Cabin fever and a few rants
Feb. 10th, 2007 10:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
matrixrefugeeIt's been deadening cold for days and days up here, and it's really getting on my nerves, much as I like the cold weather. I'm tired of having to pile on so many layers of clothes, I can barely see through my scarves or bend my arms and legs. I'm starting to get a touch of the strange form of Seasonal Affective Disorder that plagued me when I was a kid: after Christmas, when we'd start taking down the ornaments and lights and such, I'd start getting anxious and restless. When I was seven, I suffered from terrible bizarre dreams that used to leave me unable to fall asleep, or which would wake me up at ridiculously early hours of the morning, unable to get back to sleep. I can remember some of these dreams even to this day, though they certainly don't phase me in the least now. I'm not having nightmares, or the one or two times that I did recently, I utilized some techniques I learned from an article on lucid dreaming by Deepak Chopra. Besides reminding yourself that it *is* a dream, you get ahold of the situation... sometimes I feel like I can handle threats in the Dreaming better than I can in the real world. But there again, considering some of the things in the news, it's been enough to make me want to retreat into my skull for a while:
First off: the parents who had their brain-damaged six-year old daughter surgically altered so that she won't grow any bigger.
Now, I completely understand their reasoning in wanting to remove her breast buds and ovaries and if I remember correctly, part of her pituitary gland, to keep her small and to keep her from hitting puberty, so they don't have to worry about some crooked caregiver who cheated on their CORI impregnating her. But I feel like it's somehow messing with nature and playing God. She might not live long enough to grow to that size or that level of development. I feel like it's infringing on her right to develop as a human being. And for goodness' sake, it might give people the idea to elect to have their kids surgically altered in the same or a similar way, just to keep them small and cute, like some kind of human bonsai tree.
Second: the fracas over the Cartoon Network gonzo advertising prank in Boston.
Okay, I like the idea of advertising that breaks the conventions of billboard/magazine/etc. ads. And I admire Boston's Finest for their quick response in dealing with what could have been a bad situation. But... the gonzos that put up the things should have been a lot more responsible about how and where they put them. And the State Attorney General's office shouldn't be yelling to have the Cartoon Network's FCC license revoked, because that will put them out of business and punish the wrong people, ie. the studio crew members and the people who create the shows that get aired on it. I told my OOC buddy/IC friendly rival Yahweh, on the MxO about this -- he works as a video editor for CBS and he was the one who edited the stuff from Boston -- and he was shocked at that response.
Third: John Odgren, the school stabber with Asperger's Syndrome...
I feel bad for the kid: I know what it's like to be kicked around by so-called "normal" people and I've had times when there were people I honestly wanted to eviscerate for the way they treated me. But at the same time, I wish he hadn't done it, because it reflects badly on us with the same condition...
The people I'm tempted to eviscerate, I'll admit, includes the local media which has been dragging out everything imaginable about the poor kid, from his medical history, to his weblog, and splashing it all over the place. At least they've been quick to explain that most people with AS are more likely to get stabbed than do the stabbing, since we tend to do the "deer in the headlights" sort of thing when we're in an emotionally tense situation, but there's gonna be people who get it in their head that AS is a form of psychosis. I don't tell people, but I hear people talking at work, and to hear a few of them say it, AS needs a cure sooner than Ebola does. I can't speak up, since it gets too upsetting, but my co-workers, or rather, the three or four I trust enough to share this info with, have been nothing shy of empathetic.
First off: the parents who had their brain-damaged six-year old daughter surgically altered so that she won't grow any bigger.
Now, I completely understand their reasoning in wanting to remove her breast buds and ovaries and if I remember correctly, part of her pituitary gland, to keep her small and to keep her from hitting puberty, so they don't have to worry about some crooked caregiver who cheated on their CORI impregnating her. But I feel like it's somehow messing with nature and playing God. She might not live long enough to grow to that size or that level of development. I feel like it's infringing on her right to develop as a human being. And for goodness' sake, it might give people the idea to elect to have their kids surgically altered in the same or a similar way, just to keep them small and cute, like some kind of human bonsai tree.
Second: the fracas over the Cartoon Network gonzo advertising prank in Boston.
Okay, I like the idea of advertising that breaks the conventions of billboard/magazine/etc. ads. And I admire Boston's Finest for their quick response in dealing with what could have been a bad situation. But... the gonzos that put up the things should have been a lot more responsible about how and where they put them. And the State Attorney General's office shouldn't be yelling to have the Cartoon Network's FCC license revoked, because that will put them out of business and punish the wrong people, ie. the studio crew members and the people who create the shows that get aired on it. I told my OOC buddy/IC friendly rival Yahweh, on the MxO about this -- he works as a video editor for CBS and he was the one who edited the stuff from Boston -- and he was shocked at that response.
Third: John Odgren, the school stabber with Asperger's Syndrome...
I feel bad for the kid: I know what it's like to be kicked around by so-called "normal" people and I've had times when there were people I honestly wanted to eviscerate for the way they treated me. But at the same time, I wish he hadn't done it, because it reflects badly on us with the same condition...
The people I'm tempted to eviscerate, I'll admit, includes the local media which has been dragging out everything imaginable about the poor kid, from his medical history, to his weblog, and splashing it all over the place. At least they've been quick to explain that most people with AS are more likely to get stabbed than do the stabbing, since we tend to do the "deer in the headlights" sort of thing when we're in an emotionally tense situation, but there's gonna be people who get it in their head that AS is a form of psychosis. I don't tell people, but I hear people talking at work, and to hear a few of them say it, AS needs a cure sooner than Ebola does. I can't speak up, since it gets too upsetting, but my co-workers, or rather, the three or four I trust enough to share this info with, have been nothing shy of empathetic.