At various points in my life, by various people - I have been called childish. I can see where this comes from - I am 44 years old and autistic, and I still enjoy a lot of things that are considered childish things. I color and paint. I like stickers. I enjoy blowing bubbles off my balcony or while on a walk on a windy day. I enjoy putting things together and taking them apart. I love learning about the world, and will often read schoolbooks or watch videos to educate myself on a subject I don't know enough about. Because I am dyscalcic, I even work through children's math workbooks to help things like times tables and math formulas stick in my head. I play games involving cute little animals on my kindle. I sleep with a stuffed animal named Mr. Fluffy. I talk to my cats in cat language, and sing silly songs to them in my language.

These are all things, as a grownup, I should likely be over doing. Most grownups would not sit happily for an hour putting stickers of cats into a sticker book, looking at the color variations between breeds and enjoying the smooth texture of the stickers and the way they feel in my hands. This is how I relax, however. Simple soothing activities like this clear my head.

I have no interest in a lot of things adults seem to hold as exciting. I don't drink, I don't smoke, I don't care about which actor or royal person is doing what to whomever for how many dollars. I only want enough money to be able to live comfortably and afford things like my therapy and decent food and a car that runs. I don't want to go to a club, or a vacation resort, or a luxury spa.

I still get overwhelmingly happy when I see a flower blooming. In fact I am likely to point and exclaim "Oh, look how pretty!" to anyone I am with. Yesterday I saw a family of Canada geese including fuzzy gray little goslings and thought about them for the rest of the day, looking up what they like to eat and what their migratory patterns are and what areas of the US they are found in.

Other childlike qualities I have include a desire to share. If I have something, I want my friends to enjoy it with me. What can be more fun than playing a game together, or going for a walk together, or if you have read and learned something - passing it on for others to enjoy and read?

At times I may have a childlike joy in life, and I may enjoy simple things that many adults have outgrown or never paid much attention to. But I don't think that makes me childish. To me, childish is causing drama and reveling in the drama around you. It is not caring about the world around yourself, or the feelings of others. It is living a selfish life that is only concerned with having more, bigger, better, faster and consuming without thought of why/how/or how much will be left for future generations. And I think too many so-called adults are in that perpetually childish state, with nothing much to show for it than a pile of meaningless stuff.

We went to Stormwatch Comics and All Things Fun to pick up our free comic books for comic book day. They were both crowded - lots of people coming out for free comic day! Stormwatch had some costumed characters (Wolverine and Black Widow I think it was) . They let you take three free comics each, and also pick up five other comics from a HUGE selection. After the five free ones, if you wanted more, they were only a dollar each.

All Things Fun let you take three free comics and they had some posters and pins for free too. There were also free pretzels yum. Outside they had costumed characters from Star Wars, and inside they had some card gaming going on.

Both stores had a lot of specials - All Things Fun had some good discounts on games and such, but we'd already gone through our fun budget for the week.

Here's a list of the comics Aus and I got:


From All Things Fun:
The Dark Crystal / Mouse Guard (dual book)
Kung Fu Panda
The Lone Ranger / Battlestar Galactica (dual book)
Imperial Cadet Training Manual (activity book)
Green Hornet
Sonic The Hedgehog
The Astounding Wolfman

From Stormwatch:
The Stuff of Legend / The Intrepid Escape Goat (dual book)
Bongo Comics Free For All
Civil War Adventure
Atomic Robo (plus Moon Girl)
Darkness Confession
ICE Immigration and Customs Enforcement

(and the ones we picked out for the five free- )

Knights of the Dinner Table no 116
Zantana vs the Royal Flush Gang
Warriors Three (4 of 4)
Mouse Guard The Black Axe (2 of 6)
Secret Avengers (6)
Deadpool (33.1)
Dracula The Company of Monsters (5)
The Dresden Files (volume two - Dynamite 4)
Uncle Scrooge (403)
Army of Darkness (Dynamite 8)

Pretty good haul! Lots of comics to read.

It's been a while since I've done an installment of Dirty Word Theater. Today we present to you a word that comes courtesy of the hidden object game I was playing... which asked us quite seriously to find a cockade. After much laughing and wondering if it was a marital impliment or an unusual swizzle stick in a drink, we looked it up.

A cockade is a knot of ribbons, or other circular- or oval-shaped symbol of distinctive colors which is usually worn on a hat.

In the eighteenth century, a cockade was pinned on the side of a man's tricorne or cocked hat, or on his lapel. Women could also wear it on their hat or in their hair. A cockade uses distinctive colors to show the allegiance of its wearer to some political faction, their rank, or as part of a servant's livery. In pre-revolutionary France, the cockade of the Bourbon dynasty was all white. In the Kingdom of Great Britain a white cockade was worn by those supporting the restoration of a Jacobite monarchy, while in contrast the established Hanoverian monarchy they were trying to overthrow had one that was all black. But elsewhere and at other times there was more variety.

During the 1780 Gordon Riots in London the blue cockade became a symbol of anti-government feelings and was worn by most of the rioters.

During the American Revolution, the Continental Army initially wore cockades of various colors as an ad hoc form of rank insignia, as General George Washington wrote:

"As the Continental Army has unfortunately no uniforms, and consequently many inconveniences must arise from not being able to distinguish the commissioned officers from the privates, it is desired that some badge of distinction be immediately provided; for instance that the field officers may have red or pink colored cockades in their hats, the captains yellow or buff, and the subalterns green."

Before long however, the Continental Army reverted to wearing the black cockade they inherited from the British. Later, when France became an ally of the United States, the Continental Army pinned the white cockade of the French Ancien Régime onto their old black cockade; the French reciprocally pinned the black cockade onto their white cockade, as a mark of the French-American alliance. The black-and-white cockade thus became known as the "Union Cockade".

Cockades were later widely worn by revolutionaries and proponents of various political factions in France and its colonies beginning in 1789. Just as they did in the United States a few years before, the French now pinned the blue-and-red cockade of Paris onto the white cockade of the Ancien Régime - thus producing the original Tricolore cockade. Later, distinctive colours and styles of cockade would indicate the wearer's faction—although the meanings of the various styles were not entirely consistent, and varied somewhat by region and period.


Want more hot cockade action? Check out these national cockades, or perhaps this tutorial on how to make your very own cockade by hand.

Tonight I : rescued a slug, saw fireworks explode so close that cinders rained down on the car, had beef and broccoli followed by cherry water ice, laughed about gas from the seventies, made an entire biker gang look at a woman with boobs bigger than my head (by exclaiming 'That woman has boobs bigger than my head!' . She did.), heard a story from my childhood about rescuing a half-bald chicken from the middle of the road, and came home just in time to reconnect with a dear friend. Sometimes, life is good.

Christmas Gift Toy & MySpace Layouts at pYzam.com

One of my friends is hosting a Halloween Scavenger hunt on LJ. Click on the pic to play - looks like it'll be pretty fun!

There is a non-standard punctuation mark intended to combine the functions of a question mark and an exclamation mark in English called an interrobang, which resembles those marks superimposed over one another (‽). The sequence of "?!" or "!?" is used more often, however.

American Martin K. Speckter invented the interrobang in 1962. As the head of an advertising agency, Speckter believed that advertisements would look better if copywriters conveyed surprised rhetorical questions using a single mark. He proposed the concept of a single punctuation mark in an article in the magazine TYPEtalks. Speckter solicited possible names for the new character from readers. Contenders included rhet, exclarotive, and exclamaquest, but he settled on interrobang. He chose the name to reference the punctuation marks that inspired it: interrogatio is Latin for "a rhetorical question" or "cross-examination";[2] bang is printers' slang for the exclamation point. Graphic treatments for the new mark were also submitted in response to the article.[3]


http://www.interrobang-mks.com/


The interrobang (/ɪn'tɛrəbæŋ/) (‽) is a rarely used, nonstandard English-language punctuation mark intended to combine the functions of the question mark (also called the interrogative point) and the exclamation mark (known in printers' jargon as the bang). The typographical character is a superimposition of those two marks. The same effect is also frequently achieved by using both, e.g., "How could you do such a thing!?" or "How could you do such a thing?!"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interrobang


Is it just me, or does this sound like punctuation porn?

I say we interrobang all over the internets and bring it back to popularity. What say you‽

So after saving a little bit of my Gather / band money at a time for what seemed like forever, I finally had enough saved to buy the Wii I've been saving for. Of course, then it took a while to actually find one in a store. But we have it now - and wow, is it amazingly fun. It has wireless connectivity to our internet - and it downloads all the news and weather for all around the globe. When you read a news story, it shows you where on the globe it takes place. And you can spin the globe and click to see what news is happening in a particular place. It has a shopping channel that lets you download oldschool NES, Nintendo, Sega, and N64 games to play (they cost like anywhere from 5-10 dollars each). Haven't bought any of those yet, but will be buying at least Super Mario 3 and the internet browser for the wii very soon.

Today me, Aus, the kids, my mom and my brother all played Wii sports - so much fun. My mom kicked ass at bowling. It's good exercise, too!

Also, if you haven't seen it yet- go learn some vocabulary while earning free rice for hungry people!

Today I got the most amazingly cool toy for five dollars at Five Below. It's called a 'Zizzle Zoundz' ,and it is a talking alarm clock / mp3 player speaker / music maker / recorder / toy. It has three sensing light ports and six sculptures. You can place a sculpture on a port and it recognizes the sculpture and plays the sound associated with it - but if you put the same sculpture on a different light, it produces a variant sound. The cube is a recording device - if you place that on a port, and press the 'record' mode, it will record your speech or input from your mp3 player or background noise or whatever. You can then drop the cube onto the light ports to produce variations of that sound bite. You can also adjust the tempo, reverb and so on, of the entire composition. You can set the melody you create to be your wakeup sound- and it will wake you up with it, gradually increasing in volume. It also has a sleep function so you can listen to music for a set period of time then it will shut itself off - nice if you want to set up a relaxing light show and musical interlude for falling asleep at bedtime.

The coolest thing is that when I looked it up on Amazon , it's selling for $57.00 - which means I got a super deal. I think I'm going to try and head back there soon to pick up a few more as gifts. It's just that fun.

In other news, word count is at 11,896 , which means I am about two thousand words behind, sadly. I have to try and spend this weekend catching up.

You Are 52% Sociopath

You're not a sociopath, but you're very prone to antisocial behavior. Other people's opinions matter little to you. You live your own fringe life - for better or worse.

I was diagnosed as one once, though. I've been diagnosed as a wide variety of things - the earliest one I remember from childhood as being the generic 'emotionally disturbed' because I had little interest in my peers.

Been having a lot of fun on our mini-vacation. My birthday was lovely- we ate big steaks at Fuddruckers, played video games, saw the Da Vinci Code, played a game with the kids, the kids made me a little cake with a candle on it - it was a good day.

Today we went out to Old Country Buffet, and picked up some games at Best Buy - Rampage for the PS2, and Life/Yatzee/Payday and Sims 2 for gameboy advance. Man, Rampage is some serious fun- there's nothing like being a giant monster stomping all over a city. And it's two player mode (which when you've got a whole family that plays games is always a plus). Not quite as good as the games that allow four player (always a hit around here) ,but certainly good.

Called the IRS today - found out that they do indeed have our paperwork and it is in the computer system. They told us to disregard the letter we'd received and just wait because they hadn't even looked at the paperwork yet other than to enter it into the system. They claimed to have a backlog and told us that if we didn't hear back from them within a month, we should call them again. If we do get our tax refund at all, chances are we'll be getting it just in time for Christmas at this rate. Bah.

Speaking of people that don't want to give us our rightful money, we go to arbitration for our first car accident on Wednesday. Finally. Five years after the fact. The insurance company is still fighting it, and it's likely going to have to go to trial said our lawyer, which means it could be another year or so probably, if we get anything at all. I'd really like for my medical bills to be covered, at least. That'd be nice. Anyhow, we have to go to the Hall of Justice (so super hero like!) in Camden. Where I don't really ever want to go, because Camden is like... completely ghetto and rather dangerous. I'm trying to see if I can get my brother to give me a ride, since I have zero friends around here to stand by me and help me in times like this anymore, sigh. Yes, that is a little bit of a whine there. I miss having local friends a lot- not just for helping each other out purposes, but for hanging out and being social and talking and having fun stuff, too. Bah x 2.

Tomorrow we're going to take the kids out to Batsto and lunch. We were planning on going to the Ripley's Believe it or Not museum, but I think we'll do that later in the summer when hopefully we have a tax refund to help make the trip more enjoyable.

Anyhow, I'm doing mostly fine and having fun!