult! NT’s love it. I don’t.

It makes me so angry that I’m treated as if I’m a mental lightweight by people who know very little about me. I so want to say this to people who talk down to me or ask me the infuriating, “Did you get that?” :

“Look, you don’t have to act so condescending toward me. I’m not an idiot. I understand what you say. I understand a lot. I may look stupid to you because I have Aspergers, and that makes it almost impossible for me to process verbal communication and body language very well or deal with people in a group, or know how to act when you’re yammering at me. I also have Avoidant Personality Disorder, which exacerbates my discomfort in social situations. I get very anxious. But I want you to know I’m actually very smart, probably smarter than you. My IQ is above 150 but I know you probably think I’m lying. If you could see the way I write, you would be shocked at how intelligent and insightful I am. I see a lot of what goes on, I notice everything, I know a lot about a lot of things. I just don’t know how to communicate that well except in writing, or react appropriately when you tell me something. So please stop thinking I’m borderline retarded, because I am not.”

Of course I’ll never say this. But I wish I could!

Having Aspergers and Avoidant personality disorder combined with only partial hearing really is a handicap to dealing with the NT (neurotypical) world.

People who love me and know me well, and people who read what I write know I am not stupid.

Besides, Einstein had Aspergers too, and all his teachers thought he was retarded! 😀

Black Friday Cometh

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I was going to write something about Black Friday, the scourge which threatens to take over Thanksgiving with its spirit of greed instead of thanks, but this rant is so well written, I’m just going to reblog it here.  I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Trey Willis's avatarFlakes of Cynicism

Or: Ready, Set, CONSUME.

Thanksgiving is upon us, which can only mean one thing – Black Friday is back, ready to blow your sanity to bits with door-buster deals. Don’t get me wrong, I love a bargain as much as anyone else, and have found myself wading through rabid crowds in the cold dawn more than I would care to admit. I don’t really take issue with Black Friday. The way in which it has usurped Thanksgiving and what that says about our culture is what I find problematic.

Look, a dead horse!

I’ve never been one for crowds, so perhaps that is the root of my general disdain for this holiday of consumerism. Thanksgiving has been my favorite holiday since I was a child. I have all kinds of warm and fuzzy memories of giant family Thanksgiving meals long past. As an adult, more often than not, my wife and I host our families for…

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Restaurant customers who don’t tip

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My son, who works as a waiter at Carrabba’s, served a 50-top today for a large group. Pictured below is the bill, which shows no tip was included.

notip

Management asked the customer if the service was alright, and they said it was. They told management they thought the tip would be taken out automatically, but I smell bullshit. Management is “taking care of it,” whatever that means.

Wait staff make less than minimum wage, and tips is what they have to live on. While tipping isn’t required, it’s common courtesy and is expected, unless the service was really terrible. Even if this patron only tipped 10% (15%-20% is actually the correct amount to tip), then the wait staff who worked this event should split a tip of $95.50. Really, it should have been nearly twice that.

Not leaving a tip for a large bill like this, when the service was satisfactory, is rude beyond belief, considering the amount of work required by the wait staff, who could have been serving smaller tables and making more money.

Holy shirt!

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holyshirt

Be honest. Do any of you women suffer from holy shirt syndrome? I have a lot of thin cotton tee shirts, and every last one of them has an array of tiny little holes right in the front at the bottom, over the belly button area.

This is a huge mystery to me. My first thought was clothes moths, but that couldn’t be it, because why would the clothes moths only attack the same area of every tee shirt? Besides, I haven’t seen any clothes moths and none of my other clothes suffer. Belts? No, that couldn’t be it either. I never wore belts until very recently after I lost a bunch of weight because that was the only way I could get my old pants from falling off. I have had my holy shirt problem far longer than that. Someone suggested seat belts might be the culprit, but it happens even in cold weather when I’m wearing a coat and the seatbelt is not touching my tee shirt. Tucking my shirt into my pants can’t be it either because I never tuck my shirt into my pants.

Today I Googled “tiny holes at bottoms of tee shirts” and was shocked to find out this is actually a common problem and everyone else seems as mystified by it as me! For some reason I thought no one else had this problem. Anyway I found this article saying it’s caused by leaning over kitchen counters. Hmmm, I guess it’s time to start wearing an apron. Somehow I don’t believe it though. I’ve had brand new tee shirts I hung in the closet and never wore to cook anything, and somehow the holes still appear.

I don’t get it. Does anyone have a better theory of what causes this? And what can be done about it?

High anxiety

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rawnerve

I’m having one of those days again.  You know, those days where you feel like all your nerves are beeping and buzzing  and flashing the red DANGER sign.    I deliberately stayed home from work today because I felt like sleeping in (and honestly, I wasn’t feeling well–I think I’m coming down with a cold, the flu, or maybe Ebola).  But once I got over the anxiety-inducing hurdle of actually calling work,  I curled back into my nice warm bed, expecting to drift into pleasant dreams, but instead  I couldn’t go back to sleep!   This happens A LOT when I try to relax:  my mind starts racing and my heart begins to palpitate, while all my morbid, negative thoughts of unnamed disaster start to overtake my brain.   This always happens, especially  when I’m trying to relax.

When I was young I never had this problem.  The 20-something version of myself could languish in bed until 2 PM or even later, with nary a sense of guilt or anxiety.  I would drift into the most incredible, lucid-like dreams like someone on a mushroom high.  I woke up ready to take on the world.  But things have changed.  As I’ve grown older, my attempts to sleep in just make me feel like I deserve to be punished and my body responds in kind.   What’s up with that?

sleep

So I finally gave up trying to get back to sleep.  I untangled my legs from under the covers, stood on the cold floor and walked to the kitchen where I made a strong pot of my favorite hazelnut coffee (I’m weird–coffee sometimes makes me sleepy) with cream and no sugar, put on some socks and opened my laptop.   I read some blogs and blogged a little myself, but the nervousness was still there.

Around 11:30, I could no longer stand laying around in the clothes I sleep in (last night it was a tee shirt with threadbare drawstring pajama pants with Lucky Charms logos and leprechauns all over them) and got dressed in real clothes.    But I still feel that unnamed sense of dread.    My palms feel sweaty and my heart is in my throat.    Should I go for a drive?  Mow the grass (which is still overgrown and weedy looking even though it’s been cold)?   Read a good novel?  Cook something scrumptious that involves plenty of chocolate and butter?  Arrange all my books in order by color to make my bookshelves look like a rainbow?   I just don’t know.    Now I wish I went to work today.   I don’t know why I take these “mental health days” when I always wind up feeling guilty for doing so and crazier than if I’d just gone to my crummy job.

pajamas
The crazy outfit I slept in last night.  Maybe going to dreamland with kittens and leprechauns is the stuff of nightmares. 

Am I the only one?  Do any of you suffer anxiety and guilt when you take a day off from work when you’re not really sick?  What do you do to combat your nerves?

 

16 overrated things

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notamused

1. Facebook. Your boss or your potential boss can spy on you and make character judgments based on what your updates say or what your photographs look like. Family members and old classmates you’d rather have nothing to do with can find you here. Companies can profile you and bombard you with ads for you to “like.” Facebook is fucking Big Brother. It’s going to take over the world someday. It must be stopped.

2. Stainless steel appliances. They look nice when new, but they’re hard to maintain and keep looking nice. They can’t take fingerprints and everything shows on them. After a few years they just start to look like shit. I’ll stick with plain old boring white appliances, thank you. Unfortunately, if you’re in the market for a new fridge or oven, they’re ALL in stainless steel these days.

3. The Kardashians. Famous for doing nothing at all. What the hell is so interesting about them?

4. Shrimp and other invertebrate seafood. Shrimp has a disturbing crunchy texture that reminds me of the exoskeletons of insects and arthropods. In fact, as members of Crustacea, shrimp, crab and lobster are biologically very close to Insectivora and Arthropoda. Sea-bugs for supper. Yum.

5. Vampires/zombies. They bore me. I’ll never get the neverending love affair America has with these uninteresting creatures.

6. Homeschooling. Kids don’t learn to interact with their peers, and most parents really aren’t cut out to be teachers. That said, I suppose there are some benefits for families who want to be able to control what their kids are exposed to. I’m not sure that’s always a good thing.

7. Autumn. There’s about a week where the trees actually look colorful, then it’s all downhill after that. While the weather is okay (in September and October), it’s getting colder and by November and December, it might as well be the middle of February. I don’t like fall because it reminds me that my least favorite season, winter, is coming. The days are getting shorter and everything is dying. It’s fucking depressing.

8. Snow. I ranted about it in this blog post.

9. Blonde hair. Women with blonde hair have to work extra hard to be taken seriously because everyone assumes they’re stupid. Blonde hair doesn’t age well and makes some people look washed out. Why 90% of women want to be blonde is a mystery.

notimpressed

10. Tans. The precursor to skin cancer, and they don’t look all that great anyway. I’d rather be pasty and free of both wrinkles and dangerous sun lesions for a few more years.

11. Christmas. The main problem I have with Christmas is how overcommercialized it has become. The day after Halloween it starts, and for almost two months we are made to feel guilty if we can’t afford the latest, most expensive gifts for our loved ones and can’t act jolly all the time. You can’t get away from it. Commercials and ads showing large, happy families sitting down enjoying a sumptuous Christmas meal with everyone opening gifts make me feel inferior and ashamed of my small, dysfunctional, impoverished family. One of my favorite radio stations during the rest of the year plays Christmas music 24/7 and it’s enough to make me want to stab Santa Claus.

12. Sushi. The package is nice but it’s RAW FISH. I’ll pass.

13. Major Sports (baseball, football, basketball, hockey). I just. don’t. care. Mmmmkay?

14. The news. I don’t like to get angry, and watching the news has an unfortunate tendency to make my blood boil. If it’s something I really need to know about, I figure it can’t be avoided anyway and I’ll be duly informed. Until then, I’m perfectly happy with my ignorant head stuck down here in the sand

15. Family Guy. Once upon a time it was funny (sort of). Now it’s just pathetic, recycling the same old lame jokes and unfunny cutaways. It’s time to put this show out of its misery. Peter is particularly insufferable.

16. Random, pointless lists ranting about things you think are overrated.

One more thing that pisses me off.

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radio

I can’t believe I forgot to put this on my pet peeve list: Morning radio shows suck. I can only say 4 things about them.

1. They are not funny. It seems everyone wants to be Howard Stern these days, and guess what–he was never that funny either.

2. They ALWAYS have a really irritating, maddeningly perky, female sidekick with the IQ of a sloth and a voice to make even Kim Kardashian cringe in embarrassment. They never have anything original to add, and just seem to exist to laugh idiotically at the Stern-wannabe’s lame jokes.

3. Speaking of the Kardashians, does anyone really give a shit?

4. And finally, the worst thing of all: What the heck is wrong with ACTUAL MUSIC?