Thespis Strip Dated Sunday, January 31, 2010

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TRANSCRIPT:
Marvin: So, anyway, back to what I was speaking of OOOF
Announcer: OH SNAP IT'S THE DANGLING PARTICIPLE GOBLIN!
!!!!!!!!!

Identity

   Or is it something else that truly scares me? Like I said, it's not my past self, but the idea of my past self, that I could have my strings pulled and not notice it. I'm better than I was, but how much of it is yet uninternalized?

   I broke very easily as a child. They must have instilled in me some coping mechanism or defense mechanism to counteract it, because I must have learned to outgrow it somehow (most of it anyway.) Maybe it's still there. My childhood is this force that's pressing against my back, nuzzling me and then swallowing me up. I've had positive and negative manifestations, suppressing the negative and refining the positive ones. Hopefully. The autism itself is the cause of both of these, but not the actions themselves- I choose how I manifest it.

   Sublimation is considered a psychologically mature form of defense mechanism, because it involves rejecting negative behavior. It involves the nourishing and nurturing of the underlying negative ideals you are trying to repress, though, only directing them to a different outlet. The demon grows alongside the angel.

   And that is why I am a serial killer.

   Haha, just kidding. (the dehydrated samples of human skin in the scrapbook under the bed are JUST RESEARCH, mother.)

   But the strengths and the weaknesses do come from the same source. It's not like my life is being defined by this, since I forget about it half the time as it is. I see myself as myself, to a degree of identity that I can only guess others can't even imagine. And it is this degree of identity which causes my own lack of identity. Like I said, the reason I return to the same things over and over is because they're awesome.

   (And I realize the problem behind that, but that is how most of us operate, so I'm gonna fly with it.)

It's Really Time You Reexamine Your Place in Society, Boy

   Saying that with a Sean Connery accent would be best. Itsh taime ya reexhamin your plaish in shochiety, boyh. Yeah, like that.

   But I just realized what a loser I am, statistically. Well, not a loser, but how easy it would be to dismiss me. All my demographics, the things I'm into, have traditionally been the path of the unpopular. Too many outcasts. I am a freaking autistic Mormon hipster furry brony manchild. Being the ultimate outsider does have this edge to it, like so-uncool-it's-cool, and of course coolness exists outside of that, but that still doesn't explain how others put up with me when the stereotype is that not much good can come from any of these things individually much less combined.

   It's an elective thing, I suppose. You don't have to if you don't want to. I'm not actively telling you this; I'm not saying these things out loud. It's a written medium, and it's your choice to read or not. With listening, you can ignore it and you can tune it out, but you can still hear it. It requires a bit more effort on your part to read something, though. So I don't have to explain myself to you if you don't want that.

   That's why you're here, isn't it? To see me, well, not, justify myself, to you, exactly. The hear what I have to say and see what I have to show. To look and see and find out just exactly what it means to be like me. Oh, man, I just quoted Comrade Helicopter at you.

   All my life, I guess, I've been in the minority. Or the equivalent, I guess. Being Caucasian male has no real political push anymore, except for subconscious things like being perceived as more trustworthy. We don't have to pay as much for houses, for example, because real estate agents, as human beings, have this implicit bias towards trusting us more.

   I guess, on one hand, I don't need to tell you, but on one hand (and maybe it's the same hand, who knows) I do. Or is it you who needs to be told by me? The only reason I bring it up here is this entire thing is about me spilling my guts and psychoanalyzing myself (I do that so you don't have to do it for me, I guess) and as embarrassing as it is to admit my membership of these groups I suppose it's an essential part of my psychology. Asperger's can be used as an excuse for anything from mild awkwardness to downright rudeness, or even use it as a bragging point, how it makes them more special than the other people in the room. But you really can't change things like that much, as cliché as it to bring it up. Or, no, uh... What, is it passé? Both, I guess.

   But you can't let it stop you, just because you're not entirely unique. You still need something to springboard off of. Is it so popular now it's no longer cool? Or are you ashamed for the others? The things I like I like because they're awesome things.

   So here I am.

Thinking, in Pictures and Words

   I remember thinking entirely in pictures when I was young, but then training myself to think verbally by using pictures of those creepy busy  preposition ants from School House Rock (seriously, ants shouldn't wear shoes. That’s why I also think the song "Ants Go Marching" is creepy. Nor should teddy bears, one of the many reasons I think Teddy Bear Picnic is creepy.) The ants would march by with pictures of the words, you know, signs with the words I was thinking written on them.

   I would not be who I am today without the film Jurassic Park. And, I guess, the book. The scene when Laura Dern and Richard Attenborough are sitting together in the cafeteria, eating ice cream before it melts because the power is off, and Mr. Attenborough's character explains remembering Petticoat Lane and the flea circus, and wanting to make something that was actually real this time. That’s just excellent scriptwriting. Give that guy an Oscar, give him a Knighthood. The dialogue inspired me to have conversations of my own like that. It inspired me to my own form of eloquence, wanting to think in words instead of pictures.

   Anyway, Ian Malcom, Jeff Goldblum's character. Chaos theory. That dude was awesome. Sitting in the car, talking to himself, after everyone else jumped out of the car to see the Trike (Jurassic Park slang for a triceratops.) “See, here I'm now sitting by myself, uh, er, talking to myself. That's, that’s chaos theory.” Which inspired me to talk to myself. A common trait of autism is vocalization of thoughts, but I guess in me that's where it came from.

   Yeah, that's right. Jeff um uh Goldblum. For me, that was the pinnacle of eloquence. Ian Malcolm, chaos this and that.

What It Would Mean

   Like I said, I was (blissfully?) unaware of any of the results or of the changes in curriculum, so I didn't realize my place or my scoring. This thought didn't occur to me. A genius, am I? I don't consider myself to be a genius. If not in the creativity definition of the word, in the intelligence definition. When I was little, I didn't know of such things.

   I said, it must have been because of the fact that my cousins were also my neighbors, opening up more room in my brain because I didn't have to keep the politics of both relations separate. I said, knowledge of trivia does not equal intelligence. That was a hot one. Or, I am just self-aware, and thus I consciously work on self-improvement. That one, I think, would work for anybody. Since I am not other people, I do not know if they are self-aware, but they might not be. Get self-aware, people. It'll bump up your IQ.

   That rationalization of my above-average capacity for memory storage and retrieval, and for higher-level thinking in general, was back when my IQ was only 122. Well, "only" 122. That's in the 93 percentile. Makes me seem insufferable. Though if you're reading this blog, you're pretty bright yourself. And have excellent taste.

   So, again we return to why I started off on this subject anyway: it may not be what my brain works, but how it works. That's what the entire thing is about, so more on that, would be good.

A Sudden Rise: A Second Opinion

   Actually, treating the CAS as being only a System for Cognitive Assessment and not a bona fide IQ test (I'm assuming here there wasn't actually an IQ test that also happened to say 115 and everyone was treating my CAS score as an actual IQ test,) but, treating it like that, my score of 118 in the eighth grade, my second-most recent barrage and the one preceding my highest barrage, was the lowest IQ I've scored. As far as I've found the results for all the IQ tests I've ever taken, that is. Two barrages in the second grade, 122 on the KBIT and 125 on the K-ABC. Maybe this most recent score doesn't represent an exponential growth so much as... Well, something else. I'm not sure what. A fluctuation. A drop in the eleventh grade, I guess.

   Ha, so it turns out that the real mystery is not why it rose so suddenly but why it dropped so suddenly before that. No list needed for this one; it's probably something unsexy like conditions on the day of the test itself. These things are entirely mutable. So there was a rise, and a fall. Capacity for both fluid and crystallized intelligence is said to increase until well within the 20s (thanks, Wikipedia!)

   Maybe my second grade IQ was even higher than it was measured to be, come to think of it, seeing as how that was before my Asperger's diagnosis and autistic people tend to under-perform on IQ tests. The eleventh grade would represent a true drop, of quite a bit for whatever reason (it wasn't lack of stimulation.) There was no adjustment made there for the autism because the autism wasn't diagnosed. Wait, no. The Asperger's wasn't diagnosed; the autism was diagnosed just fine. The barrages I took in second grade were quite thorough, with different scores for different categories, so even then I don't think that much adjustment would be needed.

   Also treating the CAS as being not a true test of Intelligence Quotient means that there's a gap from the second to the eleventh grade in which my IQ was not tested, so there was room for all kinds of fluctuation there. That effectively put my second grade IQs as outliers, which is why I didn't report them in my initial discussion of my historical IQs. Should I have? I don't know; I made a judgement call and I'm sticking with it.

200+?

   Yeaaah, I know they balance these things out to have the mean be 100 (and maybe the median and probably the mode, though obviously not the range.) Let's use the above-given IQ score of 115, which may or may not have been my own as tested once. Fifteen points above 100. One standard deviation from the mean. Fifteen points below 100, or 85, is one standard deviation below the mean. The standard deviation for IQ, you see, is 15 points: A 130 IQ represents two standard deviations from mean, with its corresponding below-mean IQ being 70-- 30 points above and below, and so on. I'm not sure if it's possible to have a negative IQ (just sucking the intelligence out of everything around it without soaking any up for itself, I guess,) but if and only if it were, then it would be possible to have an IQ that exceeded 200.

Intelligence is determined not by the size of the brain, but by its shape. It's not, the bigger the better, it's, the more folded the better. The less folded the brain, the less intelligent. So what would an almost perfectly smooth brain look like? There is a rare congenital brain condition called lissencephaly (smooth brain,) which leads to IQs as low as 20, but under that it's impossible to test so for all intents and purposes, 20 is the lowest IQ can go. If the mean IQ is set at 100, still, even this relatively rare phenomenon might have to be at least somewhat less rare than IQs above the opposite-end-of-the-scale counterpart IQ of 180, unless they're making up for it with just a lot of average scores (most likely.) IQ is ranked on an ordinal scale, meaning the rank is more important than the actual number- one IQ point separating two IQs at one place in the chart is not the same as another point at another place in the chart. Still, the ratios of the IQs themselves are accurate.

   It's possible for like little children and stuff to have IQs of 200, because IQ tests for children are generally measured as status ratios, meaning intelligence is gauged by comparing against peers: an IQ of 200 would just mean the child is operating at a brain capacity of the average person twice their age, which is much more common. I think there was a group of like Ukrainian students who all got their IQs tested when they came into America and their average IQ was like 160 or 170. I'd be more specific if I could find a source for that, but something like this was definitively documented to have happened; I just don't know if all of those details are correct, so don't quote me on it. I was using that for illustrative purposes only. Either way, the average was quite above average. There were possible explanations for that, like these, given, but I don't think I'd be able to tell you those either.

A Sudden Rise

   Why the huge jump?  

1. He just misheard, like heard it as -ty instead of -teen or something? And that mishearing somehow also happened to be the number put on the official documentation... Okay, that idea was stupid from the start. But it makes sense in terms of the known range in my test scoring.
2. Maybe they just lied to me. That was one of my first thoughts. That I'm part of some study where IQ tests are administered, and the results are overstated to determine whether this has any positive or negative effect on future IQ scores. There's no way to disprove that (I did feel it was an off day that day...) and either way not likely.
3. Maybe they were using a different test method- no, the method seemed the same to me. The blocks and the vocabulary. WAIS-IV, that was it. A different test calibration, then, maybe. No, that's also dumb. It's the same test, it should be calibrated the same. Though the standard deviation was 16 instead of 15 in one place up until [EDIT: shoot it looks like I missed a spot; yes it was originally blank here, just a blank blank cliffhanger. I'm reviewing these posts early April '17 in the middle of/as part of a project I'm doing on IQ testing, and boy does all this conjecture seem moronic to me now (moron- the highest grade of mental retardation in Jean Esquirol's model. better than being imbecilic or idiotic, at least.) I was talking about the Stanford-Binet, anyway, which used 16 as the sigma instead of 15 up until the, shoot, fifth edition?]
4. Maybe I had just gotten used to those tests, and gotten good at them? 
5. They didn't offer a possible range or margin of error, so perhaps its definitiveness (definitivinity?) makes it non-definitive. Okay, maybe not. There's generally supposed to be a range of about 3 points plus or minus on any given score, and a 95% accuracy rate on these things. At least on some of the tests I took, and since the test that yielded the high-average scores was the same test that yielded the superior score... Meaning, in second grade, (using KBIT my IQ was measured at 115-129 (plus or minus seven points of 122,) and the probability was given 95% of that ration containing my true IQ. Thus, my really high test just fell  into this 5% margin. It happens. Once every twenty times, it happens. Sad thing is, that's probably it.
6. Maybe it deals with the personal and social advancements I've made since then, being able to better express myself and speak and have it be legible. Or the low number in one category got significantly higher which bumped up the entire Full Scale. I've seen the subcategories on my grade-school IQ tests, though, and I don't think that's it. It is said that there are two kinds of intelligence, fluid and crystallized, and this is important because autistic people tend to have low fluid intelligence. I've gotten better, but I don't think even all of my advancement in that category can explain quite such a leap.
7. Maybe that's causing my IQ is increasing exponentially, and soon I will have one of those (literally impossible) 220+ IQs (I meant to put 200+, but  I hit the 2 twice instead of the 0, and I'm keeping it because 220+ is just soo much cooler.) 

   That's the one I hope it is, that one on the end. I.Q.s 200+ are impossible, right?

A History of (My Own) IQ

   I'm willing to admit my past scores here, which may seem kind of contradictory to what I said in the last post but isn't for reasons that will soon become readily apparent.

   115, I'm not sure if that was actually an IQ measurement, because I was also tested in the fifth grade  using the CAS (Cognitive Assessment System,) which was measured to be 115. I don't think that the CAS is actually a recognized IQ test so much as... well, as a System for Cognitive Assessment, the examiner said he believed that "the test results are an accurate representation of [my] abilities." Legit enough. Alright. Maybe that was something else, like there was an actual IQ test administered and it also happened to test 115, so I'm gonna fly with it and say it was 115. There were tests before that, in the second grade, but that was in the second grade, which is discountable for reasons it's really not the place to get into here.

   In the eleventh grade, my FSIQ (Full Scale Intelligence Quotient) was tested using the WAIS IV (which is a recognized and official IQ test,) to be 118. A jump of three points! Yay! Then I took another one in college, (Sophomore year?), as part of a qualification for voc rehab. It had grown again. By a lot. The exact scale of the jump to what my latest measurement is I will not say, because

1. It's statistically high, so sharing it here would seem like blatant bragging,
2. It's realistically high, so sharing it here would be embarrassing because it's really not worth bragging about, and
3. My shame of how low it is would still come across like bragging

   I was 18, 19 when I took that last one. It's not unheard of and in fact expected to keep increasing like that, but such a jump... I don't know what that could mean. I do have my guesses, though. More on that next time.

I Hope I Don't Fall Over Myself Too Much in This One

   Let's see how high these ghostly wings can fly us, shall we? Oh, dear. It's a blessing to be blessed, yes. But humility sounds like boastfulness even when you put it that way. It all sounds like boastfulness: I'm trying to analyse this impassively, but it doesn't come out sounding that way. At the very least, I can always claim it's a parody of that kind of thing. My own genius? Yep. Here comes the part where I talk about my IQ. No, I'm not telling it to you. I need to talk about it to explain some things, namely why past me continues to scare me (a-ha! you thought we were off of that now, did you?) But I don't divulge the exact number here.

   Why am I even talking about it, then? This is the internet (last I checked, ha ha,) which is full of bright people... allegedly (ohhh diss.) Seriously, though, it's big and large and vast and deep and any claim you make can be matched or exceeded somewhere else on it. I'm not going to tell you because this isn't about what my own IQ is, it's about why it is. When the best that so many autistic children can hope for is retardation, why am I on the opposite arm of the scale?

   I'm not here to brag, as bragging about something like that only seems petty. I'm just here to talk about it. A blog is not the place for shame, though. It's a personal thing about a person. If you didn't want to hear it, you wouldn't read it. So I'm going to talk about high testing-- er, being tested high-- er, being tested to be high, in the tested sort of sense. And why and how it could be that way.

   IQ tests are easy, though. You just go in there and they answer you insultingly easy questions and then impossible questions about obscure Russian literature, (which you fail of course.) That's actually what happened to me. I'm not sure if he decided just to skip to the impossible ones at the end or what. Like, oh, he's so clearly bored with these easy ones, that about as far as that can be gauged anyway. Hmm, that doesn't sound nice. Need to work on my humility.

   Humility? I suppose gratitude is in order. Other than the odd case of savantism, there's generally not much hope with this prognosis. Alright, that's unfair. Asperger's is not uncommon, but it's generally not what people think when they think autism. It's like Asperger's is a different thing to them. We can still feel the effects. This entire thing is about how crippling it used to be and still is to a lessening extent. But I was still bright. And that's still considered high functioning. There's low functioning, which is intellectually crippling with below-average intelligence, and high functioning, which increases to overlaps average intelligence. But a few of us overshot that. I'm negative mild. Mild autism, so mild it's negative, I mean, that which pushes outward instead of pulls downward. (Gifted instead of cursed, I guess. Well, no, the curse is still there. But it's a good curse?) Man, that sounds bad.

   It's hard to balance sounding humble with sounding like I've got a healthy self-esteem. That would certainly explain where the Asperger's stereotypes come from. Oh, feel sorry for me because I'm different, at the same time as, oh, be impressed with me, I'm different! I don't think you'd be here if you didn't expect to hear about it, and it's hard to speak of oneself emotionally neutrally, but I'm sorry if it came across as that. I guess I've covered this already, but don't you worry about me. I don't need your pity or anything. I just need you to not read too much into whether I'm trying to impress you or not right now, alright? (Yeah, I know. The lady doth protest too much, methinks.)

   But, I mean, how can I either boast or complain when it's the only life I know?

Ghosts

   Yeah, Asperger's. The very nature of the disease makes me unsure of exactly how much I'm crippled by it, but as far as I can see I'm fine. If it weren't for the reminders. The reminders of how awkward it's possible to be. That's what you're here for, yes? To hear me tell about it? To try to understand me when I myself don't know what to say to make you understand because that's exactly the problem? Okay, it might not be as inflated as I make it sound (once again, I'm not sure,) but it sure sounds pretty, doesn't it?

   But, since I'm unable to see the problem, I'm alright with it. I don't know if it's good or bad but I do know it could be worse. This isn't a curse; it's a blessing. Sometimes (all the time) it'd be great if it were more of a blessing, but that's true of anything. There are those to whom what to me is a gift is a curse, of course. It had to manifest itself in this exactly specific way. Different each time, but all exactly specific. That make sense? It's always specific, the exact manifestation, coming up as a little reminder of how things are in times where it either would or would not be convenient. Not as much for me as with some others, so I think I'm able to tell exactly what that means. I... think I've got a pretty good grasp on what anything else would be, better or worse, but there are still the little reminders again. I don't know how far out I am.

   For some, it comes as a crippling retardation, but, speaking of all of humanity, are we not all retarded in some way or another? There are the savants, of course, no more or less common than you'd think. We may very well all be savants, as well, but that's exactly how our retardation manifests itself, so that  we could never be able to show it.

   The wise man proclaims himself to be a fool, so I'm just chasing the horizon trying to figure out exactly how autistic I am and am not. How autistic I am and am not. That was a weird admission. It felt weird. Feels weird. I am autistic. From the Greek, autos, meaning self. I myself. I am autistic. It's a contradiction and a tautology rolled into one. How could you be, or not be, or even know for sure? It's different each time, so the only way to gauge it is against others. Bizarre.

   Either way, while for some it would be a retardation, for me it is my genius. In the original Latin meaning, too, I guess. A personal spirit. Haunting me like a ghost. For many, it is a poltergeist. But for me it is a genius. There are many such haunted who can approach or even exceed standard, but I can count myself blessed that my ghost has wings. Count you blessings, yeah.

Future Me Scares Me

   That's it, though. Precisely it. Past me scares me because presast makes perfect. The arrow is aimed of the past and let loose of the present, and we can see the trajectory of the future. If my past was so frightening, I don't know what I've got the potential to be. I was a terrifyingly bright child, with a relatively low IQ for someone with an IQ that high. I must have been le enfant terrible at that time, only as a supergenius mastermind. Though, nope, testing from that period showed a low disposition for... well, for disposition. "A personal weakness for Planning," that was it. I've never been very good at strategy. So, thank goodness for that. I'd hate to turn into Arslan or something.

   No, wait. The Planning test, while it did show that as my personal weakness, showed it as being in the low averages. This was labeled my personal weakness, as my other scores were Superior, (or high-ish Average on the Attention Scale.) Hmm, we're going to have to delve deeper into this. I've got the report in front of me now. Date of Examination: October 7, 2002. Examiner: Stephen F Jackson, M.Ed, Ed.S.. CONFIDENTIAL PSYCHOLOGICAL REPORT. Shoot, maybe I shouldn't be sharing this. Ah, well, I'll try not to quote it directly too much. Though I did already do so with the "personal weakness for Planning" thing. And don't I, as the subject, at least have some right to divulge it here? Well, I guess I'd better explain the Planning Test, at least.

   The Planning test on the CAS (at least at that time) comes in two parts: Matching Numbers (whereby, in order to become efficient in finding the matching numbers in gradually toughening challenges the student has to develop strategies to find the numbers) and Planned Codes. This is publicly available, so I feel alright sharing that much. Now, Planned Codes itself comes in two parts. In the first part the student has to complete a simple repetitive task, and in the second half the student has to override the automatic responses used in the first half, exhibiting higher order cognitive control. I appeared to be "lost" during the second half of that test, and "responded to the test in a random manner." A-ha. How interesting. I don't know what this means (or what I was thinking,) but it's interesting. At that time I was also evaluated by a psychiatrist (J. Zenoa "Dr. Zen" Meservy, MD, Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist, it would seem?), and that's when I was diagnosed with Asperger's Disorder.

   "Though Eric does not show the typical repetitive, stereotyped movements, usually associated with Austism [sic], Eric's tests results are similar to the state definition of Autism:

   "The pupil has a spectrum disorder which significantly affects the verbal and nonverbal communication and social skills of a person and is often characterized by repetitive and stereotyped movements, resistance to changes in environment or daily routine and responding to sensory experiences in an unusual manner, is usually apparent before the age of 3; and adversely affects the educational performance of a pupil causing significant delays or irregular patterns in learning or both."

   2002, October. That must have been third- no, fourth grade. Let's see, the Towers fell in September of second grade, so, yeah, that was third grade. I've always considered that to be a good year, so maybe it was on account of special treatment of that diagnosis? I had always thought it was because of Matt. It seems like they knew or at least suspected autism before that, though, going back to 1999 or sooner, but the diagnosis was set at Asperger's in 2003.

   Thank goodness. I'd hate to get stuck with PDD-NOS.

Past Me Scares Me

   Past me scares me. Not just because I flipped my lid often and sometimes beat up girls for no reason. Crap, that sounds horrible. No, though, I'm (mostly?) over that. Looking through my old education files, I found a lot dealing with... my education, in those files. Yeah. Not just being taught, you understand, but learning. Looking through my education files, I learned how I learned.

   Was I really so paralyzed? Now I can (hopefully) catch my own awkwardnesses (how's my slouching? Is it really all that bad? It doesn't it make me look like I have special needs, does it? Oh, man. I don't do that thing where I curl my hands, do I?) but back then I must have been blind. Maybe Mrs. Rigg-Anderson's anecdote about the student who went around imitating a robot all the time with his parents thinking that it'd be perfectly abnormal for a second grader to do anything else, maybe her telling that was somehow triggered by something I did (it was Rigg-Anderson, right?) Either way, yes, I did no that acting like a robot was not "just a second-grade thing."

   Past me also scares me because of, in spite of all that, how bright I (once again, allegedly) was. I've seen my IQ scores from back then, and they aren't all that high. Well, not as high as you'd expect from such a student. I've also seen my drawings from back then, which weren't very good either, but I was supposed to be a pretty good artist so maybe they've just got different standards for kids. (I've heard that.) Self-esteem is important...

   I've also seen my IEPs. Well, that's where I mostly retrieved the IQ information from, so, yes, I've seen those. Yeah, let's talk about that. The other parts of my IEP, the parts of my Individualized Education Plan that actually planned my education. This is it, this is the heart of it. Why I'm afraid of who I was.

   They had set goals for me, like, Eric will learn to make eye contact where appropriate, 80% of the time. I don't recall being trained like that. I don't even recall learning to make eye contact until I decided to do so on my own. Past me scares me because it's weird to think of my strings being pulled by unseen puppet masters throughout my schooling. I've clearly made improvements in those areas, but the implications as to how that happened are kind of disturbing. Most of my knowledge of IEPs came from being required to attend the personal parent/teacher conferences where they talked about me. I was totally oblivious otherwise. It's not like I knew that other kids didn't have little rituals they did with their teacher whenever they overheated.

IEPs

   I've been flipping through my old medical records, which are actually mostly old school records, mostly IEPs (Individualized Education Plans) because of my ASPARAGUS IN THE ROOM, which I suppose does count as medical? But I got a good view of myself, as a student. What I must have been like, this mind impenetrable to all but myself. And even I don't have a clue what I was thinking during some of the psychological tests they administered. Those only show the what, not the why. So I guess now would be a good time to try to explain the why.

   It's... frightening. A lot of it is. My past self. My file. The plans made for me, the mechanisms designed to give me a normal schooling experience.

   Special Education wasn't a regular class of mine since, uh, at least after 2004. For 2004, my IEP says the student will spend 90% of his or her school day in the regular educational environment. So, by then I was-- 2005, 86%? What the hay? It dropped! The amount of time in the regular educational environment dropped! What was that- was that from sixth the seventh grade? Oh, okay. I was transitioning into Junior High. But still, I spent most of my school day in a normal classroom

   Gifted and Talented Education doesn't count, nor does the speech therapy I underwent, I don't think. But my teachers had special in-class programs (here in the computer program sense of the word) in place to cool me down in case I got out of hand. But I didn't realize that. That went through a lot of iterations of these programs, trying out different tacks, which I guess is what made it invisible to me. It was there, and it was invisible, because it changed. I must have improved my behavior due to these, but I didn't realize it. I'm not sure if I even realized my behavior was abnormal. Maybe inappropriate, but what I did wasn't (considered by me to be) tantrums. Just a perfectly normal reaction.

   I must have realized and worked to correct some of this behavior- for example, the case file on the speech therapy says I was actively working to correct my own problems in mispronunciation, and was dismissed from their services on May 6, 2005. I didn't realize I had a speech problem before that therapy, but I was given an examination seven and a half years prior, on November 11, 1998, which stated I was eligible. I had apparently been in speech therapy all along since then. I didn't know I was in speech therapy, though, until the fifth grade, and I wouldn't even have known I was in it that long beforehand if I didn't see the date on the report. I thought I had both started and ended it in fifth grade. Nope, K-7. It's like these invisible strings were pulling me and I had no idea all along. Which is another scary thing.

   By the end, when I did know I was supposed to be in speech therapy, I was apparently actively trying to correct my pronunciation (maybe because I knew that I had a problem.) So they dropped it. Once again, without my realization. I didn't even know they had dropped it, until just now when I reviewed the old file, and realized what it said and meant. I didn't know. That they had dropped it, that I was improving. But ever since they dropped my speech therapy without my knowledge, I've always been self-conscious of my own speech patterns, thinking I had never improved.

   That's another scary thing, how I could have been so oblivious to the things that were told me (or at least should have been told me.) You want me to make a list? Very well. I shall do so.

Weekday Thespis 5

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Weekday Thespis 4

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Weekday Thespis 3

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Weekday Thespis 2

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Weekday Thespis 1

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Thespis Concept Art

   When I first decided to set out on the creation of Thespis, I had a few ideas which I sketched down here to brainstorm. Then I realized that the concept was fleshed out enough in my head as it was, so the entire exercise was kind of pointless. At least I got a good post out of it.

Also, Emo Hitler.

Nightly Time Travel

   What if dreams are real, only from some absurdly far-off sci-fi future with technology sufficiently advanced? The reality of this distant future is highly mutable, of course, seeing as how dreams change from night to night. Ooh, what if the situation in the dreams changes from night to night because the reality of the dreams is mutable because the timeline itself is mutable? The mere act of time travel changes the course of history, so the time stream changes.

   That's a wikked sweet idea.

Thespis Strip Dated Sunday, January 10, 2010

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Transcript:
Marvin, thinking: Okay so, Eric Perazzo wants to kill Collin off. The creator of a -I'm gonna admit it- fictional character- is going to kill off his creation.
With godlike ability, there's no way to tell from where the strike will come.
This looks familiar.
Marvin: Hmm...

I’M PRETTY SURE THAT I CAN’T FEEL THE LOVE TONIGHT

I remember my first date with my first love
The Lion King at the dollar movie theater.
I remember how cute I thought that you looked
I felt so lucky to have my arm around your shoulder.

I remember how you cried
When Mufasa died
You were so cute when you did that.
I was pretty teared up myself, of course,
--- jungle cat.
I remember when you turned to me
When Simba and Kira fell in love.
When you said that the song that they played
was the song that our song was.
I remember it like yesterday.
When you said that the song that they played
was the song that our song was.
I remember how I heard you say

“Well, I know that I can feel the love tonight,”
And I thought I could too.
But them you left me all too soon
And there’s nothing I can do.

‘Cause it’s been a long time since 1994
And it’s been a long time since 1998
And it’s been a long time since 2004
Now it’s been too long since our first date

And now I’m pretty sure that
I Can’t Feel the Love Tonight.
No,
I Can’t Feel the Love Tonight.
Oh,
(I Can’t Feel the Love Tonight.)
Oh,
(I try to feel your love tonight)

I remember before it all went wrong
There was a period of heavenly bliss.
Collecting tie-in memorabilia for you, yeah,
I was a junkie for your kiss.
I remember that when your eyes lit up
I was bathin' in that light
All we'd do all day is listenin' to songs
And savoring the strange feelings that we got
when we listened to Can You Feel the Love Tonight.

We listened to the songs that made it seem
That love is the only thing
That makes life worth living.
We sang the songs that made it seem
That it’s the only thing
That makes it not.
I wrote this song
In the hopes that you’d
Come back and turn my life around.
I wrote this song, ‘cause you were the
Only love I ever got.

And now I’m pretty sure that
I Can’t Feel the Love Tonight.
No,
I Can’t Feel the Love Tonight.
Oh,
(I Can’t Feel the Love Tonight.)
Oh,
(I try to feel your love tonight)

Oh, yeah!

An Ephiphany of Etymology

   Looking at the ideal of a pedal- something you press down on with your foot; basically, a foot handle. Makes sense with the word pedal- ped- al. A handle for you peds. Handle would then be hand- le, which I can tell just by looking is unrelated, but similar enough for that connection to make sense. I guess. Ped-al would be a handle for your foot, and hand-le would be a pedal for your hand. Though "hand" isn't Latin. There'd be a man-al, or perhaps there is the word manual, but that's not a hand-operated lever so much as the idea of any work for the hands. So, handle. Makes... sense.

    It sure makes me a whole lot less passive aggressive why they go out to get "hooficures" in Friendship is Magic rather than, say, "ungulacures."

A-Team Insanity

   I was going to say this earlier, like, post this earlier, until I realized I didn't have much to go off on at that time. I did mention in in passing in post: Which is It, Then? "That Murdoch guy, is he crazy or what?" But I've got that now. Stuff to go off of. It's not much, but, man...

   That Murdoch guy, is he crazy or what? In A-Team (I hope I didn't really need to clarify that.) The team are even seen to need to bust him out of an insane asylum in order to assemble. You know? Dude's just crazy. It's not Hollywood insanity, either (which just appears to be schizophrenia, if you analyse what Hollywood depicts when they depict "crazy.") Murdoch, though. He's like, he's actually crazy. Loose-wired. So here we go.

   Insanity is doing something the same over and over again but expecting a different result each time. Or whatever, right. Retardation. The inability to conceive of an alternative to the tack you're trying. But isn't there also a fine line between insanity and genius? Indubitably. So either way, the insane are in the top or bottom two or three percentiles, of retardation and genius.

   Is insanity worth it? I don't know, it's not like bipolarity where you swing between the two. You just continue down your path, independent of whether you're being smart or dumb at any given time.

Con Names: Special "Furries and Bronies" Edition

   Seeing as how furries apparently have sort of a natural predilection for punning, (not to mention pontification,) plus a lot of really bizarrely specific cons, (I did a post on that once, didn't I? I seem to remember...) That's right, I've giving the furry and brony conventions their own, special category of con name. There are imaginably a few really really good ones, as well as ones that are quite frankly just plain awful.

THE GOOD

1. BroNYCon: Because it's in NYC. That's just awesome.
2. Brony Fan Fair: oh... oh! I get it! Like fanfare and... clever, clever.
3. Fur-Eh!: It's Canadian! 
4. Furthest North: so is this one!
5. Everfree Northwest: The northwest version of Everfree gets bonus points for kind of sounding like "Everfree Forest."

THE BAD

1. Rain Furrest: I'm not even going to touch that one.
2. Furnal Equinox: Nor this one.
3. EquestriaCon: Uninspired. Really, ones like these stand out in the seas of puns that these can be.
4. Canterlot Gardens: Lovely, but this one is pretty boring, too. Hey, I'm just saying these are bad names for cons; these are nothing compared to:

THE UGLY

1. Galacon: another Brony thing. Named after the Grand Galloping Gala? Or apples? I might have checked this once, and I think both. At least the other ones make sense.
2. Furloween: I guess I can... kind of... see what you were trying to do?
3. Howloween: okay, that one makes more sense.
4. Fur the 'More: It's in Baltimore, hence, 'More, and its mascot is a raven, like the Poe kind, because Poe lived in Baltimore. The entire thing is so clever it's dumb.

   And I feel like I should give out some
SPECIAL MENTIONS
   where exactly how bizarre these can get gets lampshaded.

1. ConFuzzled
2. FURther CONfusion 
3. What the Fur 

   EDIT [11/23/14]: About the Baltimore thing, Fur the 'More. As you can see, I put that name in the, ugly, category- for what it's worth, there had been a lot of deliberation on that point, but, "ugly," there I stuck it and there it stayed (I think really it's because I needed a rounder number than the three I had already up there in that category.) Fur the 'More, anyway. I've been thinking about that a bit, um, more. And I came to the sobering conclusion that holy smokes, an entire article could be written on the layers of meaning in there. Maybe I'll do that, I don't know. Just thinking on it: it looks like the word "furthermore," and, yep, yep, I understood all that- it basically is the word "furthermore." Okay. So, you think, alright, that's a pretty cute name on its own, yep, "fur," I see what they did there. And that's when you realize all those things I pointed out in its name up there already, which I do not feel the need to rehash here, but then... Maybe it took me a tad longer than it should have, I don't know, I made the connection, Poe's Raven's catchphrase (iffen, erm, you can call it that) is nevermore... Well. I think that the "so clever it's dumb" thing I said, crosses over into being "so clever it's scary;" just, give it its own special mention apart from the regular special mention section. Which I just did, in a sense. So there we have it; sorry about that.

Con Names: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

   Just an onslaught of conventions. Names. Some really good, others not so much. These are the ones that stand out to me through the research I've done. The good, the bad, and the ugly con names.

THE GOOD

1. Comikaze- 'Nuff said.
2. DEFCON- like Defense Readiness Condition, but as the name of a convention. Glorious.
3. Convolution- if it weren't for Comikaze, I think this one would be the cleverest.

THE BAD

1. Fanime- I see what you did there. And it was awful.
2. ConFURence- AARGH what is that get it out my eyes! Thankfully I don't think this one is still around. Though furries could practically get their own category when it comes to con names. I guess brony cons count here, too. You know what, I think I'll do that.

THE UGLY

1. Otakon- otaku con. Clever, once it's been explained to you, but outside of that, not much. At least it's better than Fanime?
2. Conflation- an awesome name for a con, unfortunately already taken by some crappy local outfit. Not loonies, either. (Looners? What's the word for balloon fanaticists again? Looners, right?)
3. Gen Con- it's just... boring, is all.

Thespis Strip Dated Sunday, January 3, 2010

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TRANSCRIPT:
Marvin: The creator? Of what? The strip? Alright, so, Eric Perazzo says your ancestor killed his and now wants to do you off at the start of the New Year.*
*(2010, to those in the future to whom the situation is much less dire.)
Marvin: You made that up.
Collin: Nope.
Marvin: !
Collin: But here's something I did make up:
[singing, 3/4] If wish-es were Cad-dies then beg-gars would ride!
(Hmm... Maybe he's going through denial, the first stage of the Kübler-Ross model of acceptence [sic].)
Collin: 's a good song.
(Or maybe he's just oblivious to the whole situation.)

Art, Um, Preservation

   Art preservation technique: When you drew something on a whiteboard but want to keep it, just lay down a bunch of tape over that sucker and lift it off the board!

   Yup.

Correspondence 1/2/10 17:52 - 18:30

   Continuing our new year's discussion, with the knowledge of how Cailin gets in the mood to do work, we discuss fridge magnet poetry of all things. It will make sense, in context.

Re: Song Work
From POMegranate to Persomem   Jan 2, 2010 5:52 pm
so, now...

Re: Song Work
From Persomem to POMegranate   Jan 2, 2010 6:00 pm
Now...?

Re: Song Work
From POMegranate to Persomem   Jan 2, 2010 6:01 pm
Now can you do stuff?

Re: Song Work
From Persomem to POMegranate   Jan 2, 2010 6:03 pm
Probably not?

Re: Song Work
From POMegranate to Persomem   Jan 2, 2010 6:06 pm
why not?

Re: Song Work
From Persomem to POMegranate   Jan 2, 2010 6:07 pm
Not... inspired?

Re: Song Work
From POMegranate to Persomem   Jan 2, 2010 6:08 pm
oh, yeah. good reason. refrigerator magnets?

Re: Song Work
From Persomem to POMegranate   Jan 2, 2010 6:11 pm
Magnets?

Re: Song Work
From POMegranate to Persomem   Jan 2, 2010 6:13 pm
those poem magnets that have words on 'em and you rearrange 'em to make poems.

Re: Song Work
From Persomem to POMegranate   Jan 2, 2010 6:16 pm
I've never really been that good with those, just used them to write out obscene things.

Re: Song Work
From POMegranate to Persomem   Jan 2, 2010 6:22 pm
Man, I don't know what packs you've been buying...

Re: Song Work
From Persomem to POMegranate   Jan 2, 2010 6:22 pm
No four letter words mind you. It's subtle.

Re: Song Work
From POMegranate to Persomem   Jan 2, 2010 6:27 pm
Alright. I suppose we have nothing to talk about, then.

Re: Song Work
From Persomem to POMegranate   Jan 2, 2010 6:30 pm
Seems that way.

Correspondence 1/2/10 14:27 - 17:39

   A new year. I had thought the water sprites to represent annoying riddle-bearing uncles, but now I think they may be entirely made up. An important fact on Cailin's work schedule is revealed.

Re: Song Work
From POMegranate to Persomem   Jan 2, 2010 2:27 pm
Are you alive?

Re: Song Work
From Persomem to POMegranate   Jan 2, 2010 4:08 pm
Oh, whoa, yes, sorry. Some things happened.

Re: Song Work
From POMegranate to Persomem   Jan 2, 2010 4:26 pm
I will only excuse it if one of those things was Avatar.

Re: Song Work
From Persomem to POMegranate   Jan 2, 2010 4:29 pm
Man do I wish.

Re: Song Work
From POMegranate to Persomem   Jan 2, 2010 5:03 pm
ok

Re: Song Work
From Persomem to POMegranate   Jan 2, 2010 5:06 pm
I was busy visiting the family shrine as is the new year custom, and I was held back by some troublesome water sprites who would not let me pass till I solved their riddles.
But anyway, hey.

Re: Song Work
From POMegranate to Persomem   Jan 2, 2010 5:14 pm
yeah, hate that. what were the riddles?

Re: Song Work
From Persomem to POMegranate   Jan 2, 2010 5:17 pm
What wipes its face with both hands, year in and year out?

Re: Song Work
From POMegranate to Persomem   Jan 2, 2010 5:18 pm
A kitten.

Re: Song Work
From Persomem to POMegranate   Jan 2, 2010 5:19 pm
A clock, apparently. They kept on giving me riddles based on Japanese puns too.

Re: Song Work
From POMegranate to Persomem   Jan 2, 2010 5:22 pm
suuuuuccks.

Re: Song Work
From Persomem to POMegranate   Jan 2, 2010 5:27 pm
Yep.

Re: Song Work
From POMegranate to Persomem   Jan 2, 2010 5:28 pm
SO have you made any progress at all ever?

Re: Song Work
From Persomem to POMegranate   Jan 2, 2010 5:29 pm
As would be expected, no, not really.

Re: Song Work
From POMegranate to Persomem   Jan 2, 2010 5:35 pm
not even PoM?

Re: Song Work
From Persomem to POMegranate   Jan 2, 2010 5:36 pm
Yeah, not even PoM...
But, I've been consistently reliable for a while now, and the structured nature of school ought to straighten me back out?

Re: Song Work
From POMegranate to Persomem   Jan 2, 2010 5:38 pm
oh righty, that could be it..

Re: Song Work
From Persomem to POMegranate   Jan 2, 2010 5:39 pm
I've gotten kind of lazy with my daily cycle of sleeping all day and screwing around on the internet.