Category Archives: Uncategorized

Three periods of time I have ridden motorcycles. I have been driven to them by poverty. Any given quantity of money will buy a better motorcycle than it will buy a car. Most motorcycles get better fuel mileage than do most cars. Most motorcycles are less costly to operate than are most cars. I have found that bikes go better with poverty than do automobiles. Far too often in my life, the car is but a costly lawn ornament as I again walk or take a bus to work.
I am now of ancient years and in my third biker age. Way back in nineteen eighty I went back to bikes after being disgusted and financially ruined once more by used cars. I bought a new Honda, a Series 2 CB 750F (The twin cam version that out handled, for that very year, the Ducati SS 750 Desmo). As I studied dealers and deals I noticed that there was a non official group meeting nearby. I thought to myself that as soon as I had brought my skills back up to par I would go there and se what was going on.
I did. I found that motorcyclists were wonderful people and easy to get along with. (This assessment from me: an Aspie!) Well of course, we all orbited motorcycles. Motorcycling as a strange thing to do. Motorcycles may have economy on their side, but there are negatives too. Motorcycles are less comfortable and more dangerous than are cars. Motorcycles are not convenient. The rider wears special clothing, must place loads with care upon the bike. . .a motorcyclist has less in common with an automobile driver than with either equestrian or aviator. Then, like aviation, the safety is all before the accident. Don’t crash, you are safe enough; crash and, well. . .
So motorcycling, being a strange thing to do, selects people who are somewhat strange. My good friend, Susan, said it all quite concisely when she wondered if we are a bunch of cowboys. Well, that and cowgirls, yes. So many specific sorts of cowboy and cowgirl, but pretty much that mold. And know what? Even though economics are part of my motivation, so is the ride. I love being on two wheels. I have known this ever since I had my first bike, a Honda CB 100 single. I learned to ride and I learned that riding is right for me.
I fit within that group of two wheeled tourists. And within that group I, autistic, had my first real enculturation. I was wit other riders of steel steeds, I was in safe space. I could explore with others whilst nonetheless being in solitude atop my Nihon mount. It was with these fine people that I found the way to escape the palpable force field that surrounded my home at some unspecified but nonetheless field distance in spacetime from my apartment and that I could not penetrate to go farther! I learned so much; how to go to an unknown place, how to enter a real restaurant, how to communicate with real people! I would not be where I am now if I had not purchased that meteor fast seven and a half and then ridden it to that gathering, week after week. Therapy!
A couple of weeks ago I got a name and number to call. A name from my past. Was it her, my old biker buddy with whom I rode from SoCal to Canada? Yes it was! And during my horridly horrid span of mom care time I had lost track of her. I will be off to visit her next week. I don’t expect to tweet much. a blast from the past made current! Things go in cycles in my life, cycles of time, and cycles with engines.

Autism Spectrum Disorders are on the rise. Just a few short years ago we accepted numbers of approximately 1 in 250 children born. Recently the numbers bantered about have been 1 in 100 or 1 in 88 0or such. The most recent number from the CDC that I am aware of is 1 in 50. I have looked up the statistics from the approximate time that I was originally diagnosed and have found them also reported within a range; that range being from 1 in 25,000 to 1 in 10,000. Whichever numbers we choose to accept, there certainly has been a huge increase in autism diagnosis during my life time.
Now, many of us with autism are loathe to believe any hypothesis other than pure genetics. I understand this viewpoint and sympathize with all who hold it true. If I am as I am due to genetics, then I may be anything at all; perhaps even a new wave of human evolution. On the other hand, to accept any environmental causation of autism implies that some of us, perhaps even I, are damaged. Being autistic is difficult, more difficult than being a “normal” person. Being autistic and having to wonder if something – some thing – damaged you; that if only that thing had not happened that I might be normal. . .that would probably make the being autistic even more difficult. I mean to say that I would far rather be the next stage of evolution than damaged goods!
But a rise from about 1 on 10,000 to about 1 in 50; during my short lifetime? How? Perhaps it is just better diagnosis. Come on, how many kids with no eye contact, not hugging their parents, using unusual language – or no language at all, flapping, spinning, did we completely fail to notice in 1962?
But wait! There’s more! Autism is not the only human issue that is far more common now than in (recent) years past. Asthma is hugely more prevalent than when I was an asthmatic child, and asthma is hard to miss. I doubt that parents just didn’t care about coughing and choking children. Diabetes has also increased in a non linear fashion and to disturbing levels. MS was rare and now is not. Cancer rates are frightening. Look around, it is not only the Autism Spectrum that is gaining ground, we are running out of “normal, healthy” people!
Something is wrong. We the people are living a long time. . .on maintenance drugs. We the people are living a long time. . .with disabilities. There just may be an autism epidemic; there seems to be an epidemic epidemic!
Something seems, to me at least, to be wrong here. I suspect that environmental factors may not be the actual causes, but perhaps triggers of already present human variations for good or bad. I think that we have created for ourselves an environment unhealthy because it is comprised of a lot of artificial stuff that nature in no way prepared us for. I think we ought take a good look at the sign of this: the unhealthiness of so many of us, and change this environment.

I have not blogged much during the past week. I have been having a troubling flare of my not known but highly suspected neurological disorder. (This is a Zone One probability.) (I am disordered, what else is new?) This issue actually scares me, if it is what I believe it to be it could easily land me in a Hover Round (I think these are probably really neeto devices and if ever I need one I want one. I do not want to want one) (That sounds like a lyric by “Cheap Trick!), or in a grave.
Here is a funny thing. Whenever a strange thing hits me and which I think is probably neurological in nature I google the symptom(s). Each and every time the search takes me to pages describing the underlying trouble that I consider to be a strong probability (Zone One).
Here is another funny thing. I follow as near as I can (Given that I lack funds to see doctors most of the time.) and the flare follows about the course that one would expect.
So, I am running an upped daily dose of Prednisone, which is indicated for persons having my current trouble. I am resting whenever my body tells me to. I am being even more careful with diet and supplements (Fish oil with EPA and DHA, B group vitamins.) And I am getting much better. Vision trouble lessening, and I am gaining some energy. Yay!

This is related to my article using the “F Bomb” and I am still worked up into a lather. I am in general tired of seeing children adultified by our society.
We use our children, as stated by one advocate for something or another, as “agents of change”. I dislike this for two reasons:
1. Children are not yet endowed with wisdom. * To cause a child to become an activist is to cause a young person without any philosophical centre to take part in YOUR desired activism. You may think it is wonderful to involve children in YOUR activism, but probably would not appreciate some skinheaded racist involving his children in HIS activism. Political philosophy is for adults, people. To raise a child to be good, to be honest, to be generous, to accept others is good. To foresee them to believe specific political points is indoctrination, no matter who does it.
Further, this activism is another case of thinking that children ought to be involved in legal contracts and obligations. That is barbarous.
2. The child’s mind simply must be disturbed by concepts of: pollution, economic troubles, wars, civil unrest, homelessness, sex**. . . Why? Cannot we allow a child a few years AS A CHILD? I mean: don’t worry, all you who would create within the person a mind and soul of terrible worry and torment, that is coming! The real world will impose itself upon the person soon enough! Need we destroy the child’s few years of potential innocence?
3. A child is a young inexperienced human being, rightly owing self. anyone who would consider a wonderful child to be an “agent of change” is a real fucker.

*That people will use children as, “agents of change” shows that any assumption of wisdom among adults is in its self misplaced. That child has no idea yet what is and is not in need of change. Just as a person is more than a, “taxpaying unit”, a child is more than an, “agent of change”. An agent of change is a TOOL in use by others for other’s purposes!

** In many ways, including but not limited to childhood “beauty contests” our society sexualizes the very young.

I just read a CBS on line news article which states that two seven year old boys have been suspended by their Suffolk County School district for using pencils as guns, making “bang” noises. This school district has a zero tolerance policy on weapons. Weapons, zero tolerance. Pencils and “bang” sounds are not weapons. The only thing making these pencils in conjunction with, “bang” sounds is within people’s minds! Certainly the boys thought that the pencils and, “Bang” sounds were good enough for a game of shoot ‘em up within the boy’s minds*; will they be punished for thoughts? How long until brain scan technology now under development is used to peer into all our minds? When that happens, will any of us be prosecuted for the thought of weapons when we are insulted or fired or harassed on the basis of zero tolerance extending into our gray matter?**
The actual weapons being zero tolerenced here were actually those within the minds of the school system officials. Those people took pencils, bleeding pencils, along with boys making, “bang” sounds to be actual weapons suitable for banning and for expulsion of the boys from school.*** How did such fucking crazy people as that; people who would take pencils and sounds to be images of weapons and then move on to images of weapons being the actual weapons themselves to be then subject to zero tolerance regulations, get into such positions of power? Because we the people are so fucking foolish as to place them there and grant them a hell of a lot of power, and then tolerate them and their fucking stupid actions! That’s fucking how!
BUT: there is another point to be made, a point more subtle than the previous and probably more important. So there is a school system zero tolerance and the boys broke it with pencils and bangs. Now the boys are expelled. The breaking of regulation with attendant expulsion constitutes the usual operation of a legal covenant. And know what? Every civilized society understands that children lack some degree of intellect and of emotional control that allows them to understand the legal covenant as they are informed of it, and the emotional control required to cause them to live by it. This is why we do not allow children to sign legal contracts.
Yeah, but there is one here. it may be implied, but it is real and obviously has legal consequences. Oh yeah, just for the record: I would not require kids to take the Pledge of Allegiance either, for the same reason.****

*And, boys play with weapon toys folks! Guns, phasers, bows, light sabers. . . This is what boys do, lacking anything else they will aim Barbie dolls at each other and say, “bang”. There is no report of anything approximating bullying or violence here, just boys doing boy things. Is being male illegal now? (yes)
** Yes, of course we will.
*** Pencils and bangs to images is step 1, Images to actual weapons is step 2. Two steps of ill logic are needed to reach the zero tolerance threshold.
****As we require children to be ever more adult at ever lower ages, we expect and tolerate childish crap from adults to ever greater degrees.