Blue Buildings, blue shirts, blue merchandise, everything’s so damn blue it looks like an episode of the Smurfs. Now why on earth could everyone be wearing blue? Are you wearing blue because you just happen to love the color blue or, are you wearing it because Autism Speaks told you it would support a cause predicated on spreading the wrong kind of awareness about Autism? If your answer is the former then good for you, everyone is entitled to what ever color they choose. If your answer is the latter, have a seat! I’ll grab you the best seat ever because I’m gonna give you a piece of my mind like I blew my own brains out and lived long enough to hand you the fragments. Now you’re probably wondering why an Autistic person such as myself has a strong dislike for a organization that is constantly spreading awareness about Autism. My issue with the organization is that the kind of awareness they spread is detrimental to the world view and perception of Autism. Continue reading
Tag Archives: misconceptions
Game On
Long time no see strange world! Miss me? I thought so. Well I’m back so without further adieu, I’m about to blow your mind so hard J.F.K. would be jealous (too soon?). Now those who know me and those who have read my blogs know how important gaming is to me. I have covered gaming in a number of blogs (Those Awkward Times When Game Consoles Understood Me Better Than People Ever Would, The Graphics Aren’t As Great In Real Life, Neither Are the People, and Somewhere I Belong). When I was younger some would call me obsessed, I thought about video games, talked about them, and day dreamed about them. I hated school and nothing was better than getting home and firing up my Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo, or PlayStation and getting lost in a world that wasn’t my own. Now y’all are probably wondering what was so great about the world within the game. It wasn’t so much the world within the game that was enticing but rather what it helped me get away from. Before we get into that, we have to do a Quentin Tarantino and do a time jump to the present for a bit. Continue reading
Business As Usual
So I was watching NBC’s new comedy “Superstore” which I highly recommend and there was an episode that spoke to me in a way that TV episodes haven’t in quite sometime. The episode follows the crew of the store Cloud 9 as magazine has come to do a photoshoot for their next issue. One of he characters Garrett, who uses a wheelchair dreads the shoot as he’s had experiences with magazines taking pictures of him because a guy in a wheelchair working makes for a good story. Throughout the episode are scenes where one of the cameramen follows Garrett throughout the store hoping to snap a picture. Eventually, Garrett has to walk around the store with his middle fingers up in order to make getting a good picture impossible. While a person with a disability being employed makes for a good story to a person who’s never lived that experience, for us it’s honestly just another day, same shit different toilet. Continue reading
There Is No One Alive Who Is Youer Than You (Shameless Plugs)
There are honestly way too many words to describe the last few months. To sum it all up, the last few months have been a bigger mess than your living room after Christmas presents have been unwrapped. The last six months have been such a mess that your toddler’s high chair would be jealous. Your child’s bedroom ain’t got nothing on how much of a mess the last couple of months have been. Move over NFC East (football division), what if I told you there was a dating life that was a bigger mess than you guys? And the saga continues like horror movies that can’t decide if they’ve released their last film or if they plan on dropping another shitty sequel. My romance life has decided on shitty sequels because it can’t seem to decide on an epic finisher like a Mortal Kombat player deciding if they want Liu Kang to finish you with a Bicycle Kick or if they want him to transform into a dragon and bite the top half of your body off. Continue reading
Smile Empty Soul (Depression Through The Looking Glass)
It you haven’t seen the recent Pixar movie “Inside Out”, y’all need to watch that ASAP!!!!! That movie will change your life in ways you couldn’t imagine. Now the movie follows a girl through her life and a major transition that will rattle her emotions. Her core emotions (anger, fear, joy, sadness, and disgust) are presented in a personified form and you get to witness how each of these emotions work to manage through a tough time in the main character’s life. The basic premise of the film is that you have a girl who has grown accustom to her life in Minnesota. One day you find out that her father has gotten a new job in San Francisco and they movie across the country which sends her emotions and her entire nervous system which is represented by a control center into complete chaos. Each emotion handles each new situation in their own unique fashion with the emotion Joy trying to keep everything together. Certain events in the film cause the emotions Joy and Sadness to get separated from the rest of the crew and the rest are left to manage the best they can. Continue reading
Russian Roulette: An Autistic Guy’s Lens Into Online Dating
Guess what time it is, guess what time it is! It’s time for another exciting installment of the blog from yours truly and the best place to experience life’s adventures through the eyes of a guy so sees the world in the most literal way possible. I’m about as literal as syllables dancing in your cereal. So this blog is about exactly what it implies, my adventures in the online dating sphere. After spending the summer being such an emotional wreck and admittedly even crying myself to sleep some nights (yeah I’m kind of pathetic), it was time go get off my sorry ass, grab life by the horns and start shopping the market once again for Mrs. Right, easier said than done right? Definitely easier said than done. Those who have read my blogs know that I suck at talking to most women and emotionally it’s difficult for me to emotionally connect with them let alone anyone unless I truly like them or feel safe. I promise I’m not picky, it just don’t always have an easy time with people. Trying to find people in person got pretty frustrating so I decided to delve back into something I told myself I’d never try again, online dating. Continue reading
The Glass Prison (Take These Chains…)
For however long it takes you to read this blog I’m going to be more honest with you than I have in a while. No we’re not taking into question what I’ve written in my blogs, it’s the Flemmings Beaubrun that I’ve presented to you in the last three months. I’ve shown you all a Flemmings that seemed to have it all together, a Flemmings that was happy and seemed like nothing phased him at all. The problem is that for the last three months I’ve been wearing a mask but as time has passed that mask has been getting harder and harder to wear. Lying to people about my emotions has gotten pretty tiring actually. I’ve gotten so fatigued about lying the last three months that I wonder how Commissioner Goodell of the NFL has been able to play that game for seven. I’ve had it with lying so I’m going to explain to you the whirlwind emotions I’ve had to juggle for an entire summer. Shit, even clowns would be jealous with all the complicated shit I’ve had to juggle. Now in my last blog post I briefly mentioned the unfortunate end of what I though would be a very promising relationship. Was hasn’t been brief however is the emotional and psychological toll this break up has had on me for the last three months. Now while I’ve developed enough coping methods and grown enough to avoid flirting with the suicidal thoughts I had to battle through the last time I was this depressed, it still has been one of the toughest summers in recent memory. Continue reading
Small Talk, Big Problems
There’s this gorgeous looking lady at the gym I go to, like gorgeous. I’ve yet to see her smile but she looks like she has a million dollar smile. Did I mention she’s got glasses? I’m a sucker for women with glasses. In a perfect world I should be able to walk up to her and start flirting and yet I’m paralyzed with fear. I don’t even know where to start or how to get her attention in a way that I don’t seem like some random guy going to strike conversation with her when she’s trying to workout. There’s also this other gorgeous lady that takes the same bus and train I do. I can’t muster up the courage to talk to her either. In my life time the two women I’ve dated had made the first move so I’m not very good at initiating anything. I’m about as bad at initiating things as a someone too distracted by a movie to feel up their significant other when their practically putting up the Bat Symbol (For those wondering about the ever so lovely girl I dedicated a blog to a few months back, that shit is over like a game of Mario when the Nintendo breaks. I really don’t want to get into the details but the I’ve got a story of my tragic love life larger than all of the Game of Thrones books combined and it just got enough pages to make a replica of the tree that all of that paper came from). I sit awake some nights wondering why I suck so much with women and it all goes back to one of the biggest struggles someone on the spectrum can have. Continue reading
2nd Round’s On Me
Another year, another dollar. Gosh is this blog really two years old? It feels like yesterday when I decided to start spilling my feelings and opinions on all things Autism on the internet. It’s been a pretty crazy year of blogging and antics. From dragging Autism Speak’s name through the mud to dragging the names of really shitty parents of children on the spectrum through the mud to voicing my opinion on all things Autism, this year has been a thriller. I’m thankful to have so many loyal readers, a decent amount of which live across the pond. I never thought this blog would get all of the positive buzz that’s been getting over these years and for that I am truly thankful. It’s people like you that give me the energy to continue writing. Get ready, because this coming year will be huge as far as this blog goes. Now I had a long synopsis of these two years planned for this post but I just couldn’t come up with anything so I will leave you with a picture since those things are apparently worth a 1000 words.
Stay classy folks
Self Serve
Okay, there’s been a hot button topic within the Autism community that I have yet to discuss but lately has gotten pretty heated on some forums so I feel I need to offer some of my insight on the issue. Within the community there seems to be a stigma around “self diagnosis” which is exactly what it implies, it’s someone diagnosing themselves as being on the spectrum without any medical proof or evaluation from a psychologist. Now you may remember back in the fall of last year when Jerry Seinfeld stated in an interview that he may be Autistic. Within moments of that interview there was a shitstorm of backlash from parents of children on the spectrum who saw this as simply a publicity stunt. To them it was nothing more than a celebrity attempting to capitalize on a struggle that affects many families. Their worse fear was that their struggle would be overshadowed by a celebrity who doesn’t look like they should ever be the face of Autism. Now while I feel for the families with children on the spectrum and those on the spectrum who feel that people are hopping on the bandwagon because they think it’s cool or hip, there’s something you need to understand about the world’s perception of Autism. Continue reading