Gitcha some of them all-dressed chips for a little flavor with your vinegar.

And don’t travel by plane, and don’t travel at all. Build a bomb shelter basement with titanium walls.

You have no idea what I’m capable of in <<City>>. 🤣

Such an obvious mail merge. I’d imagine there is a way to automate pulling the Google Street View images and pasting them in the document, but I don’t know how it’s done.

But yeah, I got version 1 from that article and just shook my head at such a pathetic extortion attempt. I was like, “C’mon now…everyone in my life knows I’m a polyamorous hedonist. I could sell some of them whatever video you could ever possibly have of me that you definitely don’t. 😂”

Possibly from stoners? Not badmouthing weed, and I have anxiety myself so I get it, and I get that some people medicate with it for the purpose of anxiety. But holy cow man, you gotta respect a person’s time.

She was an hour and a half late. I only waited for her because she was responding to my messages, apologized for her tardiness, and said a couple times she’d be there withing 20-30 minutes which led to a 90-minite wait). Once she got there, she told me that she was late because she was having some anxiety that day and went to a friend’s to smoke a bowl first. She chainsmoked on the patio, and I sat away from her because I don’t want to smell that while I’m eating. She told me about a terrible book she was writing, with the sort of stupid plot you’d get from r/writingprompts. And then she said she needed to get high again and asked me if I wanted to come to her car with her while she did. I declined and said I was gonna head home. Proceeded to promply never see her again.

After the housing bubble burst in late 2008, Democrats approved a stimulus package that Obama signed that sent millions of dollars to the nation’s schools. Then-governor of Texas Rick Perry used those funds to balance his shitty budget. None of it went to schools. The school I was teaching at lost it’s theater arts program, they had to reduce staff by attrition, the district rebalanced staff levels in a Last In First Out manner, we got no cost of living pay increase or step pay increase (same exact pay as the prior year), and class sizes skyrocketed. I didn’t have a middle school math class with fewer than 31 students that year.

The following year, another stimulus package was passed for education. There was language in this bill that specifically said that it MUST be used for education purposes and that the money would be recouped from any state that doesn’t use it toward that end. Then-AG Greg Abbott went to court to fight for Rick Perry’s right to use the money however he wanted.

And finally, the Texas lottery was sold to Texans as a way to provide extra funds to schools. However, that’s not what happens. Instead of funds from the lottery supplementing education, it supplants the funds. It would be like if your dad gave you $100 every year for your birthday, but then one year your grandma gave your dad $20 to give to you, and so your dad just gave you $100 and pocketed the $20.

Texas Republicans don’t give a single solitary fuck about public education. I’d rail on their push for the voucher system, but I finally left that festering shithole and can’t be arsed to give a fuck about it any more.

I’m 47 in the US, and I have felt this way most of my adult life. In my teens and 20s, I always felt like an afterthought. I’d ask to be included to group events, and I rarely remember ever being invited. I’d try to chime in when people were talking, but what I’d say never quite seemed to land right. The microexpressions on people’s faces indicated to me that I wasn’t a social equal but that I was simply being tolerated.

It didn’t even occur to me that I was autistic until I was 39, and it took until I was 46 for me to get myself diagnosed with ASD1. But I’ll tell you…something happened in my 30s. I don’t know what it was exactly that changed things for me in this regard, probably a multitude of things, but I am no longer the person I was in my 20s.

Maybe it was the fact that I got two degrees. Or that I was married for 17 years (now divorced, but it was my decision) and have two great kids. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that I developed a career as a teacher and have felt pride in the accomplishment I’ve made in my vocation. Or maybe it was just the passage of time that allowed me to develop coping mechanisms thya work for me…time that tempered my worries about myself and my place in this world among others.

Whatever transpired, I’m no longer the sort of person who cares what people think of me. Of course, I always aim to be the best version of myself, someone people will admire and recognize as a safe, consensual, trauma-informed person, so I do want people to consider me a good and decent person.

But I can never control their perception of me as an autistic person. I’m different. Everyone knows it when they get to know me. When I discovered at age 39 that I was likely autistic, I told my colleagues, and they were shocked that I didn’t already know that about myself because they all clocked me as autistic pretty much immediately after meeting me three years prior.

So, instead of trying to hide it better in order to fit in. I wear my autism right on my sleeve. I tell people “When I’m in a group and say something awkward, and I can see the awkwardness on their faces 🤨, I just respond with ‘🫤😯…I…I’M AUTISTIC. 😬🙃’ And then everyone goes 'OH! Okay, that’s what it is, gotcha…I knew it was something like that! 😁”.

By telling people this, it let’s them know my sense of humor about my condition and sets them (and me) up for awkwardness in the future. Because it’s going to happen. Not all my jokes will land. Sometimes I’m gonna chime into a conversation and my comment will completely flop. But my out can always be “'🫤😯…I…I’M AUTISTIC. 😬🙃”. They’ll remember that my awkward comment isn’t my fault, that it’s this wacky thing about my brain and the way it works, and they won’t just sit their with a weird look on their face trying to figure out how to move past what I’ve just said. They’ll laugh, because I can laugh at myself! And I don’t feel so alone any more. I get invited to parties, and I’m included in the conversation.

Beyond having a sense of humor about yourself, the best advice I can give is to learn how to really listen, ask questions, and care about the responses and the people who give them. Low self-worth was been a constant companion in my life. I rarely felt valued, so I tried to create value among others by providing them with entertainment…being the funny one, or having off-the-wall talents (developed through periods of hyperfixation). I know now that my worth as a person can only be evaluated by me, and I know that I am as valuable as a human being as anyone else is, regardless of what I provide others.

That being said, what brings me great joy is being considered a friend and confidant, someone people value as a companion. And I foster that by caring about them, their experiences, and their feelings. I listen to them…really listen…not just waiting to say what I want to say in response, but thinking of questions I can ask, considering how their experiences make them feel, and proferring up advice when it is requested.

Anyway, that’s a lot. Off to work. Good luck to you!

How about “Go to hell, Shakira?”

invariably someone

a robotic voice

u/Always-Hasbeen2674

I smoke absolutely nothing, take no drugs at all (apart from caffeine), and forget to take my meds every other day…just basically raw-doggin’ reality. But I need to dig into why I do the things I do that lead to my relationships not lasting, because human connection is the one drug I am feening for the most.

Yeah, I get that. Single guy who likes to have conversations with kids: Creepy. Married guy who likes to have conversations with kids: Aww! I hate that that is the mentality people have, that single men are creeps. (That being said, it would help if so damned many of them wouldn’t send unsolicited dick pics to women on social media.)

And thanks!

Yeah, I know. When I had to get a marketplace plan in Texas during the pandemic, I had to search through page after page on Psychology Today…nearly 300 providers in, I found an acceptable one. But I’m in Portland now with insurance starting in nine days, and I’m told I’ll have a much easier go of things here.

I’m glad you got the help you needed, that’s awesome.

I have the added fun of being queer (non-binary, grey ace) and polyamorous, so finding care from sex-positive, LGBT-friendly providers who are also well-suited to treat autistic patients with gender dysphoria…

I lived in Texas until recently. For the past ten years since my journey of self-discovery began, finding therapists has been awful. But I just moved to Portland, Oregon this summer, and I was told by the genderqueer, neurodivergent benefits specialist at the school district I started teaching for that I’ll have a much easier time finding care here because (gestures broadly) it’s Portland. 😊

Bronze: Austin Danger Powers (UK)

Well bodies are supposed to be made such that the tits don’t fall off at all, so I just want to point out that this is not normal.

I’m 5’ 9" and dated a 6’ 3" cis woman for a year. She’d wear six-inch heels when we’d go out. There was no “poor fella” about it, she was an Amazonian knockout, and I got to fuckin’ climb her like a tree.

Tai Chea

From r/sbubby way back when. “A funcking beesechurger for monch.”

The photo of Leon dancing to Copacabana is making me feel more than a little punchy.