To My Baby Brother

Let me tell you about my baby brother, Robert. He’s the biggest kid you’ll ever meet. He’s ten years old. He’s been ten years old for twenty years now (well, 19, but it’ll be twenty in three months time). This is great news for my family, because for the longest time, we’re afraid he’d be three.

This boy is smart. How smart? You may not have met him yet, but he already knows how to manipulate you. He knows how you see him, he just can’t do anything about that. What he will do is convince you to do things for him because he’ll act like he can’t. He can, he’s just knows it’s better to have someone else do it. It’s easier that way. He can quote the movie Spaceballs to you, front to back. From what I remember, my parents took that movie away from him when he was 15 because he could quote it front to back. Say Frau Blucher to him. I’ll bet he whinnies.

He’s autistic. I’m not talking, high functioning, can do well in society, Aspergers autism. Real deal, barely verbal until he was 10, trouble communicating to the point of violent frustrating autistic. I didn’t get it when I was younger. He was different, but that’s all I knew. Looking back at it, I was jealous of him. Knowing that my parents loved us all but he required the most attention. Maybe that’s why I acted out and became a rebel.

Yeah, right. Some rebellion. Oh yeah, Dad! Make me wear shirts with collars to school?? Well I’m packin’ a plain purple t-shirt and changing on the way there! What’s that Mom? I have to have my homework done before I can play Nintendo? Well I’m gonna play Nintendo right up until you get home, turn it off, run to my room and look like I was working really hard. Yeah! Take that!

Then you grow up, you see that what was done was the best way. And then you wonder, this guy has had a fairly good life for someone in his position. My parents worked hard for all of us, but especially this guy. I don’t want him to lose that. So, then you start to fret. You fret because you know that some day, you’re going to be the dad. Someday, he’ll be burning off your cell phone minutes because he needs you to know what the Pokemon trainers are doing. Someday…

So you get ready for that day. Hopefully no time soon, but fortune favors the prepared and the fools. I’m going to be the most prepared fool in the world.

Annoying Little Things

So the last couple of days, I’ve been having my head filled with lots of ideas and thoughts. Mostly I blame the Internet and the neocon nutballs at work.

The first thing is how Hank Williams, Jr. got all upset that ESPN dropped him like a hot potato when he dared state his opinion and went on bellowing about how it was censorship and blah blah blah. To sum up: Mr. Jr. compared some republican leader and the president playing golf together as if someone were playing golf with Hitler. I think his point was that he doesn’t want politicians to work together but rather bicker like they’re doing now. The problem is that he just compared a US president who has passed a controversial health care bill and feels that taxing and spending is the best way out of our financial troubles to a man who started World War II and began the systematic alienation, segregation, and extermination of a religious group. It’s really quote difficult to bridge that gap. Espn decided that they didn’t want half the country pissed off at them and severed ties with Hank. Hank claims he’s being censored (he’s not, he can still call Obama Hitler if he wants), it’s just that Espn thinks it would lose more viewers if it didn’t drop him.

Also, I can list people who are like Hitler. It goes like this: Stalin, Pol Pot, Slobodan Milosevic. What do they have in common? They have thousands if not millions if people killed. So, until someone does that, they aren’t like Hitler for fuck’s sake.

So, America, stop Godwinning arguments. It doesn’t prove your point. The guy isn’t that bad. Maybe pick a lesser pain. Say he’s like Jacques Chirac or something.

Modern Political Discourse and the Civil War Documentary

It’s late and I’m watching the Ken Burns documentary from the 90s on the Civil War. I’ve never seen the full thing but I will eventually. Watching it however made me think of how the vitriol in the political discourse sounds a lot like today’s. President can do nothing right. Government is invading our lives too much. Etc.

Then I realize it’s been like that since before the Civil War. The whole thing was essentially fought on a States Rights Feds Rights platform. Slavery is pointed to but that was simply a large plank in the platform. After that it was reconstruction, then Isolationism, then Prohibition, Socialism/Communism.

But really it all comes back to the individual’s rights against the larger group’s rights. But no one wants to talk about that. They’d rather talk about how W sounds like a moron or how
Obama always uses a TelePrompTer. So what?

Those topics aren’t germane to politics. They’re ad hominem attacks for no real purpose. To call them an idiot is to ignore the topic at hand.

Whenever I hear the ultra-cons around my desk talk politics I put in my headphones. Because I know how the conversation goes. It follows a very narrow line of thought over a well-worn path with the same handful of words used. But it never touches an issue, only complaints about the President.

Then there’s the laughable hypocrisy of listening to them complain about big government and then complain about impending cuts in our budget or benefits. Which is it guys? Big government or not?

That which affects me is bad. That which affects someone else is okay. That which affects someone I don’t like is awesome.

Yay for dumb trains of thought.

Okay time to stop getting pissed off and go to sleep.

I Really Doubt I’ll Want to Do That Again

Stacy, Stefan, and Nicole wanted to go to the big Halloween block party they have around LSU. Basically, from the sound of it, I knew everyone wanted to go and when I was asked by Stacy (after Stefan had called her) I knew they wanted me to go too. The long and the short of it is: I’m uncomfortable in crowds. It’s an extension of a couple of things, mostly just being shy. Combine that with mixing with people 10-13 years younger than me (on average) isn’t much fun to me.

Come to think of it, it wasn’t fun when I was 21 either…

So, we went out in costume. All of the others’ costumes were great. Mine was…well, not a huge departure for me, I guess. Jeans, t-shirt aren’t anything new. A fake tattoo, a beard, and a wallet chain aren’t exactly huge differences I suppose. Next time, I’ll go with more obvious things that are more appearance changing for me.

I didn’t drive, which was probably the best possible thing for others to have their fun, because hating crowds and searching for a place to park means that quite quickly I leave the area and abandon what was originally planned. After some perseverance, a spot was found behind the Chimes and we headed out. So after we park we head out into the crowd. Yay…

Needless to say, if I’m in a group where I don’t know at least half the people, I’m uncomfortable. The band on the stage we went to wasn’t very loud, the music not terribly good, and the people around us were just short of obnoxious. I do know now that Stefan laughing is enough to make me smile. It’s rather infectious in that regards.

In short, I just really did not have fun. I stayed up until 2am to basically go do something I knew from the start I wouldn’t like, but I knew others wanted to go do. I’m really afraid I ruined everyone else’s good time but I was so far from having a good time it was ridiculous.

At what point do I declare this to be a problem?

For years, Saturday has been game night, eight years, I think. It’s usually been D&D but occasionally we break down and play Chez Geek or Munchkin. I’m sure there’s a time in the future when we might try 40k again. That might be more of a stretch, but I digress.

The cast of the Saturday evening game night has been fairly steady with a couple of adds and drops over the years. It’s always been close friends and people I get along with in the group. This basically sets up the “I’m not sure how to deal with this and I’m kind of annoyed I have to.” feeling I’ve got at the moment.

The latest addition to our group is a military guy. He’s a nice guy, but he’s rough around the edges. Spent three tours overseas and he tends to treat everyone like a solider…in that his sense of humor is very…not kind. Stefan can be a jackass, and he knows it. He also knows I’ll call him that to his face. This guy I don’t feel I know as well and don’t want to call him down for being an ass to me because for some reason I feel like it’ll hurt him and he’s had enough shit in his life that he doesn’t need more.

That said, if he calls me whipped one more time, I’m probably going to pack up my stuff and walk out the door. Perhaps I should confront this before I reach that point. It really came to a head when he called this out in a loud voice while I was talking to my girl while she was on her way home from a trip. I wasn’t sure I could channel my “Dad look” that well, but I really felt my face turn into this massive storm cloud promising hell if he didn’t stuff a sock in his piehole.

My dad has that kind of look and he got to practice it a lot. ^_^

So, typing this out was good for me, because I’ve resolved to let him know the next time he teases me about being whipped. I’m going to be level and straightforward about it and basically state that if he insists on going that route, I’m going to stop playing with him. For some reason, I can handle Stefan’s insinuations that I’m lazy and/or stupid and not funny (because I find that funny because they’re all not true) and Andrew’s drier and somewhat more scatological bent, but when I feel like I’m not the one being insulted but rather my girlfriend, it just feels like a line has been crossed.