Kaminiwa

( Profile ) ( Contact Info ) ( Meditations ) ( Private Notes ) (1)

chirik has made an absolutely gorgeous Tetris fabric pattern. I showed it off to my gaming group on Sunday, and given the reaction, felt I had to share the link (plus, chance to buy the fabric for anyone who does sewing!) :)

http://chirik.livejournal.com/443103.html

My skin ripples. No longer human. Angel, demon, shaman. Something wholy else. A disturbance in the symphony, a false note to God's grace. A shimmering ripple across water. A slithering out of the old self, an abandoning of everything that was. Becoming something new. Ever so slowly, learning to understand what that even means

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oFP_TH8jYY&feature=player_embedded - Very neat video of a girl playing her flute instead of singing the vocals for a Rockband song. She's quite skilled, but mostly it just struck me as a nice illustration of how I process lyrics - they're just another instrument, and you could probably replace them with a flute and not have me notice ^^

http://scienceblogs.com/catdynamics/2009/11/pale_blue_dot.php - Beautiful bit of Carl Sagan done to a Sigur Ros soundtrack. I don't quite have words for it, except "sad in an insightful, artistic way, not sad-sad."

Modern day witchhunt

It really is sort of creepy that watching someone get murdered is legal, yet cartoons (or two 16-year-olds texting each other) is a crime.

This is the first LJ post written from Sigil Grove, my nifty new place on 122nd & Division. My cooking supplies are limited to a single cookie sheet, there is no bed or furniture of any description, and dinner is Pizza Hut. And this is the most profoundly relieving thing, because I have not lived by myself in 18 months, and gods, I needed it. It is my place, and it is mine alone to do with as I please, to bless as I wish and re-arrange whenever fancy strikes, and I can seal it and open it on a whim, and it is mine, and it is my place and... *happy*

It is also the first place I've ever had which insisted on having three names, which is cute. It's other name is Dreamholm, because it seems to have some affinity for peace and dreams, given I dreamt of it the first night it was mine. We shall see how actually sleeping here goes, on this the 11th of November, and the 11th hour of the evening :)

(For those of you that can count, the third name is it's True Name, and so far I've not been given to disclose it. But it is a very nice True Name, and one that makes me feel very safe and welcomed here)

(Wow, for extra coincidence points, I signed the lease on November 8th: a year and a day after I left San Jose o.o)

( In case someone hasn't seen V for Vendetta )

Finally got new power charger for KoiPond, at "you woke me up when?" o'clock this morning. Could not go back to sleep, so I pretty much had to go try it out. Plug in. Wait for neat blue light. No blue light. Don't panic. Check that other end of cord is actually plugged in. Yes. Check that power strip is really on, and in fact powering something else. Yes. Try another outlet anyways because that's just what you DO when you don't want to accept reality. Still no blue light.

Took apart entirety of laptop. Discovered that somehow the very-firmly-plugged-in *internal* power cord was loose. Discovered this by unplugging and replugging it, and TADA, we have a fully functional KoiPond. I think... the speakers *may* have been slightly broken in the process... *throws on a song* Oooh, huzzah, I even managed to fix the wire I accidentally frayed! :D

Now I just need to remember to put the DVD drive back in at some point. I may have been in a hurry to prove to myself that it was really working... *cough*.

OH MY GOD I HAVE MY FILES BACK I HAVE MY KOIPOND BACK YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!

P.S. This thing is huge! The display is easily twice as large in every dimension o.o Also, all the buttons are in places I don't expect them to be so suddenly I'm having to relearn how to do things like right click ^^;

P.P.S. Speaking of aspie and people getting really upset when you're abnormal: There are maybe a handful of people in my life that have made me as excited as I am right now, because of having my computer back. I'm guessing everyone else in my life would be a bit upset to find out they lose to a computer but... damn, the computer loves me unconditionally and won't leave me just because we get in to an argument, and ... and this is why I've learned to just NOT TALK about certain subjects, but I wanted to have a nice solid example.

P.P.P.S. No I'm not telling you whether you're one of those people. Not even if you ask really nicely ;P

I was trying to explain "being aspie" to a new friend of mine, and commented:

"Perfectly normal human wormbaby" is a phrase that basically means "I'm an alien desperately trying to convince people I'm human so that they don't kill me"

I was pretty much kidding when I wrote it. "Wormbaby" is a quote from Invader ZIM that I've used ever since I heard it, after all, and that's what the phrase means for ZIM. Except, the thing of it is, it really does feel like a very apt metaphor. Replace 'kill' with a number of other unpleasant verbs for the most part, but I've never really felt like I actually identified or fit in with humanity. They're a weird and interesting species I'm studying, and I've learned to get along with them for the most part, but sometimes they are just absolutely baffling, and sometimes they react very, very badly to the fact that I'm different.

One of the worst things about being aspie is that you have to hide and suppress it so much. I can come out as aspie just fine. The word has never carry a ton of stigma for me (others may have different experiences, but in my experience it mostly just carries befuddled looks and the question "What's that?"). But you start stimming (repetitive motion - for me, drumming my fingers or a pencil against something solid), or continue talking about the latest TV show you watched after someone breaks down crying, or admit that you really don't care in the slightest that a relative died... yeah, people get amazingly unfriendly *then*. And they don't need to know the label "aspie" to get hostile, either.

One of my more baffling childhood memories was my dad lecturing me, and suddenly yelling at me for not making eye contact. To me, eye contact means "defiance, dominance", and I absolutely could not understand why he'd *want* me to be defiant while he was lecturing me! He then went on to explain that if I don't make eye contact during interviews, people won't like me enough to hire me. I've dutifully followed this rule ever since, and it really does seem to help, but it still just absolutely baffles me. For me, even now that I've learned to deal with eye contact and it's become less painful and intense, it's still something I do only rarely or in those moments of "I'm interviewing / otherwise need to impress you."


Despite all of that, it's still really hard to explain "aspie" because... well, because the whole point of it is that I don't *get* neurotypical (non-aspie) people at all. If I understood them enough to explain exactly how I'm different, I'd probably have far fewer issues ^.^

I've recently begun writing all sorts of stuff in Javascript, and have been wondering if anyone knows of a good free website hosting service that allows such?

Geocities, you shall be missed in this respect :(

"The classic analogy to explain the social model [of disability] is this:

Many sighted people have less-than-perfect sight. If assistive devices — glasses or contact lenses — were not so widely available and accessible, many of these people would be prevented from full participation in many aspects of society.

But because society sees fit to prioritize this assistance, to make sure glasses/contacts are widely available and accessible so that every less-than-perfect sighted person can have clearer vision — because society decided that no person should be blocked from access because of hir different vision — this condition is no longer a disability.

This is a useful thought experiment. But it is not a perfect analogy. Many blind people still face considerable access blocks. This only really applies to people who are sighted, but whose sight is not precisely “normal.” Perhaps because society can, for the most part, bring abnormally-sighted people to normal-sightedness, whereas it cannot do the same to blind folk.

There’s a lot to explore here."

- http://disabledfeminists.com/2009/10/24/disability-is/

This really pretty much covers why the "gatekeeper" model bothers me so much. I would loathe a world where my doctor could tell me I'm "not really vision-impaired" just because I can hold a job, and thus refused to prescribe glasses.

(Okay, and I just think glasses look neat, but that's an entirely different metaphor ;))

Via way of meowse, a wonderful article on raising children to be okay with mistakes

In the same way that I have for a long while, I've reaffirmed my servitude to the gods, and paid suffering and toil as penance for whatsoever might be in need of it, and let random questions be asked and answers, and just generally undergone the rights that re-affirm my role along the shamanic path.

There is apparently a set of trails in the Arboretum that I was never aware of. ( Read more... )

Another form slid out of the inbox and allowed to slide against the desk. The gentle touch of pen-tip upon paper, the light flow of ink, elegant curves of black soaking in.

"Everything you do is worthwhile."

The worship of paper, the sublime beauty of the everyday. There are some whose purpose is to be glorious, and there are a thousand others who must exist to support that.

I have a locally hosted server that I set up myself, which now has three games on it (Checkers, Tzaar, and Zertz), all of which I wrote myself.

This programming and learning thing is really very fun and satisfying!

I recently got a plushy in the mail, with no explanation of who it was from )nor whether they want to be recognized publicly for it :)

Description:
The ostrich is the largest and heaviest bird. It is also the fastest-running bird; it can run up to 43 mph (70 kph). It can outrun most predators, but can also kick to protect itself. Ostriches cannot fly

Size:
Height: Height at shoulder 10-12 inches (25-30 cm). Weight: They weigh from 6-10 pounds.

Range:
They are found in warm, tropical areas, desert lakes in East Africa and cold mountain lakes in the Andres mountains.

Habitat:
In the summer the arctic fox lives in the tundra at the edge of the forest. In the winter it can be found on ice floes where its white coat serves as camouflage.

I can't help but think that the label was misprinted, and every other field accidentally had the information for ostriches. Still, the notion of an ostrich fox which lives on the ice floes in the middle of desert lakes... :)

(Also, huzzah for being able to touch type - only three typos in typing up the entire description without looking at the screen ^.^)

Moral outrage annoys me. It makes it a pain in the ass to hold an actual dialogue. Despite that, this is my LJ, so I get to be stupid and throw oil on the fire anyways! :)

( Because most of you are probably tired of hearing about this crap! )

"ORS 163.160 Assault in the fourth degree. (1) A person commits the crime of assault in the fourth degree if the person: (a) Intentionally, knowingly or recklessly causes physical injury to another;"

If any of my lawyer friends want to explain why BDSM isn't assault, I'd love to hear it (or confirm that it technically is). I can't imagine it getting prosecuted unless one of the people actually goes to the police, but I'm curious.

Home internet has been down for a week (the disadvantages of "relying on other people to provide service", ahem) and thus I've not had any internet access for the last week. I'm using internet at my friend Brendan's, but will otherwise not have internet for a while yet at home.

Went out to Pioneer Square to do origami again. A girl, maybe 12, hopped up on the ledge I sit on. "Are you making an origami crane?" "Uh-huh." She stood and watched me for a bit, fascinated, and seemed absolutely delighted when I handed her the final product. "I've always wanted to know how to make these" "Want me to teach you?" Her dad commented that they didn't have time just now, but he'd teach her when they got home.

A little bit later, a couple of girls came over. "Are those origami cranes?" "Yes! You want one?" I said, offering it to her. "Do you have a pen? I want you to write your name on it first." What an interesting request.

I can't quite capture in words the simple joy that this is. The people around me smile, and there is the joy of creation and the joy of all these people and the joy of having absolutely no social obligation to any of them.

"Do you enjoy to read?" The man said. "Yes." "Then read this sometime," and he hands me a Dianetics pamphlet. "Oh, no, not this," I shout at him, hand it back. "Why not?" He looks threatened. I shrug. "I'd really rather not get in to that right now."

After that I left. Public can be pleasant, but there's some people I just don't want to interact with :)

---

The theme running in my mind, unfinished yet, is that everyone has art in them. My co-worker makes LOLcats and similar. Amber does sewing and dolls. Brendan paints miniatures. Everyone has these little elements of art to them. I've been wanting to teach Origami, just because it beautifully illustrates that anyone can learn how to do these things. Everyone can make the world beautiful - it is not the province of some special class, some unique "artist's soul" that is blessed to one at birth.

And it is very satisfying to create such beauty, and share it, even if it is as simple as folding a piece of paper while a little girl watches and makes me nervous that I'll screw it up :)