All the other things about living life outside the main stream.
It has been a while since I talked about my Aspie traits. I have decided I won’t call myself an Aspie but will state that I have many of the characteristics of one. Asperger’s Syndrome is part of the … Continue reading Aspie Traits – Assets vs Liabilities..
I will admit up front here that I have no idea of why the so-called social media is addictive to so many people, especially our younger generations. But then again due to my Asperger’s characteristics I am not really attuned to much of any form of social interactions. :) But that doesn’t keep me for chiming in on this issue. Growing up in the 1950s and 60s I was never aware of much social pressure in my life. I tended to live inside my own bubble and was just not that affected by what others thought of me. I did … Continue reading Instagram, Here I Come..
I know one of the reasons that we have the current incompetent in the White House is that too many white men are afraid of becoming a minority. They are afraid of what will happen when their say is no longer the dominant one but instead one of many. For the most part white men have been dismissing minorities for decades and don’t want that to happen to them. They are afraid of many things but this is probably one of the major ones. If none of the clues on RJsCorner have given you a hint then I will bluntly … Continue reading What’s It Feel Like For a White Man To Be A Minority??
I am a dreamer, always have been and always will be. When times are bad I dream of better times. When times are good I thank the Lord. I have always dreamed that every citizen of our country has at least an ounce of empathy and two ounces of brains. I have come to doubt that belief, especially since the person in the Oval Office doesn’t even seem to pass the bill. I guess this particular dream will have to wait a while before it can be realized. Now don’t misunderstand me, I don’t expect everyone to be overflowing with … Continue reading An Ounce Of Empathy & Two Ounces Of Brains
Annually we spend in excess of $600 billion on our military to protect us from foreign invaders at the same time the GOP is not willing to spend $20 billion to keep millions of us from dying of treatable diseases and ailments. I don’t know maybe it is just me but I don’t see an ounce of logic in that fact. For one thing, we have not been invaded by more than a handful of discontents since 1812. Yes, I admit that by some fluke in structural design a handful of USA haters managed to kill three thousand or so … Continue reading $600 Billion, But….
I have been spending some serious time lately trying to come up with better ways to spend the remaining time of my life here on earth. How can I be happier and less stressful about my life in particular and in general the world today? Several reasons probably prompted this search. One is that I turned 70 not long ago. This birthday hit me much harder than any other. I don’t think I really had a mid-life crisis so maybe this is my version of it to be called late-life crisis. The other primary reason is my recent … Continue reading Making For A Better Life
I realized that it has been quite some time since I put out a post primarily about deafness. But the title of “chapter 92” is kind of made up. :) This particular chapter is the result of an episode on the CBS News – Sunday Morning about being in an anechoic chamber. First off the program mentioned is not really about “news” but more of like On the Road with Charles Kuralt but with Indiana’s own Jane Pauley. Now I know I am dating myself with this reference but for those of you who don’t know about “On The Road..” check it out … Continue reading About Deafness — Chapter 92
As I have grown older and wiser I have learned some important lessons in life. One of them is that everyone deserves a hand up when they come across hard times in their lives. The words of Jesus taught me that early on but I guess I just wasn’t ready to hear that message. It would be years and many personal relationships before I took it to heart. I think I have had my share of troubles during my life. I grew up in poverty although I didn’t really realize it at the time. I had a very narcissist mother who just … Continue reading Everyone Deserves a Hand Up…
This is going to be one of those personal posts for me as it delves into my inner being but it needs to come out. I think it is natural that when a person starts to realize his mortality that he tries to summarize his life and the world around him. For some it is about legacy, some just tr I have been doing that a lot the last few months. It is not that I think I will die anytime soon but of course I have much more life behind me than ahead. I have been searching for that one word to … Continue reading Disappointment …
For my weekly bio post I thought I would talk a little about my blogging processes in particular but more generally about my thought processes which due to Aspergers is probably different than yours. Many of the more successful blogs around the Internet are niche blogs, that is they concentrate on one particular topic. Many that I read are of the retirement genre. Their readers pretty much know what they are going to get when they go to their sites. As they say like-minded people like to congregate together, especially during these trying times so they don’t want any surprises and … Continue reading I Am Just Not a “Niche” Guy…
Lord knows I have my problems in life, I have even been blogging about some of them in my Celebrate Diversity posts lately. So I can understand how so many women are addicted to their make-up. I also admit that I am not very well attuned to the social scene so I really didn’t know much about Alicia Keys, but I admired her audacity. By baring her bare face, Keys has revealed how makeup can become a crutch and a mask. The very fact that women are so encouraged to apply makeup communicates that we should be concealing our imperfections and … Continue reading About Make-up…
This is Part 2 of 10 of My Venture Into Asperger’s. In my previous post I reported how I was a late-bloomer in the relationship field. This time I want to talk about feminine and ‘macho’ things. Even as a young child macho was a very negative trait to me. Simply speaking I hated it. I’m sure the word macho means different things to different people so to the right is the definition that I use. IN my mind macho is almost synonymous with being a bully. There is nothing manly about it. I knew being a boy I was supposed to be macho but the … Continue reading Feminine vs Macho…
The title above may seem strange coming from a deaf man but I really do think we have to stop using sign language interpreters for public announcements. Its time to move on to better ways. Way better ways… The facts show us that the ASL interpreters who are often behind a public official announcing something is understood by less that 20% of the people who are deaf and less than 2% of those who have hearing impairments. But there is a technology that is understood by probably 90%+ of that population. That technology is captioning. It is cheap, it is … Continue reading Stop Using Sign Language Interpreters…
This post is part of my continuing study of the Autism spectrum and particularly Asperger’s Syndrome. I am stuck between two worlds in my life. I am a deaf man who lives almost exclusively in the hearing world but neither the hearing world or the deaf world considers me a homeboy. I am seldom around other deaf people so I can’t speak for them but since almost 80% of us deafies are like me in that they went deaf later in life ways maybe I do. One of my goals via this blog and a few other forums, is to help the … Continue reading Caught Between Two Worlds….
This post has been sitting in my “draft” pile for as long as any there. I don’t pretend to be some guru siting on a mountain with the meaning of life. I’m just a guy who has managed to survive seventy years on this earth and not get into too much trouble. But living those seventy years I have made a lot of mistakes and had a few successes. The last post was about rules and how they can be stifling in life and now here I am giving you my “rules for life”. Kind of ironic isn’t it? I … Continue reading 10 Rules for Living a 21st Century Life
A good portion of my life was spent around someone who lived in a world of pretend. My mother was that person. She abandoned me, my brother, and her husband when I was about ten years old to marry someone much richer who could provide her with the luxuries she so wanted in life. I would not have any sort of relationship with her again until twenty years later when that husband divorced her to marry his much younger secretary. It was not until this re-introduction that I realized that she primarily lived in a world of pretend. Reality had … Continue reading The World of Pretend…
I wanted to pen a post on a topic most of your are probably unfamiliar with and that is closed captioning. I’m pretty sure most of you have at least a basic idea of what that is but for those of us who are deaf it is a lifeblood of keeping up with keeping up with the world. Without CC our world would be a quite different place. If you want to get an idea of what that means I would suggest that for the next few days when you turn on your TV to hit the mute button and … Continue reading About Closed Captioning (CC)…
History backs-up the scientific evidence that secular people are more moral, as reviewed by Israeli psychologist Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi. Most white supporters of the US Civil Rights Movement were non-religious, for example, while the apartheid regime in South Africa was led by devout Christians and opposed by atheists. But the view that non-religious individuals are morally dubious is deeply embedded in American society. Atheists and agnostics are considered less trustworthy, even immoral, which explains why people who don’t believe in God are unlikely to be elected to high political office, such as President of the United States…. ”It’s sometimes claimed that … Continue reading Religion Makes Children More Selfish…
That is the moral-ideological core of conservatism today. It presumes that life is a competition or race, that people are unequal in talent, drive, and ambition, and that those who end up on top deserve their victory and rewards — and those who come out on the bottom deserve their failure and hardships. Any attempt to overturn or even mitigate this moral order — whether through government regulation or changes in habits or assumptions in school or on the playground — amounts to an offense against justice itself. Source: What defines conservatism today? I want to spend a few posts … Continue reading They Deserve Their Failure….
This Sunday I want to flesh out a little more of what God means to me personally. Theologians throughout the centuries have molded God into a being mainly of their own making. If they can do it so can I, at least for my own purposes. As I have said in the last two Sunday posts I see God as primarily the keeper of life. There is something inside of us that makes us alive . Call it the spirit, soul, life blood or what ever you want but only God can make life. When you are born you are … Continue reading Life Flow …
I want to pen some final words about Pope Francis here. The title of this post is a recent quote from him that truly inspires me. There are just too many people in the world to who the very idea of hope seems unknowable. They live in such despair that all they can manage is just surviving day-to-day. It is said that Pope Francis views the world from the Bottom up. I have never thought of it in those terms but it is an accurate portrayal of him and I hope to a certain degree myself. Most of us, especially those … Continue reading Living On The Outskirts Of Hope…
RJ's Corner - Having My Say 