My Thoughts on "Autistic Bikini Queen"...

Fern Riley's comedy from Power and Chaos 

I’m not sure what I expected from a comedy special called “Autistic Bikini Queen” that I found in the Recently Added Section of Netflix—no, that’s not quite true. Because, in a whiff of lateral and internal ableism—that is, to say disability discrimination that we have learned to aim at other disabled people as if life is one long evaluation that my former suck-up energy will allow me to score well on—I fully expected comedian Fern Riley to be built like a brick wall that might or might not have body odor. Like, the whole “Bikini Queen” thing is ironic as calling an old guy “young man” or some shit. I think I was wrong about that in a way I’m often wrong, but I think it’s important to document such things as a path to growth. More to the point, she’s funny and great to watch.

Fern isn’t glamorous, but if she really defines herself as a “hot autistic woman”, I wouldn’t disagree.Even if she’s not all that into eye-contact—an obsession American culture has that I don’t share, whether due to being stared at, or my own(comparatively minor) neuro-divergence, I’m not really sure.

 

 

Well, this was unexpected...

 though I don't suppose there's an established route toa parody of the Second Coming but I did wonder if I was going to have my character raise it as well.

In Which The Algorithm Chooses Well...Mania...

 

I’m not as pissed at the Netflix algorithm as I should be for its thinking I like Health stuff after I watched Crip Camp a few months ago—definitely better than when Facebook thinks I’m doing charity when I write the word “disability” in my posting. The Australian limited seriesAustralian limited series, on Netflix focuses on Liv Healy, hard-living food and lifestyle reporter who has a health scare that threatens her visa back to her life in New York(probably due to public-charge rules” rules that make someone who might need benefits an inadmissible green-card candidate; your Bohemian Crip can cross “leaving the country” off her list of ways to cope with the Burgeoning Crisis Of Democracy. A theoretical loss, but still, sometimes keenly felt.as most discrimination is.)

Mostly the show is funny, despite dealing with bodily frailty, mortality, and the ways in which we don’t share our feelings with our intimates. Celeste Barber, as Liv, brings the right mix of humor, good times, and bull-in-a-china shop to  Liv’s zig-zagging quest to clean up her act and face some things she’d rather not.

If you can, help my friend and colleague...

Help Beverly get care! 

I know I don't have *tons* of readers, but it would add up if everyone threw in a few $.
Let me know if you do!

Attention-Seeking Behavior(Fiction, possible title)

 ome original fiction, right from my journal. This is part one, maybe of about twenty in this form.

Kyla usually hated mornings. But she especially hated waking up dazed and ever so slightly bloated, with what she was sure must have been a weird dream clinging to her consciousness.

Indeed, the other side of the blue sheet she was lying on was smooth and flat; nobody had been in bed with her since her mother had climbed in to straighten the sheets the week before.

“It felt so real.” She mumbled under her breath, and her roommate slash attendant heard and said “You’re looking rough.”
“Are you allowed to talk to me like that? I might report you to the union.”
“You’d have to get us one first. We attendants are totally the exploited proletariat.”
“Are you really asking me to feel sorry for you?!”
“Not really.” The attendant smiled. “I took a shot. “ Her eyes turned appraising and narrowed. “Are you really okay?” Jess asked after helping Kyla into her wheelchair, where she landed with an oh-so-flattering smack. That sounded really sexy, Kyla thought as she did many mornings. I am cute right now.“Had a wild weekend?”
Kyla was overcome with a brief wave of nausea that made sweat bead out on her forehead. “Not for a few years,” He was cute…kind of a bad idea. Maybe more that she was square enough to send him a Christmas card. Like he was a client, or family, or something
Jess said “Well, you do eat like a raccoon in a garbage dumpster. Maybe you have something food-borne.”
“You make my food.” She found the frosty glass of coke that jess left her and for an instant Kyla understood about fountains of youth.
“Okay, *we* eat like raccoons, okay?" 

To Be Continued...

California Dreamin'...

 

Thinking of my beloved Golden State today and of my many friends there who I don’t see enough. And of Barbara Lee and Katie Porter who lost out to a well-funded windbag this week.(And, yes, even our windbags are usually better than their…athletic supporters, but, damn). Not exactly the best display of free and fair elections I could envision(and yet, the US has all these notes for other countries…sometimes I think we can save it, you know.  Till we can convince Texas and Florida they don’t have fiefdoms, at least.)

 On a more personal note, my friend’s husband booked the date for a spring memorial, and, just like a lot of things that my friends do that aren’t online, I won’t be there. Sometimes I’m not sure why it was so important that I cheated death(Another thing that happened in California) to be my friends’ Zoom friend.  Even if my sense of humor kind of means I am terrible at memorials that aren’t wakes. (I know that, anyone inclined to wouldn’t need to make me feel better about it…)

I’ve gotten to the point where I can say the right thing some of the time; for a person with an unfinished life, well, I miss a lot of people by now.  I’m too on the sidelines, so far, to have some major “Big Chill” moment, but I’m not sure, even if I felt like having a full-on Crisis…I’m not sure I’d get to see it through.  I quit one of my committees last month, after a great deal of agonizing, and I’m not sure my supervisor even believed me.

I suppose if my life felt…finished, it would mean that I should be thinking of wrapping it up or something. I hate to say there are occasional times like that, especially since, well, it’s kind of all the same, and I don’t mean an endless round of readings and cocktail parties, or candidates fiending for my endorsement.
It’s the same like “Gee. This adolescence is taking an unbelievably long time.”

Except this time, I don’t get to graduate.

All my friend wanted was to keep doing what she was doing, raise her kid, love her husband.

She’s not here.  I am.

I’d say “Make it make sense,” but I’m afraid I would hate the answer.