Sunday, October 28, 2012

It's October 19th... Or is it?

This week has been a total wash. I'm not in my usual habitat, i.e. my apartment, so it's been really difficult to be productive. I'm taking care of something important, though, so I'm not going to complain.

However, the next time I do spend a week out of my natural habitat, I'm going to make a travel version of this system Autistifying My Habitat. In my normal habitat, I set up similar schedule boards for myself and was amazed at how motivated I was to do the dishes just so I could move over the velcro "dishes" tag to the completed column. Chores that usually pile up started happening. On a daily basis, even.

This week, however, I'm without my schedule and I've regressed to watching old episodes of Community on Hulu all day. It's partly research, because Abed is one of my pop culture Aspie heroes (along with Benedict Cumberbatch's Sherlock Holmes, Kenneth from Safety Not Guaranteed, and Jess from New Girl. Jess might be a debatable choice, but I'm keeping her because she seems like she'd be okay with dating an Aspie guy, and that's good enough for me at the moment).

I'm also kind of in turtle mode because an essay I wrote about Abed and how he's my Aspie hero was returned by a pretty big deal internet magazine. It wasn't a rejection, per say. In the response the editor said, "This is an interesting piece, but you should resubmit it for consideration when "Community" comes back on the air. I wouldn't run it right now, but I might then."

So, it was neither a rejection nor an acceptance. It was a deferral until such a time as NBC figures out what it's doing with my favorite TV show. They day before NBC announced that they were indefinitely delay the previously scheduled October 19th season 4 premiere.

I had originally planned to post my essay here today, contingent upon it being unequivocally rejected by other publishing entities. Unfortunately, thanks to NBCs noncommittal scheduling stunt, I have a very equivocal 'you should resubmit.' It's very fair for the editor to give me that kind of Magic 8-Ball response. Nobody knows anything about when Community is going to start, and it only makes sense to publish my essay if and when Community starts. NBC, on the other hand, is being very unfair about not letting me know when I can watch my show. I know I shouldn't take it personally, but, to be honest, I think I am. It's personal. NBC is breaking my heart.

The cast  and crew of Community, however, gave us this: 


The cast and crew of Community love me.

Happy October 19th, everyone. Whenever the hell that's going to be.

4 comments:

  1. New hypothesis based on Tony Attwood speech: ASD is an emotional oversensitivity fear condition. Caused by overactive (enlarged) amygdala. Problem with eye contact etc is then that its too much info. Therefore avoided. Oversensitivity can explain the same results. However would suggest that in highly controlled situations and /or non emotional settings empathy processes function better. What is your take on this? if any?

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    1. I haven't heard Attwood's new hypothesis. Lately, most of my reading on the topic has been focused on the narratives of people on the spectrum.

      Having said that, I do believe that fear is a major player in the difficulties of ASD. And there is definitely a difficulty in filtering and processing incoming information. It's easy to be overstimulated by information that most people filter out. With greater self-awareness, I'm finding more and more that eye contact can feel so 'loud' that I'm liable to miss the intended message. I get two or three plausible messages from the information, probably because I'm not able to focus on the accompanying body language that would otherwise clarify the intent.

      In highly controlled situations, like a movie or a play, I feel like I am able to more strongly read the emotions of the characters. I feel pretty safe as the member of an audience, and I know I'm not expected to interact with the actors, so I can observe all the information with ease.

      In fact, it might be anxiety over creating appropriate responses in social situations that contributes to the inability to filter and process the incoming information efficiently. Which would bring us back to the oversensitive fear response.

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  2. Since i'm commenting on a @partlyrobot blog I find it rather insulting that i'm checked after making a comment on not being a robot. By a computer. i.e. a robot. Who thinks he can judge, just because i can read. Is there a purpose here? A deep neo modern reflection on life's irony's

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  3. Sorry. Those are Google's robots, not mine.

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