hopeful

Every time geneticists discover something 'important', homo sapiens is brought another step towards its increasingly imminent extinction.

Nazi geneticists are pursuing their objective of a master race, initially by gentle seeming steps that fool naiive people, just like their idol Adolf Hitler did. Whatever the cause, genetic or otherwise, of somebody's Aspergers or Autism or many's another characteristic, it is inherent to the way they are. Autism/Aspergers could not be 'cured' without destroying - murdering - the people with that characteristic. The problem lies alone with those who cannot cope with diversity.

Please delete.

Well if the rest of them in that pen and all their antics there represent 'normality' in its full glory, then one can only laugh.

Well if the rest of them in that pen and all their antics there represent 'normality' in its full glory, then one can only laugh.

This amused me at least, athough it still relates to Aspergers. Once, when my late father meant to refer to my Aspergers he got his words mixed up and said Asparagus instead.

As a child I slept wonderfully. Since my teens I have suffered from insomnia to varying degrees at different times. Over the past week or so my sleeping has been going through one of its better phases. If only this 'phase' would last forever.

I detest geneticists and all they stand for. They are intent on creating a master race in which I will have no place. They are the Nazis - The Next Generation.

Something Different I have Aspergers and I relate to a lot of what you say about yourself.

I went to a mainstream school and I sincerely wish I had not. I would have been better off by far, both socially and academically, in an Asperger school. It might be said that participation in mainstream education gave me some flavour of 'normality', but at what cost? Being tormented out of my wits, and excluded by the other pupils from their social networks, leaving me terrified a decade on of anyone not paid to work with 'unusual' people? Comprehensive education is a pack of nonsense, never extended to the adult world for obvious reasons, based on the illusion that people with different aptitudes, personality types and 'behavioural tendencies' somehow belong together. It is to blame for a great deal of the grief that even many 'mainstream' pupils, never mind 'unusual' ones, are forced to endure. At the extreme it is responsible for the sheer bedlam that afflicts many schools, due to disruptive and even violent behaviour from pupils, who are either being forced against their will into a basically inappropriate environment, or who in some cases, let's face it, are just plain bad.

Autism/Aspergers are utterly inherent to the personalities of those they affect : if I did not have Aspergers I would not even exist. So if I resented my Aspergers I would be resenting my own existence, which would clearly be nonsensical.

Yes thats right waccoe, you tell 'em! I really enjoyed your jibe about the PT instructors! I would just describe PT as a form of supervised playtime for the physically strong and socially adept, in which those of them so inclined get opportunities to victimise those who are weak in terms of physique and/or social interaction abilities, and with the biggest bully of all in ultimate charge. (Compulsory dancing remains the ultimate example of PT horror in my own personal experience.)

Well many of the symptoms of Aspergers are certainly being used to describe Sir Ted.

I cannot abide noise because it completely disrupts my thinking processes, preventing concentration on anything. I do not find earplugs very useful and fear that they could even damage my ears. I think that even the obvious compensations which that would involve would be outweighed by the deprivations. Bluetack seems more promising! However, I also believe that in the first place society is far too tolerant of inconsiderate noisy reprobates who are allowed to create disgraceful degrees of noise pollution with blaring stereos, televisions, musical instruments, barking dogs etc etc etc... This intrudes on what ought to be my right to peace and quiet within my own living space. If these yobs need to live in a perpetual racket to drown out the crushing silence between their ears they should use ear phones and drive themselves deaf instead of those with the misfortune to be living near them. Better still, noisy and / or otherwise antisocial thugs who are renting council accommodation should all be sent to live next to each other on the same street, so that their current neighbours can have the peace they deserve. The dump I used to stay in in Inverness was extremely noisy, predictably enough on the basis of all the other vices there.

I am in the Scottish lowlands.

Guess I must be the only Buffy fan here then. Buffy is a very admirable person. Spike can be very funny even though he is a baddy. At least he sometimes tries to be good.

That vile place did not own my meals. Yet for the first two years I spent there, I was not allowed to eat them in my own room. Things only changed when I began taking my meals into my bedroom regardless of many threats, including one from the manager herself to actually stop my meals altogether in reaction. I finally forced these vile bullies to relent, and for the final year I spent in that accursed dump, I had all my meals in my room. Had they not made such an issue out of it in the first place I would not have cared where I ate my meals. Most residential / nursing / old folks homes bully their clients into eating their meals in dining areas. I would urge every victim of this domineering blackmail to resort to direct action as I did, and take their meals to wherever they would want to eat them. The moment staff attempt physical obstruction or to steal any meal of their victim, the victim should contact police and insist the wrongdoers be prosecuted. They should also contact the mental welfare commission and their MP. The local social workers might or might not be any use in the matter. Mine were actually siding with the dump they had put me in, which in the first place had been against my will. This was by no means the only issue I had with that freakshow, by which I do not mean the residents, but the largely stupid, ignorant, arrogant, wicked staff. They belonged to the scum of the earth. (I am one of those old fashioned types who are not being complimentary but condemnatory when they call something 'wicked.')

I spent almost three thoroughly vile years at xxxx Nursing Home in Inverness, which is the worst place I have ever been in in my entire life. I would like to see it closed down and its staff, particularly the owners and managers, jailed and never employed anywhere ever again. I could write pages. I have not one good thing to say about it.

The optimum level of physical exercise for an individual is good but no-one of any age should be forced into any activity, like dancing or team sports, with the potential for psychological humiliation. Any other policy is downright evil. Another problem I had with some PT instructors was that they thought they knew better than my mother whether I was well enough for PT or not. The head PT instructor once started yelling at me when my mother had written a note informing him that I had the cold. My mother wrote a lot of these because as a child and a teenager flu and asthmatic problems were a serious nuisance for me.

PT, which should be optional, could often be a hard time for me. Dancing was just the worst PT activity.

It is now nine years since I left school where I suffered many terrible experiences. The most traumatic of all of these, which I remember still with the greatest anger, was compulsory dancing. If there is any lesson I can give you, NEVER force dancing practise upon anyone, least of all on those with social interaction conditions like Aspergers. Being a school outcast is quite bad enough anyway without teachers imposing this ritual humiliation on you. Every aspect of dancing, which although it only took place in Decembers I would spend the rest of the years dreading, was sheer torment for me. Being the last to be chosen was bad but having to select a partner was an absolute nightmare. Even when there was only one girl left and I had no option but to pick her she would still be as nasty as possible about it. In fairness, having to dance with me must have been a disgrace in its own right because I could never remember the steps, and would literally collide with other dancers when going in the opposite direction to them. (My working memory is nowhere near so good as my long term memory at the best of times, never mind when I am being tormented out of my wits, so I never learnt anything positive.) The teachers were victimising the girls they forced me to dance with as well as myself. Adults only dance on a voluntary basis and it should be the same for children and teenagers. Could it even be a 'milder' psychological form of rape to force anyone, never mind a teenager with Aspergers in front of thirty contemptuous 'normal' teenagers, to dance against their will with someone else? I am defiantly proud to say that although I was usually well behaved in all my school years except in primaries 5 and 6 after moving house and schools, and though I never skipped any other class, I did skive off several dancing periods. When the school presumed to discipline me for this rebellion against their torture and I then asked to be excused the torment of dancing in future, the assistant head literally sniggered at me. I have remembered him with utter contempt ever since. The teenagers had the excuse of being teenagers. There was no excuse for any of the teachers involved, least of all for the one who found something funny about it.

I am also on a gluten/casein free diet, having been diagnosed with an intolerance to both, particularly gluten. I used to take soya products as a substitute for dairy stuff, but I stopped consuming them upon learning of a brain damage / cancer risk allegedly associated with soya. I hope I am wrong about this.

I am a 27 year old man with aspergers and a susceptibility to depression. I have passed quite a few OU courses initially in Maths and last year in History. I am doing another History course this year, which if I were to pass it would take me 90% of the way to a degree.

Call me immature/eccentric but I like Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

That would make a change.