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Journal Marxist Hacker 42's Journal: For the aliens out there 41

Journal by Marxist Hacker 42
And I'm not talking the illegals- but rather those of us who have something, anything, wrong with us, and thus feel like we don't really belong in standard US society- or maybe even our own families.

I'm mainly writing this in response to SarahAnAlien's set of posts; because I've yet to figure out exactly what's going on in her life that makes her feel like an alien (she's never stated it explicitly- I went back and read all of her JEs).

For myself- it's a combination of three main items:

1. I'm a sufferer of Asperger's Syndrome- which makes it really hard for me to be comfortable with other human beings or confident offline.

2. I'm a liberal Vatican II Catholic- but one who holds to the teachings of the Magisterium, which makes me far too right wing for most Americans socially and far too left wing for most Americans financially. It also doesn't help that I have Native American ancestors and relatives and still feel the pull towards animism, which used to be the main religion on this Continent before the whites ruined it.

3. I'm INFP on the Meyers Briggs Personality Profile- which means I can't stand hypocricy in myself or others, yet I'm facinated by the extremes of issues. As "Please Understand Me II" put it in the description- I have a fascination with the Holy and the Profane.

So what makes you an alien? Are there times you just don't fit in? Anybody else living with that feeling on a pretty permanent scale?
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For the aliens out there More

For the aliens out there

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  • ..when I feel like I might have a pretty snazzy solution to a problem (for instance my "no income taxes are necessary" postulate) but I can't articulate it well enough, or I know that the application would probably be well beyond the bounds of probability. Those are frustrating times and I feel "alien"-ated then.

    I think it happens quite frequently to people who have extreme imaginations (visionary) and deductive -> progressive -> extrapolation skills. (garden variety smart). In extreme cases it would
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • You haven't figured it out yet? I'm only a few JE's in, but I'm almost positive there is only one possible explanation. But she does a very good job of explaining exactly what it's like to be an alien without telling you what exactly it means. Very interesting. I'll let her explain explicitly when she wants to. What a far-out head-trip! Thanks, Sarah, if you're reading this. It's OK to be an alien. But you know that. Actually, I think it would be kind of cool. Difficult, of course, but cool in a way. Few pe
    • It's quite obvious, MH. No doubt about it. The only question is why, and I don't think she knows that either.

      I'm not sure if she says where she lives. I haven't figured that out yet. But my advice would be to simply move to someplace where they don't mind aliens so much. Such places exist.

      Our culture is absolutely ghastly and horrible. I just wanted to point that out. What's really scary is, what if she's already living in one of the places where they don't mind so much, and it's still that difficult be

      • place for aliens, I suppose (I figured it out, she leaves an obvious clue), but definitely not the worst either, which is really disturbing. I mean, imagine being an alien in someplace like Kansas City! Sheesh. Man, our culture is fucked up.

        SarahAnn's journal should be required reading for all slashdotters, especially certain ones I'd rather not mention by name. Of course, the odds are they just wouldn't get it... sigh...

        • I mean, imagine being an alien in someplace like Kansas City!

          I knew an alien who lived there, for a few years. Thankfully, she moved to a more hospitable place, tho her spouse and child stayed there :(

          Another bad place for aliens is Arizona. There, we must register as sex offenders, just for existing, and our rights are rather curtailed thanks to that.

          And, back in Illinois, from whence I hailed (until moving to Seattle), the official "treatment" for being an alien was electroconvulsive therapy (it may
          • Without worrying about the problem, is what ECT is. Purely Pavlov that is- using electricity to end the problem by forcing the person to react negatively to the symptoms is stupid.
            • Quite true. It's not a cure, it just trains victims to fear ever doing *that* again. Think of the cost to society, too - the best programmers I've ever known, myself included, were all trannies. Ever hear of Wendy Carlos, the musician? She's basicly the preson who managed to make electronic music respectable, back in the days of Moog's great wired-programmable one-note-at-a-time synthesizers. Could you imagine what we'd have lost had she gotten ECT as a "treatment" for being different? Or, more recent
              • Funny- I say the best programmers are autistic- because they can concentrate on one large, complex system for an immense amount of time that the average, more socialized member of the species, would find downright irritating.
                • Could be true, I've never met any autistic programmers. However, ability to concentrate is also big among trannies like myself, because if we immerse ourselves so totally in something, for a while at least we can be distracted from thinking about our underlying gender dysphoria issues.

                  How's your time sense? I mean, how are you at concentrating so hard that hours pass like seconds? I've had that happen often, and sometimes it stretches to days passing like seconds. Give me a repeatable bug, a pad of scr
                  • My time sense used to be rotten. It still is to some extent. Amazing how often I pull wraparounds- I look out the window and it's daylight, I look out thw window again and it's STILL daylight- but I know I've been working more than 12 hours...

                    This is REALLY common among autistics- but the bad thing is that the reverse is also true. If asked to do something we're NOT interested in, like the dishes, it's damned hard to find enough concentration to finish it (or sometimes, even start it- it's amazing how m
                    • Again, I hear you. Same thing happens to me, tho not nearly as extreme. I'm getting better about it, with practice, and a lack of really absorbing books to read.
                    • I'm getting better about it, with practice, and a lack of really absorbing books to read.

                      Too bad you're not on a path that leads to being fertile- my time sense started getting a lot better when I had Christopher to wake me up at 2:00am...still does thanks to a bad case of bronchitis lately (if I don't wake up to his coughing, and mommy doesn't, there'll be baby vomit in the bed, guaranteed).
                    • :) No need to be fertile, I have cats. They keep me amchored to the here-and-now rather well. Any time I start getting involved in what I'm doing, along comes a cat who demands attention. That kinda sucks when I'm in the kitchen :)

                      Actually, had I been born female, I might have had kids. My temprement is far closer to a Kinsey 5 than a 6, which may be part of why I have had like zero lesbian friends, yet have had dozens of bi women friends. Try as I might, I still cannot grok what makes a lesbian tic
                    • Try as I might, I still cannot grok what makes a lesbian tick.

                      I'm not sure about the genetic ones- but the environmental ones all seem to have had some form of abuse from a male in their past, either by commission or by omission.

                      Also, I'm fascinated by your politics.

                      Keep an eye on the Presidential Campaign blog at technocrat.net (President4242 is my userID there- I post daily, with some variation in time, but I make sure I have something new every day). I'm just wierd enough not to fit into normal US
                    • And of course, the falling dollar will eventually cause massive stagflation- because Greenspan's method of controling inflation has nowhere to go below 0% interest rates.

                      Quite true. I've thought Greenspan a dangerous fraud for some time now, with his nickel-and-diming interest rates, hoping some trivial change will have a large outcome. The only outcome I've seen is he's still employed. There is no teal growth, nobody is actually producing anything tangible any more, and only shyster economics is provi
                    • Huey Long? Wasn't he one of Lazarus Long's clan? (GRIN, hoping you'll get the referrence)

                      I get the reference- never thought about it before, but in personality and politics they are polar opposites. Huey Long was the closest the US ever got to electing a populist dictator- and did elect him for two terms as state governor and three as Senator. Lazarus would have said that Huey had "socialist's disease"- though from the point of view of a leader rather than a follower. He wanted to be the goose that la
    • I've read all of Sarah's JEs- but I can think of at least 4 possible explainations, and the other alien introduced me to a 5th.
      • Clearly the 5th is the answer. But I don't see how the other four could explain the bit about the driver's license. What sort of "medical disorder" would not be immediately obvious to some, but be evident to others, and be instantly recognizable to someone looking at the person's driver's license?
        • Ah, I had missed that bit in SarahAnn's journals- I was going more on the blood tests, etc.
        • oops- forgot- split personality or depression would fit the driver's license bit- especially if the name was different, or if a new name had been chosen to help cope with the life change that triggered the depression. So no- not obvious that it's #5 automatically.
          • Yeah, I guess you're right. But combine the driver's license incident with getting the ears pearced and how big a deal that was, and the bit about having to buy a bra for the first time only a year and a half ago, though she is clearly not in her teens (she says she lost a decade of her life to severe depression), and all the paperwork involved and people's reactions to that, and the odds sort of stack up.
            • After reading Ms. Willow's and SarahAnnAlien's latest journal entries and posts- I begin to suspect that we're both right. It's NOT just Tranny that makes them alien- they've also got some symptoms that remind me of my autism (and the cure that apparently works (for Sarah) is remarkably similar to my own neurochemical rebalancing act that I go through every couple of years or so).
              • I think that's what Sarah is saying, yes. She says it's a matter of pure neurochemistry. I suspect this is a much misunderstood topic. We really know so little about how the brain works, we are only just beginning to scratch the surface of such anomalies.
                • Quite correct- it's amazing how many autistic people have played around with cross dressing, as well as how many trannies seem to display some autistic characteristics. Going back to my earlier journal entry though- I don't think it's possible to generalize a cause for all of this. Different people have different causes- thus what works for me or Sarah to balance out our neruochemistry, may be entirely inappropriate for Ms Willow, the genius I've forgottent the name of who has a single brain instead of he
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  • Well I am very incompatible with society. I like being alone. I am good at stuff that doesn't earn money. I don't like being managed by others, including at jobs. I like doing things certain ways that most people find weird. I don't lile watching sports or playing most of them, or any competitions for that matter. In general I like stuff most others don't and vice versa.
    • That fits me to some extent- except for computer programming, which used to offer a somewhat ok living even for the socially inept as long as you were willing to become a Microsoft Whore (program in Visual Languages) or a Sun Whore (program in Java). If it wasn't for my wife, I'd never attend another "party" in my life, because I simply don't enjoy them.
  • I would like to try to figure out your alienity from the racial background you have. If it might be a little bit disturbing for you to hear, I'm sorry. I intend to show answer for it.

    You have lineage from Native American, right? -which comes from Eurasian Continent through Alaska 9000 years ago, Alaska was connected to Siberia at that time. Your ancestor was the main residents for 8500 years till Columbus 'discovered' America in 1492.

    Since European people started coming in the Continents, your ancestor

    • I would like to try to figure out your alienity from the racial background you have. If it might be a little bit disturbing for you to hear, I'm sorry. I intend to show answer for it.

      Interesting idea- considering that the Asperger's comes from the German side of the family.

      So it will take a little time for you to realise that such distinctions as you now feel are just a matter of degree. I hope you get rejuvenated, and I hope you start feeling you are nothing but an American! I know America will realis
      • I referred to http://www.aspergers.com/aspclin.htm/ [aspergers.com]

        I mean your alienness comes from your difference in appearance from other Americans. -I think you know what I was driving at. All people are a mixture of two or three different races. There's no pure people. All are a matter of degree.

        Some disorders are from genetically inherrited. Since genetic science has been in great progress, you can expect plausable medicine soon. It's beyond my capacity to make a comment how your particular disorder affects the f

  • Alien implies that there are more of your kind out there somewhere, just not here. Unique, is a more descriptive word, and much more positive. You are one of a kind, and it is in essence what most Americans strive for. You've achieved the holy grail of American individualism without truly trying, and thus become an inspiration for others. Don't support the label of alien for true uniqueness and individualism.

    So what makes you unique?
    • An ispiration for others? ME? I'm struggling to survive day to day, I have this nagging little voice in the back of my mind that something has gone terribly wrong with the universe or at least my corner of it; and I speak up WAY too much about what is wrong to have any real success at all.

      I'm also not quite unique- with matching 10/10 for aspergers, precisely .0244% of the population is also very likely living my life quite closely. Also, the word individual is one that is particularily meaningless for
      • I really hope that a communist hacker believing that 42 is the answer to everything is unique :)

        I started reading SaraAnnAlien's JE last night, and I understand why she classifies herself as an alien in the sense that she is often isolated away from others like her, and that there are others like her (in what she feels makes her an "alien").

        Maybe because I've read more from you, I think differently of your claim to alienness. How many of the 0.244% care about economics and religion (at most 1 in 1000).
        • Thank you for explaining your idea. The last bit though- the ability to articulately express very well thought out and controversial ideas- is one of the major symptoms of Asperger's. But I will readily admit that very likely most Asperger's sufferers aren't socialized enough to care about economics and religion....or for that matter, have the unique experience of being raised by Catholic Republicans Expecting A Great Depression during the 1970s that led to my unique viewpoint on life.

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