[ 1.9.02 ]

 
You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts; And when
you can no longer dwell in the solitude of your heart you live in your lips,
and sound is a diversion and a pastime. And in much of your talking,
thinking is half murdered.

(Kahlil Gibran).

3:24 PM]

 
The term "blue blood" derives from the
days when the Christian armies of Spain were driving the darker skinned Islamic
Moors back into North Africa. In order to prove they were white and therefore
Christian, the Spanish would pinch their arms and thus display their blue veins.
Hence the term "blue blood" meaning someone who is of ancient distinguished
lineage.
The olive skinned Spaniards have always been somewhat touchy about their
racial status In nineteenth century America Hispanics were known as 'toasted
niggers' and General de Gaulle once caused another of his diplomatic incidents
by haughtily declaring that "Africa begins at the Pyrenees."
3:20 PM]

[ 31.8.02 ]

 
"Private faces in public places

Are wiser and nicer

Than public faces in private places."

(W H Auden)

9:29 PM]

 
There are three kinds of present a man commonly gives to a
woman: flowers, perfume and jewellery. He gives her flowers
before he's been to bed with her, perfume after he's been to bed
with her - and jewellery after he's been to bed with somebody else!
9:28 PM]

 
Harry Potter and the missing author. A hilarious story in which Harry Potter tries to hire a private detective, Spade Marlowe, to find his missing author, J.K. Rowling. The detective sits Harry down and gives him the facts of life about authors and the work they do, and about being a famous literary character. Written in the best traditions of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, this fanfic is intended for those bellyaching fans who keep complaining that Ms. Rowling hasn't yet finished book five. More.

3:53 PM]

 
If you've ever wondered where Apple got their name and logo from, it was from this guy. After doing more than most to bring an end to the second world war the British Goverment forced him to undergo a course of oestregen to "cure" him of his homosexuality. After a year of this he commited suicide by biting into an apple he had injected with cyinide. Who was Alan Turing? Founder of computer science, mathematician, philosopher, codebreaker, strange visionary and a gay man before his time. More.
3:47 PM]

[ 30.8.02 ]

 
What keeps you awake at night? I'm sometimes woken by the sound of spiders talking to each other behind the skirting board in my bedroom. My batlike ears can hear them tap, tap, tapping on their webs. I don't know what they're saying, of course, but I suspect they're talking about me.
I date my morbid fear of them to the time, when I was a kid, one bit me on the finger and it came up in a blister. That night when I was given my bath the blister burst and all these wee baby spiders came floating out.
4:50 PM]

 
Oscar Wilde to his great friend Robbie Ross. "When the last trumpet sounds, and we are crouched in our porphyry tombs, I shall turn to you and say 'Robbie, Robbie, let us pretend we do not hear it'." I looked up 'porphyry' it's a hard rock quarried in ancient Egypt composed of crystals of white or red feldspar in a red matrix.
Incidently, Wilde was one of very few Irish writers to harbour no predjudice against his fellow countrymen. James Joyce refused to return home for his beloved father's funeral because "my country is now in the hands of savages" these being the newly 'liberated' Irish, a people who in Shaw's words, had emarked on self-goverment with "no philosophy, no economics, no mental stock in trade except romantic balderdash." Likewise, when Joyce's protege, Samuel Beckett, found himself back in Ireland as the German's invaded France, he immediately returned to Paris saying he "preferred France in wartime to Ireland at any time."
4:29 PM]

 
I bought another bag today. I don't know why. It's not as if I ever go any where. I just like collecting luggage, I suppose. I must have between twenty and thirty now. Everything from rucksacks to an old sea dog's trunk. It seems I have a permanent fantasy about just taking off for somewhere distant and want to be prepared. Strange really, beause one of my earliest childhood memories is of suffering a massive panic attack at the railway station as we were waiting for a train to take us on holiday. I must have been about tenish and I suddenly became so spooked by the thought of being taken away from my familiar surroundings and having to adjust to somewhere strange and alien that I ran all the way home and adamantly reused to shift. Although I'd already seen an educational pyschologist I hadn't been diagnosed or anything and yet my family already knew better than to argue with me, so I was left home alone for two weeks with an uncle to look in on me occasionally while they caught a later train. I still remember this as a happy time.
This web page is designed to give everyone an idea of what our universe actually looks like. There are nine main maps on this web page, each one approximately ten times the scale of the previous one. The first map shows the nearest stars and then the other maps slowly expand out until we have reached the scale of the entire visible universe. To infinity and beyond!.
4:28 PM]

 
As a necesarry corrective to all these cutesy kids here is a truly depressing site by a forty year old mindblind/autistic poet from Rotheram in England. His parents have both died leaving him desperate to find the wife he thinks will assuage his loneliness. It never occurs to him to ask himself why any woman would want to marry him or what he might do to attract one. He simply assumes that if he talks incessantly of his loneliness in poem after poem then one will just present herself at his door.
He reminded me of the boy I read about who having finally found himself a girlfriend, then lost her, simply attached himself to another girl, doing and saying to her everything he had done and said to the other one. He was truly mystified when this didn't work. He thought he'd finally found the key, the code. He couldn't understand that all girls were different and that what worked with one wouldn't necessarily work with another.
To the mindblind other people are just so much furniture. How would you feel if your chair wanted to be treated differently from the desk or the coffee table wanted you to take it's feelings into account.
I notice the site hasn't been updated in a couple of years. Perhaps he got married after all.
4:26 PM]

 
Ordinarily I give a wide berth to the myriad of sites with pictures of cute autistic kids. This one, though, is in a class of it's own. The Autism Picture Page was put together by the Austrailian autistic educator Lindsay Weekes but is now administered by an American dwarf (yes, really). It has an extensive and rather revealing autobiography by Weekes as well as 138 pictures of kids he has helped over the years. Each picture shows kids caught displaying a characteristic autistic trait together with a few lines of interpretation by Weekes underneath.
For example under 'Absorbtion' there's a picture of Anthony touching a tree and looking up at it with rapture and awe. Autistic people become totally absorbed in the beauty of objects we often find irritating or meaningless.
Underneath two kids are lining up their toy cars. It's a natural part of the human condition to want to bring order to chaos, and it's a lot more comfortable for autistic people when order and often a strict routine are in place. In the pictures above and below, Jack Borland and Alex Bain are absorbed in and demonstrating a well-known autistic behaviour, that is, lining objects up in a precise millimetric order, just so.
In the section entitled 'Affection' (not, you might think, the most extensive part of a website dealing with autistic people.) Anthony re-appears this time giving his friend Shaun a big kiss. Autistic people demonstrate affection in both standard and non-standard ways. Some only demonstrate affection at certain specific times, or in certain places. Shaun enjoys an affectionate relationship with Ben, his older (non-autistic) brother, as well as with Anthony, an autistic schoolmate. These boys have become very dependent on each other in the classroom, although it's going to far to call them friends.
That last sentence will dispell any illusions.
3:51 PM]

 
This is Marc Segar from the first chapter of his autobiography. Throughout my life people have treated me differently to the way they treat each other and when I ask why, or what is wrong with me, they have never seemed to be able to tell me. They say, it's just a bit of everything. What really seems to throw people is that they can't seem to understand that a six year old boy who knows all the planets in the solar system and who can already subtract five from three may not yet have worked out that it is inappropriate to climb in the dust-bins during play time or that it is naughty to chew up ones pencil and stare out of the window during a lesson.
Here he also has a survival guide for those with Asperger's Syndrome. I have now decided to write a book with a purpose. It is aimed at passing on my experiences of surviving as an Asperger sufferer in a world where every situation is slightly different, for the benefit of other Asperger sufferers. I wish to lay out a set of rules and guide-lines, in a style similar to that of the highway code, in a format which doesn't change therefore not causing unnecessary confusion.
And here, sadly, is the memorial site put up by his sister. Marc became so good at being "normal" that it was impossible for anyone but an expert to tell that he was Autistic. He had a Bsc in Biochemistry, he was a children's entertainer and a respected consultant on Autism, he shared a house with friends and lived a normal life in every way. He was a brilliant musician, artist, scientist, and entertainer. But I sometimes wonder if he would have been happier just drawing his mazes and playing with his Lego.
Marc Segar 1974 - 1997 R.I.P.
3:41 PM]

 
My speech came late and what there was of it was both formal and pedantic. I've never really spoken to anyone outside my immediate family and the last of them to speak to me was in the winter of 93. So I've been entirely mute now for 9 1/2 years. I can ask for stuff in shops. I've been able to do that for years. As long as the 'chat' consentrates on something concrete like the price of paint, then I know what the bounderies are and can anticipate any eventuality; so I'm in command, a sense of calm prevails. But if the conversation moves on to anything more general, more abstract, my anxiety rises and panic sets in.
Ideaily I prefer self-service.
3:14 PM]