I just found out that Scouting magazine (which appears to be a merging of their former youth-centered mag Boy’s Life and their existing leader magazine) has a weekly round-up of Scouting related news (mostly Eagle Scout projects). Here are some of their more recently highlighted stories:
So, a DC area Eagle candidate, representing one of the Capitol region’s oldest troops, has replaced a washed out bridge at a local park. My older brother did a similar project in Central PA in the late-80s.
Scouts in both Kansas and Florida were helping in clean-up and restoration of neglected local cemeteries – both of which housing veterans from as far back as the Civil War. It’s actually a relatively common Eagle project, but I wish this kind of work was done more often – and not just as an Eagle project.
Meanwhile, Scouts in Tennessee got a little wild making various toys/treats for a local animal shelter. This was often threatened as a punishment for Benchmark students who couldn’t find paying jobs. They were wrong. Volunteering for animals is rewarding, and I wish I had reminded them of said threat after I was fired from the McDonalds in town.
A troop in Virginia helped raise money for animals – specifically frogs – or statues of them to attract visitors to the town and raise awareness of its amphibian residents (who live in its damp, marshy soil). One of the frogs, placed in a local park, is painted with a Scouting uniform.
However, my favorite story of the week is a 16-year-old Autistic Scout from Nebraska who raised $1300 to collect and modify toys to make them “more accessible” to other disabled children at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC, where he was diagnosed) who may not have the dexterity (or “fine motor skills” in med speak) to manipulate small buttons commonly found on modern toys.
No word from the manufacturers, but if I had found out about my “unofficial” Dx sooner, I would have totally done something like this – especially since my father was a doctor and my project (which I had trouble choosing) was already at the local hospital.
So, the day started off slowly – even by my standards – as due to a “lack of drivers” in the ENTIRE HAMPTOM ROADS AREA, the wait for rideshare vehicles to get to the park was over an hour! Yes, I get I’m going to a theme park, so some waiting will be expected, but not BEFORE I get there.
Anyway, I arrived at the park… or should I say the bus stop on the far side of the parking lot where the cab driver (who took 25 minutes to arrive, on top of the 45 I’d already waited for Lyft) lazily dropped me off around 11:30am, and I found the long line for security moved surprisingly quick. This means I need to find food… unfortunately, like their non-coaster rides, most of their restaurants are still closed due to COVID.
There is, conveniently enough, a built-in solution: Busch Gardens F&W (as all theme parks are legally required to have a “food & wine festival” these days). Unlike BG Tampa which hosts all of their special event food kiosks in ONE tiny centralized area, BGW takes a page from Universal Studios’ Mardi Gras and tucks them into far flung niches throughout the twisty park (sadly, no, F&W “Tribute Store,” lol).
This means I ended up lost trying to find food not once but TWICE. I eventually did find all of them, but because of they’re the ONLY food around (remember, their restaurants are closed), the lines were almost as long as for the coasters.
On the plus side, I got more than enough exercise for one weekend. I also found out that I missed their grand “hiring event” by ONE DAY!!! I could’ve gotten a job and settled the whole “where ya moving this summer” question right there…. but not if I’m waiting over an hour to get to/from work three or four days a week!
Okay, that last part wasn’t fair. It only took Lyft 35 minutes to pick me up on my way out of the park…
My lease expires on June 26, 2021. I am NOT renewing it again. I had no choice last year because of the pandemic, but this year I do. I have exactly eight weeks to narrow down a location, find a satisfactory home/apartment and move into it. No pressure… except the mortgage company I contacted wants to see “a driver’s license (see previous post), two years of verifiable employment (which I don’t have) and two years of tax returns” (which would prove I have enough income to repay the loan).
I can explain the employment gap (hit by a car on June 8, 2018). Unfortunately, I recently found out that I have apparently not paid taxes in the past four years (as we are still settling dad’s estate PLUS mom’s on top of that). The accountants are working overtime to rectify this, but if they don’t get two years’ worth of returns by this time next week, the mortgage pre-approval will by necessity need to be called off – essentially putting me back at square one.
Speaking of “employment gaps” (which I already covered in last week’s post), I should probably clarify that I don’t consider myself “unemployed” as I currently have three blogs – including this one – that I take turns ignoring for long stretches of time just to stress myself out trying to churn out batches of pointless filler content for to “make up for it.”
I already closed ONE back in September, and will probably start winding down the others in the coming weeks. I may bring them back at some point in the future when I’ve settled into my new home, or I might just find another topic (or topics) to write about. I’m unpredictable like that… except that I (probably) won’t get paid for those blogs either. However, if things go my way, I might not need to…
I recently mustered up as much courage as I could to send my manuscript off for another round of editing. The two biggest problems are 1) I’m missing half of my first chapter (partly due to writer’s block and partly because my laptop likes highlighting text I didn’t select and deleting it for me – if it’s successful, it auto-saves so I can’t get it back), and 2) the ending doesn’t really resolve the various intertwining plot threads very satisfactorily. A promising arc is introduced… but it kinda fizzles out and doesn’t GO anywhere.
Anyway, the company I sent it too promised it would get my manuscript back to me in “16-20 days.” Today is day 20, and I’m starting to get worried…
Prompt: Are you able to drive? If so, was it difficult to learn? What was difficult about it? If not, do you use any alternatives?
This is a tough one for me to write about as it involves unpacking a lot of complex traumas. I took a deep drive – I mean dive into the topic years ago… but that was on my previous blog, which was stored on my previous laptop. In other words, it’s long gone.
Yes, I had a license, but my parents had little to nothing to do with it. In fact, my mom refused to teach me to drive because… well, I don’t remember her giving me a straight reason besides “I don’t want to” or “it’s too much fucking work.” Dad was too self-absorbed to care about anything outside his own very narrow set of interests (where have I seenthatdescription before?), so was of even less help in the matter.
This leads to an interesting paradox: Neither of them wanted to teach me to drive, and neither liked acting as my “unpaid chauffeur.” Did either of them ever stop to consider there was someone trapped in the middle here? Of course not.
If I can’t drive myself, and they won’t drive me then what were my options – public transit was not only an infrequent “taxpayer boondoggle,” but it literally didn’t exist in our part of town. So, even when I moved out to the opposite corner of town, the local bus system didn’t follow me. I couldn’t even go out on a Friday night because the local cab company stopped service at 10pm (thus defeating the entire fucking purpose of being a cab company).
I’m sorry, what was that? Hahaha, no, Friends was just a TV show. Wait, what? Um, “real friends?” Oh, you must have mistaken me for my über popular brother. Happens all the time. I don’t get his fancy legal contracts or complex schematic drawings, but I’m sure he gets some of my hate mail. I do get hate mail, right?
Back on topic, and this is where it gets hard to write… but, yes, I did eventually get a license and a car and some glorious semblance of freedom.
For all of three days. Then, in a single moment, just as my life was starting to look up – it changed. Dramatically. Instantaneously – and very nearly permanently. That moment was 6:39pm on April 26, 2008:
The sun was still out, there was no traffic – literally. no vehicles coming in either direction – and I had just finished a rather disappointing meal at Wayside Inn and as the light turned from red to green, I made the left turn from SR-61 onto Hospital Road, another car came out of nowhere and…
Despite me doing everything exactly as the DMV Handbook said to and that no-one from the police to the media ever bothered asking me what happened (believe me, I can write another full post about the way the ableist cops treated me at the scene that evening), the accident was deemed my fault. Literally, all my attorney told me was to “shut up and take the fucking [guilty] plea – because you fucking are” (which shocked the hell outta me as I thought my attorney was supposed to be, I dunno, on MY side).
It took me nearly twoyears to pay off my hospital bills, but again that’s another post. Because I was once again carless and license less, I was once again fully dependent on my parents for transportation. I hated it as much as they did, but what choice did I have? Well, I was online when I found a story about how Baltimore was an “affordable, up and coming city for young professionals.” Did I mention the “affordable” part? Because it was. It didn’t stay that way for very long, but that’s another matter entirely.
Not only did Baltimore have relatively cheap housing, it also had JOBS and more importantly it had buses, light rail and “24hr cabs” for me to get around in. Unfortunately, I didn’t get any of those fancy jobs for the same official “reason” I couldn’t find one in the Coal Region: Ablism “Lack of personal vehicle.” I was eventually hired by an upstart media company to cover “arts, movie and entertainment” within the city. Kind of a gay stereotype, but they didn’t care how I got to my assignments, so it worked out.
Eventually (2014), I grew tired of rising rents and covering the same venues week in and week out and sought out a change of scenery. I settled on Orlando because of its centralized location and abundance of entry level theme park and resort jobs. I didn’t get any of them either, but my new apartment was on next to a small forested area halfway between Disney and Universal as well as directly on the I-Ride Trolley line as well as the Lynx 1111 to the airport.
Unfortunately, as I posted before, the I-Ride has suspended service without notice TWICE due to the pandemic. Thankfully, rideshare and delivery exist… but they’re expensive. I could walk to the grocery store in Baltimore, but in Orlando it’s a $7.65 ride each way. I know they’re supposedly bringing the trolley back in “late May,” but in the meantime, my forest is gone and those rideshares add up really, REALLY fast.
Welcome, new resident(s). My name is Jonathan (yes, contrary to public belief, I am a man), and I’m the writer of this blog, and de facto mayor of the Uncanny Valley (mostly because no else wanted the job).
I don’t generally write this blog with the intention of other people reading it, but I’m glad you’re here because it means I’m not alone in this journey (though it often feels like it). I often post sad stories here, but I’m proud to say that don’t participate in the “outrage of the day” thing like other pages do (seriously, whenever an Autistic child\teen is beaten, raped or murdered, it’ll appear at least a dozen times on my FB “News Feed” so it’s not a huge loss on that front).
Speaking of FB, some of you found this blog through its corresponding FB page where I post funny, sarcastic and sometimes depressing memes there, but I’ve been making a conscious effort to post more positive images lately. I also post any photos of places\events that I don’t have enough “good” shots to create a full “gallery” around.
I’m not sorry for what I post here, and I stand by what I write. However, I hope you enjoy my entries about “Adulting” with Autism or as I like to call it: “Life in the Uncanny Valley.”
I don’t generally make “resolutions” because I hate disappointing myself with promises I have no intention of keeping. However, I have decided to make a change to this blog starting today that will probably kill what’s left of my page views: No Disney, Universal or SeaWorld through at least the end of August if not later. This will force me to find NEW places to see and explore like Winter Park, Lake Mary, Downtown, Kissimmee. I might even spend an afternoon at Fun Spot or Magical Midway.
I have other plans that are still in the planning stages and I’m hesitant to reveal them now as I had to cancel LAST summer’s plans (a 3-week summer job and a 5-day volunteer job) due to a still unexplained stomach ailment that wreaked havoc on my body for 6 full months – and I didn’t even lose a single pound! That last part really frosts me as I was really looking forward to fitting into my old jeans again.
I am also looking into more volunteer and summer jobs – the former are for the immediate Orlando area which is difficult for since most of the opportunities are downtown – and I’m in Williamsburg\LBV area. As much as I’d love to spend six months helping the OSC (though working two or three 1-day events over same period would look better on my resume), I have no car, no friends with cars and I have found local cabbies to be unreliable at best. The latter is anywhere BUT Florida, however, I have extremely poor luck in this over the past few years, but I have hope that this year will be different.
Yes, THIS year will be different – and that regardless of what happens, is a resolution I plan to keep.
I’ve fallen a bit behind here on blogging this month with about 30 memes to post and at least a dozen half-finished blog posts about symptoms I identify with and another dozen that I don’t.
Today, I found out that avoidance of the phone is relatively common in the Autism World. I thought I was the only one to act like that. I tell people “do not call me: text or email me only” and then two minutes later my phone rings.
Yep, then they get mad at me because they can’t understand a word I’m saying (I’m CONVINCED there is a special place in Hell for whoever invented the concept of “mandatory phone interviews”) and there’s nothing quite like spending 45 minutes on the phone with some random stranger to complete a “simple 10-minute survey” just to have the woman snap “you don’t even qualify for this survey – why didn’t you tell me that at the BEGINNING of this call? Thank you for wasting MY time, bitch” (don’t worry, it was only MY dinner that was charred and inedible when I finally got it out of the oven).
If I’m forced to call someone and they do not answer I will NOT “leave a message.” I get nervous enough on the phone as it is, but hey now I have to have a cogent script already prepared just so I don’t sound like an idiot. Even if I do leave a message, chances are 100% that I will not hear from them again.
For instance, one time I called a woman about a comment for a story I was writing (and yes, I know people are already leery of talking to journalists) and left a message speaking in a slow, clear and concise manner telling her to get back to me at the newsroom. I called her back a day or so later and she said “oh, so YOU’RE the ‘crazy mumble lady,’ I couldn’t understand a word you said so I just deleted it. Well, anyway, we don’t deal with crazy people here. Have a nice day, and DO NOT call here ever again.”
Fortunately, since I moved to Orlando I haven’t gotten as many calls anymore. Maybe it’s because I stopped answering the phone if I don’t’ recognize the number. Interestingly enough, if I DO answer a call like that (there’s a slight chance it could be about a job interview), most of the time they simply hang up on me so it’s a win-win.
Speaking of wins, I hope to get more quality – and more relevant – posts up in May…or not. I’m flexible like that.
I was halfway through a rambling post about how childish Trump is for backing out of the FNC debate and how unfair it was for Chris Matthews to dismiss the event as a debate between “a couple of Cubans” (particularly since the REAL winners of this debacle are Jeb Bush and John Kasich) … but then I realized that isn’t why you’re following this blog.
I’m not really sure what you do want, but I figured abandoning a post I was clearly out of my depths on was probably the right course of action. Yes, my Disney posts get the most views (even got an e-mail from them about my last post… but I’m kind of afraid to open it), but since my dad is in “critical condition” (Stage 3 lung cancer), I may not be posting about Disney for a while.
Maybe instead of constantly complaining about people mistreating me, I could find a way to advocate for better treatment of people in my situation (that was one of the reasons I signed up for the “Lung FORCE” event back in November). I started Park\Mosher Media in 2011 because I came to the rather sad conclusion that if I didn’t “hire” me literally no-one else would.
I know I’m probably somewhat biased here, but I am a fantastic (albeit “unskilled”) worker with an excellent work ethic, but was fired from my only “real” (non-college) job at McDonalds presumably for not knowing what I was doing because they – both management and fellow employees alike – felt that showing me how to do “obvious stuff” (like work an industrial grill I’d never seen before) was somehow “beneath” them.
And thus reinforcing the recurring theme in my life (and probably others as well) that if I don’t know how to do something that no-one’s ever taught to do then that only “proves” that I’m “too stupid” to learn it in the first place.
The most obvious way to work around that is to find something that already interests me and thus know quite a bit about. If I knew what that was, I’d already be doing it. Yes, I even bought some stupid workbook on that very topic with a lot of vague suggestions but nothing concrete for me to work with – heck I once had a career counselor tell me that “no-one is stupid enough to hire you. Just sign up for Welfare like the other retards.”
I know attitudes towards Autism (and in my case Sensory Processing Disorder as well) in the workplace have changed in the fifteen years since my three-week stint at McD’s – heck, Vince Vaugn even had a movie last year about working with someone (presumably) on the spectrum – but when I look up adult services for the disorder I’m always disheartened to see the emphasis on helping clients apply for SSD.
Yes, I could continue pratting on uselessly about Donald, Marco and Jeb, but I think there has to be something concrete, something tangible and, yes, preferably something photographable (or otherwise “verifiable”) that I can do to help people in my situation. I just have no idea what that is…
As you can see from this blog, I don’t generally do “event photography,” but when I saw the listing for “Volunteer Photographers” for the American Lung Association’s LUNG Force Expo at SeaWorld, I jumped at the chance. Sometimes opportunity really does come to you.
I checked-in just after 7:30 and started snapping photos… until my camera battery died an hour after arriving (which somehow only happens when I have an event to cover).
Fortunately, I live only two blocks from SeaWorld so I was able to go back and charge my battery and phone for 20 minutes or so until the actual program started (at 10am – which is when the “other” photographers were supposed to arrive). It also gave me a chance to change clothes and get some of the pictures I’d already taken off my SD card (all 15 of them).
The irony is, the brightly lit “Docks” (21-23 plus the entire 2nd pavilion) was “too dark” for the flash on my camera, but my Motorola took fantastic pictures of the mostly empty meeting rooms without a flash… until it too died about 2½ hours after returning (despite having the same 20 minute recharge as the camera, you know, just to be safe). That left me with exactly one option – I had to leave early even though the volunteer coordinator told me that two of the other photographers’ shifts had ended.
I arrive back at the apartment at 1:30pm, changed clothes (again) and plugged in my phone while taking the other photos off my camera. I wasted the next hour or so trying to salvage something vaguely useful from my pictures.
Finally, I went back into the living room to begin the arduous task of sending the pictures on my camera to my computer. My phone does not let me send multiple photos per message so I was forced to send all 46 of them individually. Now you know why I keep taking my dinosaur camera (a graduation gift from my mom) on assignments…
Consumerist is reporting that Applebee’s in Rhode Island “forgot” to pay an Autistic line cook for a full year despite he and his parents filing the proper paperwork numerous times. Don’t get me wrong, I applaud them for hiring him, but not paying him is inexcusable!
Yes, I know people with Autism are supposed to be cold, unfeeling and incapable of empathy, but I’ve seen this shit first hand too many damned times – and I’m not talking about just freelance writing gigs (which are already notorious for not paying up – heck, The Baltimore Guardianfired me just for asking).
I was just finishing my last semester at Crafton Hills Community College and finishing the last of my requirements for Benchmark Young Adult School (now called “Benchmark Transitions”) while working about 10 hours a week for Redlands McDonalds. Unfortunately, the day before I was set to begin “real employment” for them (rather than the supposedly standard “30 day trial period” that only I was offered) I was called to the break room at the end of my shift and summarily fired for being “stupid, incompetent andthe WORST damned employee EVER in [the] history of this company” (but no concrete, specific REASON for my dismissal).
Unfortunately, it took me over six months of daily searching just to get that job and it was the ONLY reason BYAS was letting me graduate. Okay, I did anyway (on Aug 9, 2001), but it was more of a “good riddance” than a “good-bye” graduation. It was also the last time I had anything remotely resembling a “friend.” No wonder I’m so damned lonely all the time.
Anyway, in order to keep my hastily arranged graduation “on-schedule,” then “Director of Student Services” Joelle Walters (also my “Primary Counselor” for most of my time there) called me into her expansive corner office to tell me she was starting me on the school’s semi-official Non-Federal Work Study type program which consisted of “assisting” in their woodshop.
It wasn’t much: 3½ hours per day, two days per week at an even $5 per hour (slightly below minimum wage at the time) but it was easy work and kept my cookie cut-I mean “custom individualized program” going as scheduled…or so I thought.
I can’t say if this is still true or not, but when I attended BYAS Tuesday was a “special” day: the day students could – barring any outstanding fines – get their weekly “money requests” from Toni (Director of Student Accounts). Most students used said money to buy cigarettes, but a fair number of us would pull our money together to buy a large pie from the small pizzeria in the plaza on the opposite site of the Redlands Blvd there in Loma Linda (the receipt going back to Toni in the office – the last time I ever NEEDED a receipt for something).
Anyway, after several weeks of working there, I went to see in the Student Accounts office as scheduled and she just looked at me blankly.
“Sorry, hon,” she said with her smooth Southern accent. “You don’t have any money for me to give you.”
“I should, I’ve been working over at Building Trades for the past several weeks.”
“I don’t know nothing about that. You’ll need to talk with Deborah about that, and then you can come back to see me.”
The whole point of both BYAS (and likely “Benchmark Transitions” as well) and its NF-WSP is to teach young adults about RESPONSIBILITY so, of course, then “Dean of Student Affairs” Deborah Kennedy would set an example for her students by resolving this unfortunate situation in a mature, professional manner befitting her position.
“I have no clue what you’re talking about,” Ms. Kennedy said in her strong Southern accent. “We don’t pay our ‘workers,’ and I know for a fact that Joelle isn’t STUPID enough to say we do!”
That was a total LIE as “work hours” was the backbone of the schools work-education and one of the chief tenants of their financial-education programs at the time.
She then goes on to chastise me for coming to her without any “documentation” of my work contract then thus surmising that said agreement was “pure hearsay.”
“That means,” she said with a giant “fuck you” grin. “It’s YOUR ‘word’ versus mine and as the Dean of this school, I know whose word I’m taking in this manner.
“Now,” she continued her tone suddenly serious. “We are NOT discussing this matter again, and if you say another word, I WILL fine you and I know you will NOT like it! Now GO!”
The line cook above is now getting the money he’s owed…or at least half of it. Meanwhile, my five months of sweeping floors for free remains as uncredited “volunteer work” and probably always will be…
Life in the Uncanny Valley 