The Field

It's been a while since I wrote a political article. As I no longer vote, watch the news, or have any faith left in my former party, this is unsurprising. Still, Facebook's news feed, the news playing as I smoke cigars at Just For Him, and discussions with friends keep me relatively up-to-date. Today, as Mitt Romney drops out of the race, I do have some interest in which direction the GOP will be going. Romney was the last candidate I supported before I stopped all involvement with politics. His withdrawal from the Presidential race got me thinking about what I'd prefer to see going forward. After all, I still am very aware of what I believe and am capable of articulating it well. The through-line is individual rights, although tempered with consideration for the balance of rights and interests. No candidate comes within shouting distance of matching my beliefs, but I can still prioritize them and say who would do the best job of representing them.

Rand Paul is who I would like to see get the nomination. Essentially, he's a somewhat socially conservative libertarian. Among the most pro-life politicians in the game, his abortion stance is the first place we lock horns. Like many Republicans, he believes that life begins at conception and that stem cell research, which uses blastocysts, is murder. By attaching inherent higher moral consideration to humans based simply on their being human, rather than based upon their capacity to suffer, he reaches a false moral conclusion. On gay marriage and marihuana legalization, he's more reasonable, simply believing in these issues being decided by the states. Foreign policy and privacy issues are where we differ the most, with him favoring an isolationist stance on the former and being obsessed, as are most libertarians, with protecting it from encroachment on the latter. That's a lot to disagree with a guy on, and not enough to get me voting, but he's still the best one.

Everybody else's liabilities make Paul's look like a mere bad taste in neckties. Jeb Bush has the last name Bush and I'm a bit confused why a man with such a reputation for being smart thinks we will ever elect another man with that name. Mike Huckabee is a nice guy, but far too socially conservative for me to ever approve of him. Marco Rubio is someone I like quite a bit, but he had the opportunity to do great things with immigration policy and turned it into a tremendous political liability. Ted Cruz is far too terrifying to the general electorate to ever become President. Chris Christie will never get the nomination because he helped Obama get a second term during Hurricane Sandy. Ben Carson can't get the nomination because he's too inexperienced and has no name recognition. Sarah Palin is an unelectable buffoon. Rick Perry is Sarah Palin in drag. Donald Trump isn't actually going to run for President and I can't believe we're falling for it again. So I have Rand Paul as my only hope for at least SOME progress in the GOP.

-Frank

Health Problems

A surprisingly high number of my friends and I are wracked with health problems. Most of us aren't out of our 30s yet, but nonetheless experience a variety of ailments that can have catastrophic effects on quality of life, employment, and even eventually even cause death. My own ailments include autism, depression, diabetes, gastrointestinal motility disorder, outdoor allergies that have actually gotten worse with age, low testosterone, and I suspect carpal tunnel, although I haven't checked into that one yet. Friends can lay claim to thyroid conditions, ulcerative colitis, chronic pain, asthma, orthopedic issues, and more. Life lived with poor health is markedly different than life lived with good health and most of the conditions I mention aren't curable. They may be managed with medication, therapy, and the like, but they take their toll just the same. It makes one think about things in a way most don't.

People talk about the young having no sense of mortality. Well, that's not true when you live with chronic conditions. Even those conditions that probably won't kill you give you a less than subtle hint about what it'll feel like when the systems necessary to live start to fail. Every cough that won't go away, every blood sugar reading that's too high, every time the colon misbehaves, every time the pain won't stop, and every time an invisible force in the body or mind betrays you and keeps you from living the life you want, you think about death. It is a constant struggle to put energy into keeping up morale and doing whatever is necessary to manage your conditions as best medical science knows how. That struggle is a draining one and just accomplishing the necessary tasks necessary for getting through your day can be a Herculean effort. Healthy people don't want to acknowledge this because it reminds them of their own mortality and they find it depressing.

When people with chronic health problems talk to one another, it can turn into just measuring misery dicks. What I've come to understand is that there is no real measure of who's more miserable and, even if there was, it shouldn't matter. We've all come into life as the shopping cart with the shitty wheel. The correct response to ailments not shared by oneself is simply to be compassionate. I have friends with chronic pain so severe they're not employable. While I'm not employable either, I don't think of myself as their equal this way. To sit there as the body tortures itself because of something as fickle as weather systems, knowing that the drugs can only do so much and that it will never really end must be an endless grind of devastation and frustration. Feeling sorry for yourself is okay. Hell, I feel sorry for myself and I feel sorry for my friends when their health is poor in ways beyond my experience. Admitting that it sucks never being well holds no shame.

-Frank

Three Rules

I've been an atheist for eight years now and I've had a lot of arguments with believers of every imaginable walk of life. Arguments with Fred Phelps style nutters are actually relatively rare. Far more often, I find myself debating basically decent people who simply cannot fathom my worldview. Not many generalizations of the faithful are helpful in the pursuit of a productive argument. Stereotyping is, more than anything else, utterly incapable of earning its keep in a theological discussion. Most of what I shall proceed to say in this article is from three years of making mistakes very common in the atheist community. As I've stated before, the atheist community and I are actually not on the best of terms with one another. That's a long story, and not one for this article, but let's just say Secular Student Society hates my guts and leave it at that. My point in bringing it up in the first place is that I am something of an outsider when it comes to nearly all groups with whom I presently or formally have an association, with the sole exception of cigar and pipe smokers group, of which I am a member of only the highest of standing. Perhaps this is because I am autistic and have the requisite gift for alienating people. In any event, and in keeping with that idea, atheists and believers alike may find themselves in opposition to the points made in this article. Atheists will hate me telling them to drop some of their arguing methods and believers will hate me because I am an atheist with ideas on how to better debate them. There are three rules I have for debating believers.

1. There are as many religions as there are believers.

The bedrock that many atheists try to hit when debating a believer is that a given believers will share beliefs with another believer of the same creed in both the short and broad strokes. Likely, believers would claim this themselves most of the time, but I've been paying a great deal of attention and they all believe in different gods, have different ideas about what scriptures mean what things. Carefully combing a given scripture for morally indefensible beliefs is a popular pastime of atheists and I can tell you from experience that it is utter folly. Thrust and parry in whatever way seems most bulletproof to you and I promise you there will be a deft countermove awaiting you. They'll tell you that slavery meant something different back then, that God is morally superior to humans and is allowed to order genocide, that Jesus rendered all the Old Testament's nastiness null and void, or that they simply interpret the relevant scripture in a way that, more often than not, is the only time you've heard any believer interpret that scripture in that way. List the atrocities committed by their religion and they will go to supine lengths to exonerate their particular sect from culpability. You can combat all of this by keeping everything to the broad concept of religion as completely without evidence, in any event, and generally responsible for promoting irrational thought and dogmatism, which has done much to add to the surplus of human misery. Do not attack their religion. Lacking a dog in this fight, don't pick on a given one.

2. Modern theological discussions always come back to morality no matter where else they may meander.

Much of modern religion presents itself as a way to explain whatever science cannot understand. This is known as the God Of The Gaps theory and the idea is that God exists in whatever gaps are currently present in scientific knowledge. Wiser theologians have properly surmised that this type of theology results in a shrinking God that gets smaller and less relevant with every advance in scientific understanding. With science moving ever greater in its rate of progress at explaining reality, the eventual terminus can only be a God so irrelevant that he may as well not go to all the bother of existing in the first place. Moral instruction is viewed by theologians as the best place to stake a claim to an area regarding which science has traditionally declined to even express an opinion. From there, we're off to the races. Every atheist has heard that the Stalin and Hitler regimes were the most evil of the 20th century because they were atheist. Therefore, every atheist must be prepared to debunk these claims. Hitler is an easy one to debunk for a few reasons. His Third Reich was actually Christian enough for its military to wear belt buckles that read, "Gott Mit Uns," which translates as, "God Is With Us." He took Catholic Antisemitism embodied in the Blood Libel and Passion Plays as his inspiration for The Final Solution. If The Vatican took issue with this, they had a funny way of showing it by making Hitler's birthday an official holiday, making a treaty with him in exchange for total control of German education, and arranging passports and other assistance for fleeing Nazi war criminals to heavily Catholic South American countries. Stalin was an atheist, but is important to remember that his rejection of Darwin and Mendel's theories in favor of a communist biology created by a man named Lysenko. This, "science," retarded Soviet biology in ways that still plague Russia to this day, resulted in famine that killed staggering numbers of people, and was expected to be taken on faith or out of fear for one's life. Everything Stalin did with communism made it little more than a political religion with no more evidence for its claims than one would find in supernatural religion. Once you've debunked the Hitler/Stalin argument, you'll need to point to how science can determine proper morals. For that, simply read Sam Harris' book The Moral Landscape.

3. You must know the proper definitions of atheist, agnostic, and similar terms.

It took me years before I stumbled upon the correct definitions of the terms, "atheist," and, "agnostic." Like most people, I had always thought that an atheist is someone who is sure there isn't a God and an agnostic is someone who isn't sure one way or the other. Actually, the terms mean distinctly different things than those popularly understood connotations. Most crucially, the terms are not mutually exclusive. So the scenario, in my own case, usually goes something like this. "You're an atheist? Wait, can you prove there ISN'T a God? If not, then, sorry buddy, you're an agnostic." Well, that's not at all true. To my mind, the correct ordering and phrasing go as Penn Jillette explains it, which goes something like the following. "Is it possible to prove God doesn't exist," to which I would respond, "No, because it is impossible to disprove any negative. You can't disprove that I have a best friend who's a platinum dragon, but you don't give any credence to the idea because there's no evidence for it either." The Flying Spaghetti Monster, Russell's Teapot, and The Invisible Pink uniform all draw upon the absurdity of relying on this argument to argue for religion. Now, the second question ought to be phrased, "Do you believe there is a God," to which I would rely, "No." Therefore, I am an atheist because I have no belief. Of the rules I list, this may seem the most unimportant, but it is actually crucial. As atheists go out there, they need to know how not to get tripped up and bogged down in terminology.

-Frank

The People I Grew Up With

The people I grew up with in Harrison, AR are in my thoughts a great deal lately. As I have written before, I nursed a great deal of resentment towards them, and the town in general, for a long time. My friendless childhood and no small amount of merciless bullying had me wondering what the hell their problem was. That changed the day I got my autism diagnosis, which was handy for the 2009 reunion. Autism changes everything about every interaction I had back then. I was punched twice in the face by a classmate the first day of preschool, and her explanation for the assault was, "He's weird." What neither of us could've known was that there was a medical reason she, and most of my classmates, found me so off-putting. So I find myself wanting to atone for all of the weirdness circumstances forced upon all of us. Everything makes sense now. All the pep rallies I protested, the obsessive crush that irrevocably alienated the nicest among them, the lack of athleticism, the staying inside for recess, and so many more eccentricities are explainable by autism. So now I'm friending all of them on Facebook now, with the hope of something of a fresh start.

Now, as to the Facebook thing, there's an odd element to it. A few years ago, I blocked everyone with connections to Harrison, with the exception of a sister I trust completely for discretion, in order to prevent feeding the gossip mill in ways that always seemed to embarrass my mother. So out of respect for her, I created the Reggie Morris profile, based on the family dog, in order to post uncontroversial things and still interact with people with whom I grew up. This blog is written with a wide audience in mind, including them. So far, I don't interact with many of them often, bearing in mind that I was widely disliked and some of them may well still feel that way. At least one person I know has blocked me and I cannot hold it against anyone who cares to go that route since I hung on to my old resentments for so long. People you grow up with didn't choose to grow up with you, nor you with them, so the whole experience of childhood interaction at school is a complete crapshoot. They likely picked up on the fact that I stopped viewing school as a social environment at some point and was merely attending it alongside them, as opposed to with them.

It's going to be a long road ahead of me as I go through whatever remains of my adult life. Things like career and family that define the experience of most human beings on this planet are denied to me and it took me a long time to face the fact of autism and how profoundly it has disabled me. In this context, I suppose it's natural to look to whatever roots one might have wherever one might find them. Maybe growing up with these people was just a meaningless fact of chance and, once graduated, there's nothing special about any connection we might share, but I like to think there is, even if it was a social desert for me. Whatever mistakes I made and whatever resentments may have formed, it was real and it's the only childhood I have. So as I face a lonely life sustained only by the money my family has been able to give me, I hope to find some understanding and perspective heretofore unknown to me in these people. We're all about 33 now, so whatever we were going to be when we grew up is a thing we already are. Whether we like it or not, we are all bound together by the things we went through together and it seems like there is a lot to learn from one another.

-Frank

Teach The Way They Learn

Autistic children learn the way they learn. Although I am not an expert on education, and certainly not in special education, I can tell you from my experiences being an autistic child a few relevant things. First of all, the way we teach neurotypical kids is that we put them in whatever school environment the state and federal Department Of Education has deigned to create and expect them to adapt sufficiently to achieve reasonable success. Expecting autistic children to adapt to their environment in some sort of sink-or-swim context is a fantastic way to fail. It's not so much sink-or-swim as it is fight-or-flight if you insist on putting them between a rock and hard place. As educators and parents, you are the ones capable of adapting, not them, and you must be the ones to do so if you've any expectation of getting anywhere.

First, let's talk about obsessive interests and boredom. Autistic kids come in two modes, which are, "interest resulting in encyclopedic knowledge," and, "bored now." Depending on their type of autistic mind (pattern, verbal, visual, or auditory), they're going to have things they're awesome at and things they're abysmally bad at, which I refer to as min/maxing. This is a gaming term referring to making some traits weak at the expense of other traits. In my case, English & History are second-nature and I barely had to try in those classes. Math & science required intensive tutoring by my stepfather or I'd simply fail. Boredom comes with subjects for which they have poor aptitude, which is best understood as simply not giving a shit about those subjects. Intensive tutoring is really the only way with those subjects.

When it comes to subjects for which they show aptitude, you want to intensively train them because those aptitudes are where career skills are lurking awaiting fruition. With poor aptitude subjects, all you're doing is getting them to temporarily understand the material well-enough to keep from wrecking their GPA or failing out of school. Overall, there's going to be specific ways they need to learn that must be adapted to each individual autistic. No teacher can simply adapt their class for autistics in general because we're all unique snowflakes and said uniqueness can make said adaptation a futile pain in the ass for everyone. Intensive tutoring is important both because of the individual attention to keeping them on task with subjects that bore them and the adaptation to the individual that is really only possible with a tutor.

-Frank

Time-Travel Thought Experiment

What would you tell a younger version of yourself if you could go back in time to a pivotal moment when everything you could say would have the most impact. While I imagine some of you may have contemplated this question, I can assure you that I have contemplated it more than anyone. Usually, contemplating this question is about telling your young self how to avoid certain pitfalls and to zig where you had originally zagged. There's some of that in my case, to be sure, but I would also utterly break myself from hope. The point would not be to direct my younger self towards a better life, but to instead discourage him from wasting so much time pursuing one in vain. This could not be done in a quick aside, but would require an extended sit-down wherein I would explain some of the hard lessons I've learned and why the pursuit of happiness is not a quest worth undertaking. No doubt, younger me would be resistant and insist upon believing that, with enough effort and tenacity, he could overcome any obstacles in his way. He would still be stuck in the idea that his potential is unlimited and unwilling to consider that the greatest obstacle to his own success and happiness is himself. That is why I would need to speak with him for several hours to lay bare the facts of the future and convince him, beyond the slightest shadow of a reasonable doubt, that I have memories that he does not and should not want.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I would first explain to him that he is autistic and that this means, in his case, that he is not employable or capable of managing a romantic relationship. There would be no mention of avoiding a specific woman, only to simply accept virginity as the better state. To back this up, I would tell him of the money he would lose, the physical and mental wounds he would suffer, the humiliation and heartbreak he would endure, and the terrible things he would learn about himself if he failed to heed this advice. Never again would he even mention romantic attraction to anyone, should it develop, for his own sake. Educationally, I would tell him to finish his master's at Drury and then be done with college. If he insisted he would try to get a job, I would tell him of his gastrointestinal motility disorder, his crippling anxiety, his inability to conform, his uncontrollable tendency to alienate coworkers and superiors, his inability to operate a broom or mop, his complete inability to multitask, and explain that these make an unemployable human being. Writing in a blog like this one would be the only career I'd suggest for him and I would encourage him to try and monetize it, although I would caution him that he is unlikely to ever be able to do so. Staying in Springfield for the rest of his life would be insisted upon and he would be encouraged to spend as much of his time as he can at the Just For Him pipe and cigar shop. Finally, I would explain atheism and skepticism to him so he would be less likely to to find himself cheated.

Overall, my goal when having this conversation with my past self would be to make him accept his status as a profoundly disabled man. The specific moment I would choose would be his college graduation from Drury in 2003. By then, he wasn't really all that bad off yet. He hadn't had his first date, he hadn't ever held a real job with real pressure, and he believed he could go anywhere or do anything. Essentially, I would have to play the hand to him that life would otherwise deal him over the next 12 years. I would encourage him to be humble, to not rebel against his mother so much, and to treasure his family in general, since he will never be able to have one of his own. Likewise, I would tell him not to judge those with whom he grew up too harshly because neither they nor he knew he was autistic. Harrison, I would explain, wasn't so bad, or even that unusual. An autistic kid like him would be hard-pressed to make friends or avoid feeling profoundly alone anywhere in the world. As to the friends he has and will have, I would tell him not to take them for granted or ever fail to do anything he can to help them, for they will be one of his only solaces in this world. His usefulness in this world is quite minor, I would explain, but he does have a unique perspective and a talent for writing. While he will never know the deepest experiences that make a human being, he should write about what he does experience, and anything else he likes, because that is unique. There would be tears, but I will tell him that they are nothing compared to the way I found out all these things.

-Frank

Self-Esteem

As I was watching the self-esteem episode of Penn & Teller: Bullshit, I got to thinking the topic deserves a treatment on this blog. Given that the blog is meant, in its most general description, to be an examination of any kind of topic through my verbal autistic perspective, I think that the concept of self-esteem that we have in the modern United States is relevant because autistic kids are often top priority targets of adults who wish to raise self-esteem in kids. In its current form, self-esteem is viewed as a trait that leads to more successful and happy kids. Essentially, this idea came about because people noticed that the kids with high self-esteem became more successful and happy kids and, ultimately, adults. Their logic would have it, the best thing we can do for kids, especially ones with a disability, is to raise their self-esteem to improve their odds of becoming more successful and happy. An especially common logical fallacy, usually expressed as, "correlation does not equal causation," is responsible for this line of reasoning and I will endeavor to explain the fallacy and give my recommendations as to the how the issue of self-esteem ought to be treated.

Humans are naturally pattern-seeking creatures and our ability to notice patterns was crucial in our evolutionary development. As a result, we are quick to give great weight to any pattern we come across. The problem with that is that is that successfully correlating an effect with an action does not prove, or even imply, a causal relationship. Proving causation requires a great deal more work than simply noticing a correlation. For instance, there is probably correlation between watching a lot of TV and being overweight, but there is no causal relationship. If you exercise every day and don't consume too many calories, the box will not make you fat. Sometimes, we get causation wrong because a correlation distracts us. Successful and happy kids have high self-esteem because of the factors that made them happy and successful in the first place. They have merit, whether that be academic, athletic, social, or whatever else it is that made them so awesome. Being awesome causes high self-esteem because these kids recognize that they are some species or another of winner and they feel pretty good about themselves for that, which they should.

So if increasing self-esteem in kids does not make them more successful and happy, what would? Well, the basic problem with the way the self-esteem movement approaches the question is that they're putting the cart before the horse. In order to be successful and happy, kids need the tools to become thus. These tools are things like marketable skills, social acumen, healthy relationships (both romantic and platonic) and a sense that they are in some way competent to be useful to others. It has been said that most people with low self-esteem deserve it. As harsh as that sounds, there is truth to it. A less judgmental way to put it is that, if you have accurately judged yourself to be a loser, then low self-esteem isn't so much bad as it is a sign you have the capacity for self-awareness, which is not such a bad place to start. Once you have identified that the problem is that you're a loser, you can start doing something about it. Do everything you can to improve your skills and interpersonal relationships. Be as useful to those around you as you can be. If you've already done everything you can do, then you probably have accurate self-esteem. Perhaps the idea that this is the best you can do is hard to take, but it is no less true for it.

-Frank

For The Hell Of It Cake

As I go about my cake-ordering planning, it occurs to me that there is an unacceptably long gap at a particular time of year. January has nothing, but I can accept that because it's got four months of event cake-friendly months right after. June is the next month with nothing, but Independence Day swoops in quickly to redeem it in July. August and September are the only months with nothing worth making a cake over contained within them. So I've decided to start a new cake tradition. I call it the For The Hell Of It cake, and it shall come in August. The only rules for a For The Hell Of It Cake are it must be as pure an expression of randomness as I can muster. Every year, it will be different, with absurdity and gratuitousness the only unifying features.

My concept for this year's inaugural For The Hell Of It Cake is as follows below:

8" round
Vanilla cake with chocolate frosting
Hot Pink Fondant
The following unrelated items go wherever you can fit them on the cake:

1. A palm tree.
2. A winter ski cap.
3. A trampoline.
4. A paperclip.
5. A bottle of Dawn.
6. Nickels.
7. Clowns.
8. The Towncar from Monopoly.
9. A pair of tits (birds).
10. A generic, "Men's Room," sign.
11. A shovel.
12. A pencil complete with eraser.

First, we start with the flavor. A vanilla cake with chocolate frosting is the most generic of all cake flavor options. It's the cake we all made with our moms as kids. So we have a foundation of the mundane atop which is built gratuitous nonsense. Hot Pink fondant is the first layer of absurdity, for there is no reason whatsoever for the cake to look like a plastic one out of some sort of Barbie Dream House, especially considering that I will serve it to manly types at a cigar shop. As for the decorations, I'm pretty sure they speak for themselves in the way you no doubt read that list and go, "...What? But...I...WHAT?!" With the addition of the For The Hell Of It Cake to my annual cake list, I will be ordering at least one cake from Amycakes 8 months out of the year. Any excuse, no matter how absurd, for more cake.

-Frank

American Sniper

Last night, I watched the film American Sniper. Some of its content made me want to write an article about said content. Since initially having that idea, I have had conversations and seen Facebook posts regarding the film and the real Navy Seal about whom it is that were rather inflammatory. Some of these were political in nature, questioning the heroism of snipers and the good light in which they and other servicepeople were cast by the film. Others were about the allegedly dubious truth value of the film & the book upon which it is based. In light of these things, I seriously considered discarding the idea and writing about some other topic in today's article. You know what though? None of what has people up in arms has anything to do with the article idea I initially had and I still think the things I have to say are worth saying. This article isn't about the film itself or the man on whose life it is based. Instead, it is about a particular scene in the film and the thoughts that scene inspired in me. If you have baggage you brought to seeing or hearing about this film, check it at the door because this is my article and it is about what I say it is about regardless of your feelings.

My father, like many of the fathers of men of my generation fought in the Vietnam War. He had told me stories of shoeshine boys who were in the employ of the Vietcong. Their shoeshine kits were actually what we would now term IEDs. After playing upon the sympathies of American servicemen to sell their services, the box would explode, destroying the boy and the man. I thought of that story during a scene in the film where the main character must shoot a child and his presumed mother to prevent the destruction of about a dozen Marines. This action deeply troubles the main character, but it is important to remember that the choice to fire was not an immortal one on his part. We want to think of children as the most tragic victims of war when it kills or maims them, and that's certainly true. Our culture, however, is not one that would use children as instruments of war, and we must remember that not every culture feels this way. Vietnam didn't feel that way, certain African countries don't feel that way, and Islamic terror organizations don't feel that way. When the enemy is willing to use children to fight, the American military can either be prepared to bury child soldiers or their own men and women.

Children make good terrorists and good guerrilla soldiers. Their reasoning is not fully formed and they do not understand their own mortality the way a grown man does. They are harder to see, less likely to be considered an enemy combatant, and killing them has a profoundly powerful effect in the service of psychological warfare against American servicepeople. The only reason not to use child soldiers is a moral one. That child soldiers are very real in parts of the world and that killing them in those parts of the world is absolutely indispensable to not burying even more of our own people than we otherwise have had to is a fact that should inspire many thoughts. Ill thoughts towards the men and women who have to deal with the reality of killing children, lest they themselves be killed by them, are unhelpful and no one who has had to make that absolute terror of a decision deserves to be called a, "baby killer," or similar epithet. What is productive is to contemplate how a culture gets to the point of thinking use of children this way could ever be morally sound. Why does a sniper, or any other serviceperson, have to kill a child and why does that child have to spill blood? If you see American Sniper, do not hate the character for firing. Lament that he had to and that real servicepeople still must.

-Frank

The Artifice

When I accepted that I was unemployable and incapable of maintaining a relationship, that left, to say the least, a tremendous void in my life. Having a big empty life isn't a sustainable proposition. If you're going to decline offing yourself and go on living, you've got to fill your life with something. Just about everything I've done lately involves attempting to fill that void. Personal training six days a week was already there and so was smoking cigars at the local cigar shop, but everything else I do lately is ultimately about building an artifice of an actual full life. That includes going to therapy three days a week, making medical appointments for ailments that I have traditionally ignored or endured, stepping up the baking and pastry arts experimentation (as with the confectionary gauntlet that was last Christmas), and planning things for which to look forward like event cakes, vacations, renovations, and the purchase of my next new vehicle.

One of the practical reasons to create all of this artifice is to, as my mother put it, have a reason to get up in the morning. Personal training starts most of my days, with the exception of Sunday, at 11:30 A.M., meaning that I usually have to be out of bed by 10:00 A.M. in order to shower, pursue general hygiene, take my meds, and get dressed. That makes sure I'm at least up and around before noon. From there, I must attend appointments like therapy or doctor's visits, and run documents to my trustee, accountant, and attorney. Once the day's errands are run, I may retire to the cigar shop, where I'll write articles like this, make bitstrips comics, and do research or other related work towards various things for which I am planning. Baking and pastry arts experimentation takes place once I get home from the cigar shop. All of that daily routine makes up the artifice with which I have filled my life. Playing on the Internet with my phone fills in any gaps in my routine.

The central question all this artifice raises for me is whether or not it constitutes a mere simulacrum of a life or an actual one under construction. Although I have not been able to come up with a useful answer on my own, a friend noted that this might be a case of, "fake it until you make it." If this is the case, it would follow that what truly matters about all this artifice isn't whether or not it constitutes the construction of a real life, but rather that its construction constitutes an effort to build a real life. In the course of living with my disability and fending off depression, I am somehow finding the will to press on and build artifice in the first place. As long as I care enough to put forth the effort to build artifice that also means that I am in a mental state conducive to progressing towards something. What fruit that may or may not yield doesn't matter because the act of building the artifice is good and healthy in its own right. Predicated upon this, the lesson would be to keep on doing what I can, come what may.

-Frank

Renovations

I've touched on this in a previous article, but this note will thoroughly cover the topic of my renovation plans, along with what led to the appropriate level of interest and knowledge. All of this goes back to some commercials that used to run in cinemas for a show called Holmes On Homes. Mike Holmes was a charismatic figure with an appealing dedication to professionalism in contracting. As it turns out, the Canadian program ran on a channel I was never able to find at the time. A few years later, I was able to find the program on the Internet during a time when a major renovation, for which I was paying, was taking place on the building in the service of the company I was starting at the time. So I would understand everything that was happening, I binge-watched the entire seven seasons of the series. While this was no practical use to me after the renovation was completed, I found that rewatching the program periodically has allowed me to retain a wealth of knowledge about construction and renovation. Well, it will be of use to me once again as I embark upon plans to renovate all my flooring and my kitchen.

The idea to do any kind of renovations first entered my head on a trip to a friend's lake house in Minnesota. There, I horribly embarrassed myself by burning his mother's countertops as a result of only being familiar with kitchens with stone countertops ever since I'd been cooking on a level above heating things up in the microwave. Subsequently, I similarly burned my own countertops, making the issue of replacing them at some point a pressing one. Although I kept putting that off, the recent point about my allergies to dust and carpet's negative effect on it brought up the issue of the need to replace my flooring, especially in light of the hell of a time my sinuses and the resultant chronic cough have given me of late. Hardwood flooring was suggested to me by an annoyingly large number of people. Given its tendency to do poorly with the spills and mess common to serious culinary adventure, my dislike of the wood luck, and my desire to keep green flooring of some kind, that's a no. Tile is the other major option and I want it to be durable, attractive, green, add value to home, and be less expensive than wildly costly things like granite and marble. That leaves slate.

Custom cabinets were the last part of my renovation plans. It was pointed out to me that granite countertops would necessitate new cabinets anyway. Since I never liked the wood look of my cabinets and it would be recognizable, even with paint, I may as well. A visit with the contractor that has handled the renovations on the building for my failed company says that my projected budget, based upon what I'll be able to save by January 2019, will be sufficient for all of these renovations. While the cabinets and countertops are uncontroversial aspects of my plans, the same cannot be said of of the entire floor being slate. Once people understand that my idea is to put slate everywhere on the floor, including the areas where there are presently tiles, they get all complainy. Truth be told, the fact that factors like expense and slate's traditional use of highlighting certain areas means that just about nobody would tile an entire 1,500 square foot condo with slate makes it all the more appealing for me. As to concerns that such an unusual feature would harm the value of my home, I basically reject that. If I were to install ugly cheap tile like the asbestos my mother has suggested, then, yeah, I could see that. Similarly, if I were to select ugly or odd slate, I could see that, but I will rely upon the advice of my experts to prevent this. In any event, it's my place, my money, and my rules.

-Frank

Pretty Women

In recent articles, I have laid out guidelines for how men like myself, meaning fellow autistics and/or geeks, who have decided to give up on having a romantic life should regard women and treat them when they interact with them. Another question might be how those autistics and geeks should regard and treat women, irrespective of whether they intend to ever couple. A more pressing question is how I personally regard and treat women, particularly those to whom I am profoundly attracted. Well, I plan to lay out exactly how I handle that sort of thing for you in this article. Keeping to myself, keeping my emotions on a short logical leash, and keeping as much self-awareness as I can are my basic strategies. Feminism is the most helpful organized philosophy for this and I have had some wonderful tutors in that regard. Deep understanding of feminism teaches you to intellectually understand women as more than objects of your desire. Like many things, I find I can only do this on an intellectual level, so emotional repression is key to me consistently pulling this off. Admittedly, my stoic approach is very much related to my autism and the resultant extreme distrust of my own emotions.

A helpful illustration of this happens to me every day and has for many years. Cutting through the nearby university campus is the best route to the cigar shop where I spend a lot of time. On my daily route, I always encounter profoundly attractive young women out jogging while listening to music. When this happens, my initial response is something along the lines of, "OOOOOO." Once this passes, logical thoughts come into play, such as the fact that she is nearly half my age, that I am romantically unsuitable for anyone, let alone a highly attractive college student, and that I am in a car and this moment will soon pass anyway. Then I start thinking about her as a real human being. She's probably thinking about her classes, monitoring her heartbeat, singing along with the music, or any number of things that have to do with her own life and worries. That's usual when she notices me looking at her and gives me a look that I imagine means, "What are YOU looking at creepy fat old man," but could just as easily be, "Oh, hello there sir." It can be hard to tell. As the moment ends and I drive off, I don't let it get to me. Mostly, it's just a sad reminder of where I stand and the actions from which I must refrain.

Most of the past trouble for me in interacting with highly attractive women came in the form of developing crushes on them. It's been years since that happened to me though, so I'm pretty sure I've managed the mental discipline to prevent that. Like a lot of things with my autism, clearly defined boundaries help. Of the female platonic friends and acquaintances I've made in the last few years, I've had nary a romantic or sexual thought about them, although I understand that they are attractive on a logical level. The boundaries to which I refer are ones I've set for myself and are self-enforced. As much as possible, I have actively thought of myself as a nonsexual and nonromantic being. Keeping a deep focus on my lack of viability as a romantic or sexual partner at the forefront of my mind, especially when I meet a woman for the first time, makes entertaining sexual or romantic thoughts seem silly and insane. I may as well have thoughts about whether women I know or meet is going to go around in a van with me and a chimp solving mysteries for all the absurdity such thoughts represent. Romantic and sexual desires are, of course, very human, but I am not human in the relevant sense. What I am is profoundly disabled and isolated from this part of being human. While the heart wants what it wants and the body wants what it wants, the mind stays vigilant cracking the whip against desires that it knows ought not be present.

-Frank

Cakes

In my previous article, I talked about planning ahead and it focused mostly on things I'm planning that will be major investments, such as vacations, renovations, and automobile purchases. Here, I'd like to focus on something a little smaller in scale. Some of my most precious childhood memories were of the event cakes we would get from a local place called Harold's Bakery. A cousin of mine worked there and that meant that I had behind-the-scenes access the likes of which is the most likely origin of my love of baking and pastry arts. Well, it's not the 80s or 90s anymore. The titular owner of Harold's is dead now, the building a furniture store, and I no longer even live in the same state. So I've had to find a cake place in Springfield to continue on the magic and it's gotta be somewhere capable of tolerating my wacky design ideas.

Amycakes has ended up being the Harold's Bakery of my adult life.
I originally heard about them via word-of-mouth amongst my old Drury friends. Basically, the titular Amy was getting her undergrad while I was in graduate school at Drury. Essentially since I moved back here in mid-2010, Amycakes has made all the event cakes for which I have been responsible. As time has gone on, I have found myself ordering cakes from them with ever-growing frequency. Considering they have recently moved into a larger space, I cannot say I am the only one who realizes how awesome they are. With the cakes growing more frequent and complex, I have taken to keeping all the cakes for the year in a single list on the notes app in my phone. Generally, what I find is that it is easiest to divide up event cakes based upon the months when they appear.

January does start things out with no cake though. February does have Valentine's Day, and I wrote a whole article about a tradition I'm starting of getting a cake mocking it every year. March has my stepfather's birthday & St. Patrick's Day, which is good for all the green (my favorite color) it has to offer. April doesn't have anything besides Easter, but I've been goaded into coming up with something. May has my birthday, my mother's birthday, and a close friend's birthday, so that's the watershed month. June is a bust. July has the Fourth, which means a colorful cake, but I usually have nowhere to go. August, there's nothing. September, same thing. October offers Halloween, and that's some of the most fun I have all year. November has Thanksgiving, but no one ever wants a Thanksgiving cake for some reason. December has Christmas and there's all manner of celebrations to take cakes to then. All in all, cakes are some of the most fun things to plan and way cheaper than vacations and the like.

-Frank

Planning

One thing I'm undeniably into is planning ahead and I'm talking preparation for events that are years in the future with plenty of factors that may prevent them from happening in the first place. Whether or not this has anything to do with being autistic, I don't know, but it definitely has everything to do with being me. In the past, this has applied to things as outlandish as planning for weddings and naming children I planned to have with women to whom I had not even yet proposed, designing a huge corporate headquarters for my ultimately failed startup business, and designing my own million-dollar mansion. While this tendency of mine has by no means subsided, these days it seems to be focused on significantly more reasonable goals. Most of the time, this means occasion cakes I plan to order, Christmas gifts I plan to buy or make, or vacations or other purchases which I plan to make. It is the last category that signifies the largest ways in which recent events have changed my perspective on what is important and what course I may expect my life to me. No longer do I plan based on relationships that will never pan out or careers that are ultimately doomed to failure. Instead, I plan on what will make me happy today and what ways of spending my money will be wisest.

The most expensive of the things for which I am planning are a couple of upcoming vacations, a 1,200 square-foot slate tile floor, and a new car. All that covers the major investments I'll be making for the next give years. One of the important things that separates these things from things for which I have planned before is that they all depend upon the current status quo instead of possible, expected, and, ultimately, hypothetical events that may or may not ever actually occur. Another important difference is that these all have meaningful or important reasons behind them. Disney will be an important chance to reminisce about my grandmother and try to rekindle a certain joy within myself that depression seems to have extinguished. Vegas will be important because it'll be the most people I've ever gone on vacation with at once as an adult and it really promises to have the feel of a, "guys hitting the road," kinda road trip. A new slate tile floor will be helpful to my allergies and will happen after the carpet is 15 years old and needs to be replaced anyway, not to mention the value a nice stone floor will add to home. Another Ford Escape is just responsible planning because my current one will be eight years old by then, which is about as long as you should let American cars go.

I suppose another thing that is informing a lot of my plans lately is living for today. We often hear that one should live for today. A popular internet version goes something like the following: Those who are depressed are living in the past, those who are anxious are living in the future, and those who are content are living in the present. Well, I'm certainly not content, and I'm medicated for my anxiety, so I suppose I'm not living in the present or the future too much. Depression is clearly not managed by medication alone, as my anxiety is, so it would stand to reason that I am, in fact, living in the past. However, I think that that is mostly about how I'm looking to my past, especially my recent past, to try and gain some sort of insight as to how I should regard my future. Recent events, teaching me, as they did, about my professional and romantic limitations allowed for a certain stability. One of the things letting go of potential and ambition grants you is knowing that your life is unlikely to vary much from year to year. Where you live now is where you're gonna live years from now, your financial circumstances now are likely to be the same years from now, and your needs as a single person are likely to be the same now as they will be years from now.

-Frank

Reevaluation

One of the things about a diagnosis of autism received well into adulthood is it changes your entire past. Everything that ever went wrong for you socially, every physical task you just couldn't perform, every relationship that was toxic and left you lost, every job at which you've failed to succeed, and every time you've felt your back to the wall because, somehow, you were the one holding yourself against it and you couldn't make yourself let go all must be reevaluated and seen in light of the fact that something was wrong with you the whole time. There's a reason the other kids didn't want to be your friend, that your motor skills aren't normal, that connecting with someone romantically is full of toil and unseen danger, that you couldn't handle the workplace politics, break room interactions, multitasking, or pressure, and you've so long thought of yourself as your own worst any. Any or none of these things may apply to a given autistic. They all apply to me, and it's forced me to reevaluate everything.

The healthy part of this kind of reevaluating is that it compels me to let go of a lot of anger, especially towards the people with whom I grew up. Sure, I was constantly picked on, socially isolated, had soccer ball kicked in my nuts once, and, by high school, was regularly and literally spat upon, but I can't really blame my former classmates for any of that. First of all, they were just kids, second of all I should really let it go after 16 years, and third of all I was so weird that they probably didn't know how to react to me. Hell, I sure didn't know how to react to me. On some level, this kind of behavior is about social correction. Negative reinforcement is supplied both consciously and unconsciously in an attempt to enforce conformity to social norms. How were they supposed to know that I was neurologically unable to conform to norms? An autistic like me needs logical reasons to forgive being wronged and I think this meets that criteria. Certain of the worst offenders have apologized to me, which is nice, but I still had to put it to bed myself.

Having concluded that I am not employable or capable of managing a relationship means concluding that I never was in the first place. So the negative part of all this reevaluating is that I'm seeing a lot of futility and wasted time in my past. It seems every employer for whom I briefly and unsuccessfully worked a job, or even presented a resume and/or filled out an application, is owed an apology for wasting their time. Likewise, all of the women I've dated or asked out, expect for the ones who simply set out to hurt me, deserve an apology for wasting their time. Essentially, as I reevaluate my past, I find I must either forgive or ask for forgiveness. Of course, all of this was necessary in the learning process, but that very learning process is one of the most lamentable things about undiagnosed autism. In the process of learning your limitations and interacting with others, you're going to give and get a whole lot of hurt. Once you know you have autism, you can start going a little easier on people and, hopefully, they can go a little easier on you.

-Frank

If You Give Up

Many of my recent articles are about autism directly, and this one is too. However, it is not about it as directly because it is about what men are to do once they realize they cannot manage relationships. Autistic women are not included here for a few reasons, such as underdiagnosis, the fact that the relevant hard and soft sciences know far less about them than their male counterparts, and the simple fact that I am not an autistic woman. If you doubt that this is a fairly common circumstance for autistic men, I invite you to go on the autistic message board sometime and try not to drown in the river of tears you will find. Compared to some autistic men, not including low-functioning enough ones that are incapable of human interaction in the first place, I have done sort of well. Six serious relationships, one engagement, a few one night stands, and the like are better than you'll find quite a few autistic men ever manage to do. Some keep trying, even in futility, but there are plenty, like me, who call it quits.

The first thing I want to address is that it is important to guard against the onset of misogyny. Here, there is much overlap with the geek community, which is a population grouping with which autistic men often find themselves affiliated. Both groups of men often find themselves practitioners of sexist practices like putting women on a pedestal, the Madonna/whore complex, feelings of sexual entitlement, and viewing women as prizes to be won. At worst, resentment can lead to more hostile sexism like slut-shaming, verbally attacking attractive women for being unattainable and unattractive women for not living up to their expectations, and complaining of being friendzoned/that women only go for jerks. Maturity is the cure for all this, starting with the understanding that your problems, whatever they are, are your own and that women of all stripes have their own lives to lead, problems to solve, and no obligation whatsoever to solve yours or be with you despite them. What you want can be the thing you hate, but you must not.

Maturity will mean that, once you've figured our that you can't manage relationships, you must avoid the temptation to be in them. I could probably get into another one if I wanted to by getting back on match, but I know better than that. If you want sexual release, go use the Internet for its primary purpose and, if you require a simulation of intimacy, and are willing to accept the dangers, pay a professional. Otherwise, the female of the species ought to be functionally no different in the context of your interactions than the male of the species. You may, like me, wonder if giving up on love means accepting a loss of your basic humanity. Well, yes it does and that's a bitter pill you are obligated to swallow. Yours will be a life of no one to lie beside you at night, no children to carry on your legacy, and, ultimately, the loss of a family life. Accepting this is as painful as it is necessary. Maybe you believe you can yet manage relationships, and, if so, keep plugging away. Give up completely if you're going to give up though, and find what peace you can.

-Frank

Delayed Diagnosis

A lot of the focus of the attention that autism gets is on autistic children. I have mixed feelings about this. Obviously, children of any sort are among the most vulnerable of society and, as such, deserve the best attention and care we can give them. Childhood is a time when autistics can often be friendless and trapped in a school system that seems designed to bully them and make them feel every bit the alienated outcast most autistics feel they are during that time. However, it is important to remember that autistics grow up. Many autistic adults around nowadays grew up in a time when autism was not well-understood, even by the medical and psychological community, and underdiagnosis was a serious problem. Therefore, many weren't diagnosed until adulthood, as was the case with me at 27. Experiencing autism in this way is, I believe, a unique experience and markedly different than the way modern kids diagnosed will experience it.

In some of my pre-diagnosis writings, you can read me making references to an unseen internal enemy holding me back or tripping me up in ways I could not understand or even name. That's what undiagnosed autism feels like for an adult. A whole lifetime of being accused of character defects has formed a pattern that makes you ask a lot of questions. My first day of preschool, I got two shiners from a girl who attacked me because I was, "weird," as she termed it, which set the tone for how my classmates would think of me, all through my life, I was in constant trouble for talking too much or about things no one cared about, which I could never seen to control and caused everyone to label me, "annoying," and physical problems like my inability to learn to ride a bicycle or operate a broom or mop were labeled as, "laziness," or, for the more unrefined, "being a giant pussy." Similar experiences for autistics diagnosed as adults all add up to a life trying to figure out what the hell our problem is.

An undiagnosed autistic adult didn't have therapy to develop coping mechanisms, specialized career training meant to help them adapt to a workplace, a solid understanding that their stubbornness is rooted in anxiety, knowledge of their type of autistic mind and the ability to use that knowledge to better adapt, or the support and understanding of family and friends who knew they could not help but succumb to their eccentricities. They have spent their entire lives being called a retard, weird, incompetent, lazy, argumentative, incorrigible, off, and to shut up. One autistic I know wasn't diagnosed until the age of 40 after three failed marriages, self-medicating with alcohol, and having the unknown and unknowable phantom destroy every last career he attempted. He and I now have a name for our pain but wow does it ever seem to have come too late. All we can ask neurotypicals is that they remember that, just because they can't see our disability, that doesn't mean it isn't there. So focus on the kids, yeah, but don't forget us. Don't forget to do better by them than was done for us.

-Frank

Advice Regarding Kids With Autism

I've written before on why I shouldn't work with autistic kids. A distinct, but related issue, is whether I should advise people who suddenly find themselves with newly diagnosed children, relatives, or young people about whom they care. Honestly, this comes up far more often and is much harder to dismiss for two reasons. First of all, it is hard to dismiss someone in a state of mild to severe panic asking for your help. Second of all, while I definitely feel I'd be of little help directly interacting with autistic kids personally, it is also clear to me that I have a unique knowledge of autism and a skill set for communication that makes me an effective advocate. All that being the case, I will use this article to present what advice I can offer if one finds oneself in the unfortunate position of finding it relevant to the lives of people about whom they care. Other autistic adults have found me to be a useful confidante as well, but that's another matter and another article.

So you find yourself with a kid in your life on the spectrum. My first advice to you is the same as the advice The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy would offer you. Don't panic. Lots of reasons you might panic are foolish and, besides, panicking won't help. Depending on the age of diagnosis, a lot may be explained by the knowledge of the condition. For example, if the kid never managed to ride a bike, couldn't stand to be touched, had noise sensitivity, obsessive interests, gastrointestinal problems, poor social skills to the point of a complete inability to make friends, or a reliance on stereotyped behavior to accomplish tasks, to name a few, you might find you now have an explanation. Now, you may not find all of those. Autism is like a big ol' bowl of marbles and each autistic reaches in and grabs a handful. Each marble represents a trait of autism and what traits present indicate a great deal of what you can expect.

Let's talk severity. High-functioning autistics are going to be strange in a way others won't quite be able to put their finger on, but they'll subtly know something is, "off," about them. However, they may be able to form friendships, maintain relationships, and achieve gainful employment, depending on how well they develop coping mechanisms through specialized therapy. More on coping mechanisms later. Low functioning autistics can have a variety of undesirable traits. They may be entirely nonverbal, rock back and forth, have no discernible ability to interact with the outside world, and even in a persistent catatonic state from which they will never emerge. Generally speaking, you'll know if the kid is low-functioning without getting tests done and, if that's the case, you'll have a long and heartbreaking road ahead of you. I'm not going to sugarcoat this. A low-functioning autistic is a dependent you will have for the rest of your life without significant medical breakthroughs.

An autistic kid in therapy will have one goal as an outcome of said therapy, which is developing coping mechanisms. Coping mechanisms are the ability to simulate behavior or other capabilities of neurotypicals (those not on the spectrum) and are crucial for achieving the goal of independent living. For high-functioning autistics, tasks like paying bills, maintaining personal hygiene, and getting up and going to school/work every day shouldn't present a problem, so the focus of coping mechanism development will mainly be in improving social skills, relieving anxiety, and improving dexterity and coordination. If you don't think dexterity and coordination can limit you, bear in mind that I am unable to operate a broom or mop correctly. Low-functioning autistics take more work to develop coping mechanisms and the goals are more basic. Things like getting them to talk or accept human touch are often the best one can expect to achieve.

The hardest question you're going to ask yourself is going to be, "What happens to my child/relative/kid I care about when I die?" Ideally, the answer to that is that they will have developed enough coping mechanisms to have achieved independent living, but we don't live in an ideal world. I am not capable of independent living and my family set aside money for me for this reason. Generally, it's good to come up with an answer to that question, just in case the autism is too acute, despite the best efforts of everyone involved. In Missouri, autistics can qualify for disability, and I know one who has done so. That's enough to eat and keep a roof over one's head, but not much else. Cures and treatments based on augmenting the unique autistic gut flora and gene therapy are in their infancy, but kids today might be able to be cured of it one day. Children with autism are dealt a stroke of bad luck I would not wish upon anyone, but know that there are things you can do to fight back. This is a long road that can end in great sadness, but don't let that stop you from going down fighting.

-Frank

My Greatest Regret

I think things could've been different for me if I'd known, and all of the people I grew up with had known, I was autistic. It would've helped to know why I was so off and I never seemed to really be one of them. There's a lot of things I would've done differently and I'm glad modern kids get diagnosed early. Countless offenses made in the cloud of ignorance youth and autism imposed upon me likely warrant apologies to goodness knows how many parties, but most of these fade through the mists of time. Most, not all, because there is one in particular to whom I KNOW I owe an apology, because I had an obsessive crush on her for about a decade. What I would've and did call love at the time was just one of many manifestations of autistic obsessiveness, and she would be far from the last woman over whom I obsessed.

Her name will not be disclosed here because of what little common sense I possess at 33. Nothing bad ever happened, mind you. All I did was perform silly romantic stunts and talk constantly about how much I was in love with her, although, naturally, never to her face. As will be quite clear to everyone not an infatuated autistic child, this did nothing but embarrass the shit out of her and generally get on her nerves. After I left for college, I fell for a girl a year for all four undergraduate years, with a similarly obsessive MO and results. About a year after I got my B.A., I got some actual romantic experience under my belt, ending in an awful breakup. In my torment, I sent her an e-mail asking her out in a move motivated by roughly equal proportions of nostalgia, heartbreak, and autism, or, if you like, abject stupidity. Suffice it to say, the result were very clear instructions to never contact her again, which was devastating but understandable.

12-step programs have a step where one is supposed to make amends to everyone one wronged in the course of one's addiction. There is an exception to this that comes into play if the best thing you can do for whomever you have wronged is to simply never bother them again. So it is that I find myself inextricably in this position with this thing in my past that continues to haunt me. She is happily married with kids and has become a successful doctor, making an apology from me about as desirable as a hole in the head. Any honest assessment would mean that I would only be seeking forgiveness, not attempting to sincerely make amends, given all that. Mine is a common story for autistics, as you'll easily confirm by reading the stories like it on autistic message boards. Modern early diagnosis helps a lot, but I know I'll never stop regretting so many of the things I have done in the places I've been or the cost of my dreams and the weight of sins.

-Frank

Anti-Valentine's Day Cake

Last year, I was able to celebrate Valentine's Day with all the appropriate gusto one can when one is with someone. Most years, like this year, have found me alone and unable to truly celebrate the holiday in the spirit in which it was intended. I used to hate the holiday for the same reason a lot of chronically single do, which is that they simply feel overlooked and thought less of by a the presence of holiday celebrating romantic love, along with significant jealousy towards those who have love while they need go without. However, is is not really a fair way to feel. Celebration of the happiness of some is clearly not meant to overlook or downplay the misery of others. That said, there's just so clearly nothing for a single person to do on the holiday under existing tradition. Well, I've got a plan that involves acknowledging the misery, along with the freedom, that chronically single people like myself must endure, even as I openly acknowledge that I could likely find myself a girlfriend again if I wanted. This last aspect does, however, help me come up with things about being chronically single that are good. As with surprisingly many problems in life, I find this one is best dealt with via the cunning use of cake. To that end, I have devised a cake design that I will soon order from Amycakes, my preferred local bakery.

The size and flavor will be that of an 8" lemon cream, the idea being that the cake and frosting are light and a bit better, contrasted with the usual density and sweetness of chocolate or red velvet. There will be light green coloration all around the side, like neon green, and it will be topped with leaf green borders and accents. Basically, the idea is to have it be the inverse of the usual pink and red. As for the writing on the top, it should be in the leaf green coloration. It should read, "I'm single, so here's a cake for no reason. Most predominantly, the final decoration will be whatever approximation is feasible of those chalky hearts with words like, "Hug me," written on them. I don't know how many of the said chalky heart decorations Amycakes will be able to fit, so here's twenty possible options of what to put on the chalky heart decorations. Each will be either a parody of sayings that appear on actual chalky hearts, something poignant about being chronically single, or something that is supposed to be a funny observation on being chronically single. Amycakes will be instructed to fit whatever they think is funniest among the list of 20, on account of that aspect being the most important, for my purposes, out of all the suggested text for the chalky heart decorations listed below.

1. I (heart) my hand.
2. D&D4ME.
3. So lonely.
4. No cats.
5. Extra chair.
6. No hugs.
7. Snippity Snippity.
8. One & Done.
9. My remote.
10. Jewelry? No.
11. Yay porn!
12. Dining table? No.
13. Candles? No.
14. I (heart) Farts.
15. I'm Mine.
16. Sane: FU.
17. Only Me.
18. Hermit 4Life.
19. Not My Baby.
20. Calm Down.

Of all the goals I have with this anti-Valentine's Day cake concept, paramount is that it be an effort to be funny and empathetic to those traditionally left out of the holiday. By calling it an, "anti-Valentine's Day cake," I am aware that I may appear to oppose the holiday and somehow wish to somehow disrespect the love of the many millions of people the holiday is meant to honor. That being how it may well be perceived, I wish to clarify that that is most certainly not the case here. Instead, view the use of the concept of, "anti," here as more along the lines of, "complementary," in the sense of helping to complete something. Plenty of us out there do not have romantic love. Some of us can't find it, others can't manage it when we do find it, still others know they shouldn't have it, however much they may want it, and a few don't even seek it due to not having the desire for it. Most of us in these categories recognize that there are things to celebrate and things to lament about being chronically single. On the celebratory side, there is increased disposable income, increased personal freedom, and decreased personal responsibility and on the lamentation side, there is increased loneliness, decreased support system, and the lack of progeny to carry on whatever legacy one might imagine oneself to possess. All I mean by this cake is roughly what Festivus means in the context of Christmas.

-Frank

Privilege

Privilege is one of the most misunderstood new concepts there is. I've put forth effort to try and understand the concept and I think I've got a somewhat decent understanding of it. If not, I apologize and will keep trying. Occasionally, I will encounter individuals more conservative than myself who have an objection to the concept of privilege and find myself in the position of trying to explain the concept to them as best I can. Being a conservative myself on about 66.6% of the issues, I am in a unique position when such circumstances arise. A standard liberal is at quite the disadvantage when attempting to convince a conservative, or anyone else skeptical of the concept, that privilege is a thing, let alone an important thing that they ought to bear in mind throughout their lives. There are a few reasons for this. First of all, most people are less likely to seriously consider a point made by an ideological rival. Second of all, since liberals generally are interested in limited individual rights in the interest of making society, business, and life in general more fair, an explanation of privilege coming from them is considerably more likely to be perceived as something of a threat, regardless of whether that is intended message. Without those complications, I have a better shot.

There are two definitions in play and each side in an argument between ideological rivals is using the other one. Obviously, this aspect of mostly unintentional ideological obscurantism is an immensely complicating factor in any sincere attempt to have a productive dialogue on the matter of privilege. Having heard extensive polemic from both ideological sides, I have done my best to come up with a proper of denotations that each side appears to be employing. The ultimate goal of the following definitions is to point out the discrepancy between them to both ideological sides and to try to jumpstart a productive dialogue with the intended terminus of arriving upon a mutually agreed upon connotation.

Definition One: An inherent advantage possessed by an individual or group based upon immutable characteristics of said individual or group.

Definition Two: An inherent advantage possessed by an individual or group that renders any complaints they may have about their lives null and void, means they must always defer to those that do not possess this advantage, and means they do not deserve or have any right to keep any accomplishment or fruits thereof if someone without said privilege needs it.

A lot of paranoia and reactionary thinking goes into definition two. Here's how I explain it to people. First, I list all my major problems. That includes autism, bum ankle, obesity, shortness, baldness, diabetes, crippling outdoor allergies, loneliness, unemployment, a GI tract that's ten miles of bad road, atheism (due to the stigma), and depression. Second, I point out that I am a white rich male. Third, I point out that all the problems I mentioned could easily be held by a poor female of a nonwhite ethnicity/race/whatever you want me to call it. They would be worse off than I am. That's all privilege means, as I understand it, which is that, all things being equal, certain groups and individuals are better off. A white rich man could have chronic pain, PTSD from horrible war experiences, and a lousy marriage to an abusive sociopath. Such a man would be objectively worse off than a black female middle class nurse civilian in good health who is happily married, but objectively better off than someone with his exact problems except nonwhite, poor, and female. Privilege isn't an argument for policy or oppressing those who have it, but a consciousness-raising paradigm meant to educate and promote empathy for those less fortunate on many levels.

-Frank

Extreme

Some holy books contain horrific ideas. They advocate slavery, murdering one's children for misbehaving, human sacrifices to God, holy war, imperial conquest, torture, killing people for blasphemy, genocide, misogyny, and punishing people for their thoughts. That's all in The Bible, by the way. Sure, the Koran, and the even more reprehensible Hadith, advocate a lot of horrible stuff, but its ideas are not as alien to Judeo-Christian beliefs as one might imagine. In fact, a fair degree of Islam is simply plagiarized from Judaism, Christianity, and various religions of desert tribes which existed when Muhammad invented Islam. In the wake of terrorist action by Islamofascists in Paris, a political cartoon was published contrasting its vision of Islamic extremism and Christian extremism. The Islamic extremist says something along the lines of, "Accept Allah or I shall kill you," while the Christian extremist says something along the lines of, "I must tell you about Jesus even if it costs me my life." Real Christian extremists are nothing like the vision of the humble martyr depicted. While they are generally less lethal than their Muslim counterparts, they are just as evil.

When a Christian fundamentalist parent believes their minor child to be gay, there are options for them in the United States. Certain people can arrange a kidnapping under the cover of darkness, coming into the gay child's bedroom in the middle of the night prepared to use whatever degree of force and restraints may be necessary to place the child in a vehicle to be hauled off for conversion therapy. Once there, the people who run the camp may imprison the child there and perform basically whatever action they like to the end of turning the homosexual child into a heterosexual one. This can legally last until the child is 18, when parental permission is no longer sufficient to detain them. Only one state I know of, which is New Jersey, has outlawed this practice. Lest you think this practice is only advocated by a few nuts, here is a list of anti-gay Christian hate groups that either condone, financially support, or outright participate in it:
Abiding Truth Ministries
American Family Association
American Vision
Americans for Truth About Homosexuality
Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute
Chalcedon Foundation
Christ the King Church (Larkspur, Colorado)
Faithful Word Baptist Church
Family Research Council
Family Research Institute
Family Watch International
Generations With Vision
Help Rescue Our Children
Heterosexuals Organized for a Moral Environment (H.O.M.E.)
Illinois Family Institute
Liberty Counsel
Mission: America
Parents Action League
Pilgrims Covenant Church
Providence Road Baptist Church
Public Advocate of the United States (see Eugene Delgaudio)
Ruth Institute
SaveCalifornia.com
Sons of Thundr (Faith Baptist Church)
TC Family (Traverse City Family)
The Pray in Jesus Name Project
Tom Brown Ministries
Traditional Values Coalition
True Light Pentecost Church
Truth In Action Ministries
United Families International
Westboro Baptist Church
Windsor Hills Baptist Church
World Congress of Families/Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society
You Can Run But You Cannot Hide International
That wall of text means that fundamentalist Christianity, while less violent and lethal than Islamic fundamentalism, can claim no moral high ground.

My thought would be that acts of terrorism in the name of Islam are clearly based on things that actually appear in the Koran and the Hadith. Similarly, The Spanish Inquisition, slavery, sexism, and a number of other evils are clearly based on things that actually appear in The Bible. These unfortunate facts about the unpleasant aspects of scripture should not be used to imply that everyone, or even a majority, among their respective religions' adherents subscribe to them. Various interpretations and contexts can drastically change, downplay, or deem untenable aspects of scriptures for various denominations or individuals, resulting in more prosocial behavior and attitudes towards science, the western world, and modern civilization in general. If there's one thing a friend with his masters in divinity from Vanderbilt has taught me, it's that these books are by no means clear or easy to understand without a great deal of concerted effort and scholarship. The problem isn't Muslims themselves as much as it is bad ideas to which sufficient numbers of them subscribe to cause a global threat to civilization. Fred Phelps and my beloved childhood minister Brother Bob were both Christians. That goes to show that knowing someone's religion simply is insufficient to know the content of their character.

-Frank

The First Freedom

Would you be willing to die to protect the freedom of expression? Conversely, if someone offends somebody via the free exercise of speech, would you blame the speaker if the offended party murdered them for their offensive speech? This is not a hypothetical question. We live in a world where there are people willing to kill those who offend them with cartoons. You do not need to know the content of the cartoons or whom they offended to answer these questions. Either it is okay to kill people who offend you with their speech or it is not. Arguments that there are some sacred things that, if spoken ill of, offend so powerfully that murdering the speaker is an acceptable response are invalid. Either people are free to express themselves as they choose, and this freedom is important enough to be worth dying over, or they are not and ought to think twice before speaking in an offensive manner about things anyone may consider sacred.

In the United States, the first amendment to the Constitution guarantees the freedom of speech to all citizens. However, the concept has been adopted by the whole of the western world. The government is not allowed to oppress the people for their speech and those who would threaten or enact violence solely on the basis of said speech are violating the law and are generally dealt with accordingly. Maintaining this freedom involves a great deal of resolve from many parties. Governments must restrain themselves from oppressing critics, individuals and groups must restrain themselves from threats and violence in response to the speech of others, and all parties must speak freely, even in the face of the worst danger. If any of these parties fail in their obligations to uphold free speech, their failure endangers the future of free speech. Make no mistake, this freedom is not a given and has been the exception, rather than the rule, throughout history.

Respecting the right of an individual or group to hold a belief and express that belief is a noble thing and an important part of freedom of expression. Instead respecting the belief itself out of fear of reprisal for failure to do so is ignoble and a very serious threat to free speech. Imagine the power any individual or group wields once criticism of said individual or group's beliefs is either impermissible or impossible without serious risk of death. That's absolute power and, even if the beliefs are objectively beyond reproach, the individuals and groups that hold them absolutely are not, which will inevitably lead to the old chestnut about absolute power corrupting absolutely. If someone oppresses you or others, do you want to be able to speak out against them for it no matter what beliefs your oppressors claim are motivating them? Well, then you're going to have to be brave enough to speak as you wish, no matter what harm may come to you as a consequence, and you'll also have to be brave enough to condemn those willing to use violence to suppress criticism or mockery of their beliefs.

-Frank

The Wisdom Of Frank Lee Coffman Sr.

Frank Lee Coffman Sr. was my great grandfather and the man who began the prosperity my family has been enjoying all the way up to the present day. He founded what was then called Harrison Federal Bank, after many years of entrepreneurship that began with a bicycle shop on the Harrison square that he opened in the early 20th century around 12 years of age. Although he was a great man because of the prosperity he brought to the family, he was also a great man for his penchant for coining bon mots. These bits of wisdom are many, but I will limit the scope of this article to discussing three of them. First, if you mess with shit, you get shit on you. Second, you'll make more with your brain than you will with your back. Third, it's a long road that doesn't turn.

If you mess with shit, you get shit on you. This is probably the most self-explanatory of the bon mots. It is also the one I've seen proven in my own life most frequently. In my time, I have known and associated with crazy people, misogynistic people, dishonest people, amoral people, narcissistic people, and addicts, and every single time, no matter how much I thought I was their friend, or, in some cases, their lover, and they would never turn their destructive urges again me, I got burned. If I were to expand upon this particular bon mot, I would say that, if you see a behavior in anyone that you consider morally unsavory, be wary because you will likely be seeing it again and, if you stay around that person too long, eventually they'll come round to you.

You'll make more with your brain than you will with your back. While I understand the logic behind this one, especially for its time, I think this is the bon mot I question and it is the only one of his I've ever questioned. Working with your brain implies the white collar world, basically, and also indicates the necessity of at least a bachelor's degree. At one time, the surest path to prosperity was working in business, with the possibility of starting one's own, as one climbed the ranks in a company to the end of building a long career. Working with your back meant low pay, backbreaking work, and lower status in society. Nowadays, a synthesis is better. Skilled trades are highly in demand and largely unionized. Using your brain in order to facilitate working with your back is the smart play today.

It's a long road that doesn't turn. This one probably requires the most explanation. Basically, it's about how you treat the people you meet as you go through life. The road of life is long and as you walk down it, the people you encounter are often going to be people you encounter again, often when you least expect it. How you treat those people can have a tremendous effect on the results of encountering them again later in life. We are all walking the same road, so it only stands to reason that our lives are going to affect one another. By the same token, this also means that you should not be too mad when people do you wrong. Maybe you'll encounter them again someday when they need something from you. Either you can not give them what they need at that time or take comfort in the inherent humiliation that comes with seeking help from someone you've done wrong.

We all develop philosophies of life as we go through it. However much we might think that whatever our parents taught us, supernaturally-inspired scriptures told us, society's mores and folkways implicitly suggest to us, or the law imposes on us, we eventually are going to end up with varying ideas of what is right and wrong, wise and foolhardy, and noble and base. For me, it's been a long journey to find my own bon mots like Pop, but I do believe I've arrived at a few. To mirror this article, I'll mention three. Never assume you know a person and their experience better than they themselves do. A law is only valid when its aim is to protect the people from one another, as opposed to themselves. Life isn't fair, but sometimes, just sometimes, you can get in life's way, which you always do whenever you can.

-Frank

The Happiest Place On Earth

The upcoming trip to Disney World has me pretty excited. After thinking about it a while, I realized why. It goes back to roughly the year 1988. I was seven years old and my beloved grandmother was dying of ovarian cancer. Grandmom was a saintly figure within the family and remains the kindest human being I have ever been privileged to know. She and my equally beloved grandfather took me on my on my first trip to Disney World, which would've been around 1984-1985. Honestly, I was too young to remember much of that trip. Some details I can recall include how she bought me an alligator bath toy with which I would play in obsessive glee and some sort of puppet show involving fruit that I found strangely engrossing. Clearer are my memories on that same trip of the Don Cesar Hotel, where I was impressed with the ocean view our room offered, exclaiming, "What a view!" A steel drum band featured at the hotel and tiny me got up and danced with them in a display of adorable uncoordination. Those are happy memories, but they are not my point. My point goes deeper. Although I've been trying to get together a Disney trip for about a year, greater urgency has presented itself as of late and I think I know why.

My second trip to Disney World came during the middle of Grandmom's battle with ovarian cancer. It so happened that my mother was attending a banking meeting in Orlando and, having a seven-year-old in the midst of learning about death and preparing to grieve, not to mention the obvious convenience of not having to find a babysitter along with me, she took me along and turned it into a Disney vacation. Although my great-grandfather had died a few years earlier, he had only been a babbling bedridden man with Alzheimer's to me, so it wasn't much of a lesson in grief. Grandmom was going to be hard though, and I damn well knew it. So the happiest place on Earth was going to have a hell of time making me happy, or so I thought. All of the effort Disney puts into the experience worked wonders. I marveled at 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, cowered at Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, and was awestruck by Epcot's display of human culture and innovation. Every day, I'd call Grandmom on pay phones around the park and tell her how awesome it all was, even mailing her a message in a bottle from Pirates Of The Caribbean. Even something as sad as cancer couldn't stop Disney's magic.

There have been two more trips to Disney World for me since 1988. The third involved my whole stepfamily and was definitely a blast, although it was most memorable for the improbable encounter we had with family friends who I knew were going to be at Disney World the same time we are, although that was mostly memorable because my mother insisted the park was too big for a random meeting like that to happen. Most recently, I went with my father and stepmother in 1993, which I recall as a nice bonding experience with him. However, that trip is slightly tarnished by an obnoxious 12-year-old me making fun of Pluto and calling him, "Odie," repeatedly. If I run into Pluto this time, I must remember to apologize. Ultimately, the most important trip for my purposes now was the one in 1988. Grandmom's impending death was my darkest hour at that time and the mouse broke through that sadness and allowed me to experience complete happiness for a while. So now, staring down the barrel of a life with autism that will mean no useful work and no love, I once again face my darkest hour. Turning to the mouse once more, I say, "Make me feel better. Take the burdens of a regrettable life away for a few days. Be the happiest place on Earth one more time.

-Frank

Low-T

I am the proud owner of a diagnosis of low-testosterone, commonly abbreviated as low-T, which is a standard to which I will adhere in this article for the sake of brevity. While I try to be reasonably well-informed regarding subjects about which I write, I must admit that I do not know much about low-T. Oh, obviously my endocrinologist has informed me of some of the symptoms, such as low energy, sexual dysfunction, difficulty losing weight, difficulty putting on muscle even with serious weight training, and other symptoms I also have. Between diabetes, autism, depression, and significant enough outdoor allergies to make me useless in the right weather conditions, I did not need something else on my place medical condition-wise, but I suppose none of us ever do.

According to my endocrinologist, my particular case of low-T arises due to obesity, which, perhaps ironically, it helps to perpetuate by impeding energy and ability to exercise. Basically, as best I can understand, fat somehow manages to turn testosterone into estrogen, which is undoubtedly the worst magic trick ever. There are two treatments I can go with to help raise my testosterone levels. I may either take an experimental pill that works by somehow short-circuiting fat's ability to turn testosterone into estrogen or I can take testosterone that works by virtue of being testosterone in the first place. Since the former option is more likely to be covered by my insurance, and is cheaper in any event, that's the one I'm going to go with, at least at first.

The next couple of months are going to be important for determining the progress of treating my low-T. After four weeks, I go in to have blood drawn for another round of tests, which will be able to show whether or not the pill is having any effect. Regardless of those results, another appointment will take place two weeks later. At that appointment, my endocrinologist will assess the test results to determine whether or not to continue the treatment. If it's working, then a decision will be made as to whether to continue with the same dosage, increase the dosage, or reduce the dosage. However, if it is not having a significant effect, I will need to go with actual testosterone, which isn't something I as of yet have much of an understanding. Another article will be forthcoming when I have a better idea as to my prognosis.

-Frank

Vacation

I was not able to take a vacation this year during the usual time of just after the holidays. This is because of the failure of my company and the resultant compromised finances. However, I've crunched the numbers and I should be able to save up enough to go on one at the usual time next year. The vacations I take have a few common ingredients. First of all, they are solely my financial responsibility. Second of all, I always take along at least one friend, which is actually the overwhelmingly common arrangement over the years. As airport security became a nightmare for many people, including unique tortures for fat guys, recent years have seen a third element come into play in that my vacations are all now road trips. By my own admission, I am not a terribly good driver and have poor common sense, so those who come with me all expenses paid are, in a sense, earning their keep by doing the driving and keeping me from bumping into furniture and the like.

My vacations have had a few different destinations over the years. These have included Saint Louis, Kansas City, Bloomington, Las Vegas, and Orlando, the last of which being the one to which I aim to return next year. Las Vegas and Orlando are the ones to which I find myself most frequently drawn. With Las Vegas, it's not the gambling, but it's pretty much everything else. The shows are the best I've ever seen anywhere in the world, the culinary adventures on offer are higher quality, more varied, and more convenient than any I've ever experienced, and, until a few years ago, there was even a Star Trek theme park. Orlando is about the theme parks, through and through. Riding those rides, seeing those sights, and existing in an environment carefully engineered to maximize human happiness is one of the most fun things any human being can do. Everybody likes to take vacations and I don't really think my reasons for taking them have been any different than anybody else's, up until recently.

Up until recently, vacations were all about fun for fun's sake. Heck, I'm still young enough that the vast majority of my life entailed planning vacations around summer, winter break, or spring break. Vacations were a thing you did when you had the time and money to do them because they're fun and fun is enough reason to do everything. Well, I expect they'll still be fun, but there's more to it for me now. I reds a quote from an actress once about how, when she first moved out to California, she and her acting friends would get a season's pass to Disneyland and, whenever things were tough, go out to the park as a way of boosting morale. Something in that sentiment makes sense to me in my depressed state. As the years go by, I can't imagine that it will get easier to live with my disability. On the contrary, it will be viewed as more and more unusual that I am single and unemployed. So it will be important to have a time of the year to boost my morale. Now more than ever, I'm gonna need a vacation.

-Frank

If I Lost It All

In my previous article, I noted that I have told my therapist that I have no suicidal ideation, which is common question that comes up during therapy for depression. While this is true, it is important to think about all scenarios that might arise. There are circumstances that could cause most people to kill themselves. John McCain attempted suicide during the worst of his time as a P.O.W. in Vietnam. Alan Turing poisoned himself when faced with a choice between hormone treatments or hard prison time following successful prosecution for homosexuality at the hands of the Crown. Dr. Jack Kevorkian assisted many people with suicide when their chronic illnesses became too much to any longer endure. For myself, I could live with the various complications diabetes may one day inflict. If I were, by some foul circumstance, denied my primary social outlet at the Just For Him cigar shoppe, I could endure as I did in my friendless childhood. However, if the money my family has ensured sustains me ever goes, I make no promises.

I wouldn't turn to suicide as my first recourse if I ever lost my money, mind you. Mine has been a life marked by tremendous generosity to family and friends and I would hope financial help would be forthcoming from some of them. If that isn't the case though, the circumstances would become more dire. Applying for disability due to autism, as another autistic friend has already successfully done, would be my only option at that point. It's not difficult for me to imagine the sort of life would entail. First, I'd need to sell every major asset I own. That means the condo, car, computer, phone, and anything else of significant value. From there, I'd need to get a studio apartment walking distance from a grocery store. All the disability money would need to go to rent and groceries, as there would not be sufficient funds for anything beyond that. With pens, pencils, and paper I already own, I would continue to write, as that would be the only remaining hobby I could afford. How long I could endure under these circumstances, I don't know, but I can't imagine I'd last long.

Although the scenario I describe in the above paragraph frightens me immensely, I repress that emotion the same way I repress all emotions. What would truly break me, I think is the lack of stimulating hobbies and the loss of the ability to help others. While I have lost some of life's greatest pleasures and have been forced to admit my own lack of potential because of the severity of my autism, things are still sufficiently comfortable that I do not think I will crack under the pressures of my disability. We all need a support system and to take an active role in feeding the things in our lives that we know are necessary for us to be happy. I know my family put aside the money off of which I must live because some of them were farsighted enough to see that my current circumstances would be forthcoming in the fullness of time, and I'm grateful for that because it is truly something I will always need. When I think of all the people who must live with disabilities as severe or worse than mine without the resources I am so fortunate to have, I pity them and I must not ever forget that I am only a few turns of bad luck away from being among their number.

-Frank