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Sunday, 08 November 2009

  • Everything I Could Never Say: To a Pervert

    You used to be a friend. I didn't think you were too bad at first, a little annoying, yes, but we all have our quirks. I just shrugged it off, I figured it to be another part of the stereotype.

    Ahh, the stereotype. It's saved your ass. It's saved your ass A LOT, and yet, you want to go against it? You've MADE the stereotype, man. The otaku stereotype: the fat pervert with the raggedy facial hair that watches overdone T&A anime porn on his computer as he eats cheese puffs and Lay's, wondering if his soul mate is going to be that stacked and will, as a matter of fact, think his collection of half-clad figurines is sexy. THAT stereotype. You fit it. And you freaking made it. I've come to realize that most people I'm around that actually fit this stereotype to a T, while usually very, very desperate, would NOT harm someone. They would much rather chew their own arm off before they hurt someone in real life. It doesn't look good for the ladies.

    But no. That wasn't enough for you. You somehow wanted more, and more you got. You claimed yourself Autistic, via Asperger's Syndrome. [I don't have anything against autism or Aspie's, just hear me out.] At first, I thought this was alright, whatever. I didn't really see myself hanging out with you very much, but for the times that I did (and you consequently annoyed the shit outta me), I could think to myself that it wasn't totally your fault.

    We hung out a few times amongst other friends. But one time -- the LAST time -- you and I ever came across one another in a friendly sort of fashion was my birthday, two years ago. I had everyone dress in costume (as that is and was my favorite hobby) and you dressed as, well, a pervert. I didn't care, really, I thought the idea (and costume) was lovely.

    And then, you broke the rules.

    Before I go farther, let me backtrack. I looked up Asperger's Syndrome in adults, and this is what I found:

    People with Asperger syndrome can show a wide range of behaviours and social skills, but common characteristics include difficulty in forming friendships, communication problems (such as an inability to listen or a tendency to take whatever is said to them literally), and an inability to understand social rules and body language.
    Source

    While I'd like to say that this applies here, it really, really doesn't. There's a difference between violating a taboo -- acting of your own accord, with no regard to the rest of humanity -- and blaming it on your disorder, and ignoring simple body language. This was not 'simple body language'; you were molesting kids, for Christ's sake!

    Whoever thinks that molesting underage children is ignoring simple body language is just absurd. It's NOT. You did the wrong thing, and you stepped over the line. You fucking KNOW you stepped over the line. And then, what do you do? You blame it on your Asperger's, saying that it's just something everyone else has to deal with. Why should anyone else in our midst deal with a possible sex offender? You're lucky we didn't call the cops on your ass, we just kicked you out of our group. It was your own fault. You knew it was your fault.

    And then what do you do? You throw a temper tantrum. I realize that you must have had this disorder since you were small, the way you brag about it. Surely you must have run across these kinds of complications before. You think that you can destroy the group because you're jealous. Yeah, that worked real well.

    Do not BLAME us when YOU were the one that stepped over the line. You have instilled a sad intolerance in me of anyone with Asperger's. I hope you're happy with that, I really am. Because you're spineless, selfish, and really, quite a snake.

Thursday, 05 November 2009

  • "History Doesn't Repeat Itself...

    "...but it sure does rhyme."

    I realize this is probably the worst possible place to be talking (typing?) about something like this, but it's on my mind. And whatever ends up on my mind usually ends up on here in some form or fashion. So here I find myself, yet again.

    I've already spoken (written?) on the fact that I am tremendously shy in real life, and mostly keep to myself save for my circle of friends at school. But I am known in the ethereal world known as cyberspace, outside of this Xangan haven. Not as much as I once was, but I have only moved to a much smaller forum than usual. A local forum, one where everyone usually knows at least someone else from the forum in real life, or has had a passing encounter with them, at least.

    I have had experiences on forums much, much larger than the one I'm currently on, and not a single one went well. Not to say that I hold a grudge against (inter)national forums; I just feel they're not for myself. I happen to like xanga because I can choose to write for myself (and often do, when I don't feel like hearing others' opinions).

    Let me outline my bad experiences -- a few people on Xanga were involved, but it seems out of the four of us that got accounts together in 2004 or so, I was the only one that kept theirs for more than a year. So I assume it's safe.

    I get too attached to people. In the real world, it's easy to hide and mask and work around. I can hug a friend if they feel bad, I can smile at them if they're having a bad day. I can have people understand me by body language and tone -- two aspects that are painfully awkward to recreate online. Friends come and go, each of them I grow attached to and take from, and I'm okay with that. Though my obsession with death is inching forward ever so slowly, I can still say that I wouldn't mind seeing [most] of them again, if only for lunch or a cup of coffee.

    My friends online, way back in the day, I suffered through thick and thin for. I would feel like I was there sitting beside them when they cried after having a bad day. The antics we created on sleep deprivation were some of the funniest, and craziest any of us had ever experienced. We were just a little band of misfits, and I was usually the one people came to whenever they had problems with relationships or parents. Of course, I was doing it all through a machine. It broke my heart whenever I couldn't hug someone around the shoulders when I knew they were crying. Whenever I couldn't joke with someone without writing a bit of code first. Instead of becoming attached to a living, breathing human being, I found myself melding with a steel box. I nearly for got how to talk without making emoticons with my voice. (You know, you 'read' an emoticon and your head makes a noise for it?)

    My family tried to snap me out of it at one point, but I was so far gone, I didn't want to come back. It was only after I realized how very ethereal machines are -- more so than humans. How often do computers go bad? Once every 2-3 years? Even those with 1337 H4( K[]N6 5K[]11 can probably make their computers to 10 years, if they really wanted to. How long are you gonna get friendship outta someone? Usually -- a lifetime, even if most of it is spent as nothing more than 'acquaintances', it's better than the nothing a computer would provide.

    Now that my boyfriend is and has been in a similar situation, it bugs me. I can't say I'm thrilled to see him repeat my same mistakes, but I have little room to stop him. Just gotta keep doing what  do, I guess.

    Have you ever made a friendship with someone that you hadn't met even indirectly online? On Xanga? How did it turn out, and if it's still going, how is it working out?

Wednesday, 04 November 2009

  • Impressions and Impressives

    Most of the time, I do this nearly without noticing, but as I've started to enter the 'elitist' community (that is -- people with swollen egos), I found myself doing it more and more. And we've all done it -- I heard the same thing on the playground when I was a child.

    You say you (dis)like something, someone else says that that idea's lame, then you ALWAYS had to one-up them with something better, or some excuse why you took the actions you did. Or at least, I always had to.

    I was raised in a very competitive household, just by the nature of it. There was always sibling rivalry, and my brother was especially harsh. My brother toured as a singer with a choir for quite a while, and being raised by a single parent meant that I was 'toured' too, although there was usually little to no room or time for me. So I was always trying to be better than my brother at something, anything so someone could notice me.

    I don't say that as an excuse, but more like an example. I always felt like I had to impress people, often boys in the choir that were bigger, stronger, and I'll be damned if they had the same interests I did. Only recently have I started to wonder what the point was in trying to impress people, and what exactly I had to gain from it.

    I can understand the practical reasons for impressing people; of course, when applying for a job / scholarship / college / what have you, it's necessary to pull out whatever stops available in order to have a shot at competition. But that's just it: it's a competition, not the real world. It seems so silly to do it in the real world, and yet, I feel the need to more times than I should.

    So I've come to this conclusion -- With the exception of academic and work competitions, I'm really not going to try to impress people any more. If they accept me, that's awesome, but if they don't accept me, no amount of excuses or reason can help. So what's the point in trying to appear smarter, more appealing towards them, if it's just a waste of energy, a facade that can be seen straight through? People seem to like me for being me; I have yet to figure out exactly why yet, but people try to explain. They try to tell me I'm pretty (which I don't think I am, but okay), that I'm funny (that's just not true), and that I'm some awesome kick-ass (this one... well, I have admitted to being a bitch before), and I'm very grateful for their appreciation. But I've found that the moment I stop trying to be all these things that I like, I actually end up being them. Don't ask me how this happens, I really don't quite know myself.

    Have you ever found yourself trying to impress someone that you really didn't need to? Did you realize what you were doing at the time?

Monday, 02 November 2009

  • Dating inside Social Circles

    [because I can't think of a better title than the one I originally had. Also, warning -- sleep dep.]

    What brought this up was an off-handed comment made by a friend of mine as myself, my boyfriend, and other friends of ours sat down to dinner at a restaurant.

    "Oh, Emily wants to sit beside [her boyfriend], don't sit there."

    My first thought was, "The fuck?"

    When we first started dating, my current-boyfriend and I had known each other for at least a year. We weren't the best of friends by any stretch of the imagination, but we were in a lot of the same circles and even lived near each other. [Considering most of my friends are scattered throughout the state, this is definitely a plus.] A lot of people knew us separately due to connections to certain events, and so everyone knew everyone in our group.

    After we announced to our friends that we were dating, little changed. Seeing as our events were across the state, and we were already living in the same town, I took him to events that we were both tied to. Everyone expected us to already hang out together because we were close in distance, so being a couple came naturally. As for our relationship, it immediately started from where we had stopped being in the "just friends" phase -- meaning that we were still friends, and that is / was most of our relationship, but we now had an emotional (and sometimes physical) investment in each other.

    The thing that got me thinking about that particular quote was the situation -- this event was slightly different from the others. It was to honor a mutual friend of ours, M, that had driven back in-state from Ohio in order to pick some stuff up from yet another friend of ours (E), and it was just a casual get-together to celebrate him being back. But when E said that, I would have really just liked to blurt -- "What does him being my boyfriend have to do with anything?"

    People assume all the time that I want to hang out with my boyfriend, which, to be honest, isn't far from the truth. But with that stated, I have to wonder if people look at myself and boyfriend the same way as they had before we were "an item", as it were. Just because I'm "with" someone doesn't mean I have to necessarily spend every free moment I have ever with them. I actually wanted to sit with M, as he was the guest of honor, but we were both shoved at the back of the table so we could sit "together"

    So have people ever assumed what the status of a relationship was (or even if there was a relationship, romantic or otherwise)? How did that turn out for you?

Thursday, 29 October 2009

  • Things That Have been on My Mind

    Have you ever gone about your business when you felt the incessant urge to write? That's what the past week has been like for me, 'cept I haven't had time to actually sit down and write. I've just been doing my normal everyday usual, and the things have began to pile up. So I'm gonna write everything that I've wanted to write in the past week in this post, in whatever order they come to me in.

    - Censorship in Language (and why it's stupid)
    - "Best Work" [Weekend from Hell epilogue]
    - Internet Addict(ion)
    - Why Technology Irritates Me [and why we don't need it]
    - Dating inside Social Circles
    - EmoPride - What Are they Thinking?
    - Geekery and Nonsense
    - Why I love/hate my iPod
    - Being Anti-Social - A Mark of Caring?
    - "Like"-ing Life [about Facebook]
    - How to Play McDonald's Monopoly [without overloading yourself with fats and whatever else is in their food]
    - Why I love Halloween
    - Why I hate Halloween
    - Impressions and Impressives: Why I Don't Care
    - "Clicking" and How it Can Happen to You
    - Becoming Barbie
    - Why "Racist" is not "Bad" [Why everyone has stereotypes and why they're still good people]
    - The Balance of Religion and Politics [How I believe in Christianity and am still open to other perspectives]
    - The Destruction of Humanity: It's okay to panic
    - Swine Flu in Media [why everyone overhyping it should be shot]
    - Haters and Amusement
    - Density: It's not just for men
    - Clothing Choices for Geeks [and why it sucks / is awesome]
    - Music ADD [It's not always a bad thing]
    - The Impact of Dress
    - Explanar: Yes, it's Possible
    - Relationships and Friendships [How much do they have in common? Are different?]
    - Stupidity: Good in Moderation
    - [Lack of] Hobbies? [why yes, people need them]

    ...Yeah, I think that's been about it. Anything you would like to see in particular?

emily_shannon

  • Visit emily_shannon's Xanga Site
    • Name: Emily
    • Gender: Female
    • Member Since: 8/14/2005

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  • Writing letters to you and the people you know.

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