Dateline: T minus 30 days

My smart car is on the ocean.  It is scheduled to dock in the port of Los Angeles on or about 16 May; add 10 days to get to Portland, and Memorial day should be memorable.

Memorial day update:  It's in car-jail.  Delivery date is now TBD.

TOBG (timely oldies but goodies)

(pen/ink)
          I created and posted this five years ago at the same time of the year.  Today, I decided to drag this up from the archives to the present because I'm feeling very out-of-sorts and I can't seem to locate any of my vastly diminished creativity (it may already be completely gone).  Maybe I've still got some around.  Somewhere.  But I just can't seem to find any and I'm too discouraged to search any harder.

Mr Nobody - film review (☆☆☆☆☆)

     Mr Nobody, Jaco Van Dormael (2009) is a film I strongly, highly, emphatically recommend—to people with brains that work like mine.

     Here's a test:  Requiem for a Dream, Darren Aronofsky (2000); the question is not if you liked it, or even if you enjoyed Jared Leto's performance (he's also the main character in Mr Nobody) the question is:  Have you watched it, in its entirety, beginning-to-end, without distraction.  Yes?  Go to the next question.  No?  I don't think you'll be able to sit thru 30 minutes of Mr. Nobody.

          Same question about AmΓ©lie, Jean-Pierre Jeunet (2001).  Yes?  Next Question.  No?  You will be so lost and confused by Mr. Nobody.  Your brain just doesn't work like mine.  It's not a better/worse thing, we just process information differently.

          Which of these five films have you seen?  Vanilla Sky, Cameron Crowe (2001); Sliding Doors, Peter Howitt (1998); Inception, Christopher Nolan (2010); Cloud Atlas, Tykwer/A&L Wachowski (2012); Memento, Christopher Nolan (2000).

          None?  You won't make it through the opening credits of Mr. Nobody.

          One or two?  You may be able to watch the entire film (after all, you made it through Requiem as well as a frenetic, subtitled, French comedy) but you lack sufficient film foundation to actually get your brain completely around Mr. Nobody.  The up-side:  you have a short list of must-see films to catch up on (except Cloud Atlas, you can skip that one; I only included it because I needed a 'high bar').

          Three or four?  You'll understand Mr. Nobody, so maybe you'll like it.  Lack of understanding is the main reason films like this (these) are disliked.

          You've seen all of them?  Then you'll love Mr. Nobody.

          It really doesn't matter what you think about any of these films—like, hate, or indifferent doesn't matter.  If you have seen all (or almost all) of these seven films, your brain works like mine.

one unhatched-chicken, two unha...


          After my car arrives, what will be the first alteration? 

          The badges—forward of each side mirror—will be replaced.

          Basic models are 'pure', cabriolet's 'passion', and limited editions each have their own.


          Mine will arrive with passion badges (in about a month) and I will immediately replace them with wampeter, which Smart Madness has custom made for me.


          Kurt Vonnegut coined the word in 1963 with the novel which begins:  'nothing in this book is true'.  Something which connects or ties an otherwise unconnected group of people together is a wampeter.

          Some salesman and loan officers; a few mechanics whom I've yet to meet; me; my family, friends and neighbors; you; the person who made the above badge, and then picked up her iphone (which has a green velvet case) to look it up and ordered Cat's Cradle using her Amazon app; other smart car owners (some of whom I'll exchange waves with in passing, others I'll exchange ideas with online, and a few others I may actually meet at the 2015 Portland smart car rally...which does not exist outside of this sentence as far as I know) — none of these people are in any way actually connected by this vehicle, this tool, this mode of transport for one or two people and an average-sized grey striped cat.  Nobody actually thinks a mystical-phantasmagorically-cosmic connection has actually been created by artfully combining plastic, metal, rubber, glass, cloth, leather, and matte grey paint, into the object which is currently sitting in the rain, in France, in a huge lot surrounded by thousands of other micro-cars.  I realize, nonetheless, that it is harmless to ponder this connection as if it actually existed.  So I ponder.  Busy, busy, busy.

I'm mentally ill and I'm OK, I create all night and I'm antisocial all day



          Around the same time that Y2K was a thing, I learned about a new word:  Aspergers.  I pronounced it with derision—two words: Ass Burger's.  Because, even though this was a label which seemed to apply to most of the personality traits which made-up the who I had always been, it didn't change anything.  It was just another rose-by-any-other-name thing.  Knowing there was a new medical label for the person that was me (who avoids doctors, of every ilk, like they're machete-wielding street-corner bullies) had little impact on me.  I have always been comfortable with my introversion and bewildered by the behavior of what extroverts refer to as normal.

          In the 1980s, I referred to myself as Über-introverted.

          By the late 1990s I easily joked about myself as someone who was at the, "Unabomber-level of introversion; without the bombs and with a keener eye towards manifesto writing."

          Today, I still pine for a shack in the woods, rarely find myself in a position to use the term Aspergers in conversation (which is more-than-probably because listendon'talk is my normal, and not because I avoid identifying which brand of homo-sapiens I was born into), and never refer to Aspergers by nickname or acronym (for the same reason it's penis, not willy or cock).    
     
          Aspergers has now been moved under the umbrella of Autism Spectrum Disorder.  Some people have a problem with this change.  Some other "new mental illnesses" (now identified as such by the DSM) include: arrogance, narcissism, above-average creativity, cynicism, and antisocial behavior.

          I am now classified as a person with autism.  Personality traits are now referred to as diseases by machete-wielding street-corner bullies.

          These distinctions are causing some people to sit up and bark.  Others are shitting in their bed-clothes.  None of this has any more affect on me than when I learned—over a dozen years ago—that a new label existed for my introversion.

          La de da.
          Kay sera sera.
          Sometimes you just have to say what the fuck.   

 

catch up on more Asperger'stuff:

lack of eye contact

death of a friend

aural effect / mood-boost