Saturday, September 29, 2007

Where the Streets Have No Name

Time keeps on slippin', slippin', slippin'
Into the future
Time keeps on slippin', slippin', slippin'
Into the future

Fly Like An Eagle by Steve Miller Band


It's never been a big secret that I am somewhat certifiably insane. I'm not ashamed in the same way that anyone with any other chronic condition should not be ashamed. Is Stephen Hawking ashamed of his condition? I don't know. I doubt it because he, like me, probably realizes that shame is a total waste of valuable mental energy. Some people might not like that comparison of Lou Gehrig's Disease (ALS) with mental illness, but in reality both are chronic conditions that affect the nerves and brain. And even with treatment, those with mental illness are never really "cured" just like they still have no cure for ALS. I find it a bit concerning that some illnesses gain a celebrity importance while others that are more prevalent and just as dangerous are left in the shadows, or where the streets have no name.

I could continue my rant about the history of mistreatment of mental illnesses and the continuing social disinterest and stigmas, but I'm not really up to giving a good enough rant at the moment. I've got some mental "house cleaning" to do.

It's been painfully apparent to me from my earliest social memories that I've not been like the "typical" females. Maybe it was an early sign of my later problems. I don't believe that it is a social conditioning problem. It must surely be some inherent, genetic trait. My sister is very much a "typical" female. We were raised in the same conditions so it doesn't follow that upbringing had anything to do with it. Incidentally, although we love each other very much, we do acknowledge that we are completely different and not always compatible. This has got to be because of my inability to "understand" typical female behaviors and thinking. Maybe it's a type of autism? ;-) After all, nowadays they say 1 in 166 kids are autistic, so why wouldn't that apply to adults too? (I don't "believe" in most of the new "epidemics" because the numbers of certain conditions aren't actually increasing. The rate of recognition and diagnosis is increasing.)

Well, anyway, there is one particular type of female that I've never been able to tolerate. That is the catty woman. (More modernly known as the female 'bully') My own definition of a catty woman is a woman who insults and picks on other women in ways that mostly only other women recognize. As you can read in some of the articles linked above, female bullies are often charming and clever so that they disguise their true natures, especially to males because they are so easily fooled by women. ;-) Well, I would consider it a somewhat "typical" female trait to consciously try to make oneself look better than she really is (especially to males). I think it is fair to say that one reason men aren't as perceptive of many female tactics is because their corpus callosum (not to be confused with Corpus Spongiosum or Cavernosum) are smaller which limits their ability to process social interactions.





Hey, maybe my corpus callosum is too small and that's why I have trouble with some women? I guess they don't make a magic pill for that since I don't ever get any spam emails offering some wonder drug or herbal supplement to "increase your corpus callosum by three inches!" If you ask me, that might be more beneficial to the world than a pill meant to increase the "corpus spongiosum (or cavernosum)" by three inches. ;-)

Where was I? It's hard to find your way when the streets have no name. (lol, yeah, that was pretty lame)

No really, what was I going to say? Was I finished about the catty women? I'm not sure, but I'll move along anyway. I am capable of engaging in catty behavior in response to someone being catty to me. Sometimes that is enough to stop them, but when it's not I'll just fight like a man. Life is too short to waste time verbally sparring with some catty bitch when really all it takes to shut her up is to "manhandle" her. Anyone of any gender who's ever been bullied knows that the only effective way of stopping a bully is to beat the crap out of them. That way you've taken all their power away. It might not be pretty, but if it works it's okay. And really, any bully who's dumb enough to pick another fight with someone who's beat them really needs to be beat again. ;-)

I'm aware that some people find this attitude distasteful and uncouth and offensive. Fine. Whatever works for you. But I'm betting that my approach is more effective. Oh, I just thought of something. You could compare female bully behavior to those who demand "political correctness" and other such totalitarian things. The "consensus" on global warming uses the same tactics as female bullies to try to discredit anyone who questions them. Maybe that will make it more understandable to men if I give examples like that. I would say, what's the difference in people doing that to each other's groups and individuals doing it to each other? It's all the same with the same end results. So it's despicable behavior regardless of how many people are involved.

Oh, yeah, and to some men, when a woman fights back like a man, they will mistakenly think that she is the bully and not the other one. They are the easily fooled and charmed guys with a really tiny corpus callosum. ;-) (As far as I know there is no correlation between callosum size and spongiosum/cavernosum size.)

You know, I really need to stop bringing up the spongiosum/cavernosum because it keeps making me lose my thoughts. ;-)

By the way, I'm fairly certain that perimenopause has begun and it feels exactly like being a teenager again. It's just like adolescence except in the other direction. Anyone who remembers a difficult adolescence should empathize.

I'm pretty sure I had more to say, but I'm getting hungry. Since my appetite has been bad lately I should eat. (was trying to think of some funny joke about sponge cake but ???)


Addendum: Very strange. Today must be "crazy movie day" on the cable movie channels. First I saw "Mad Love" (1995) with Drew Barrymore and then "Proof" (2005) with Gwyneth Paltrow. I hadn't seen either of them before and enjoyed both. "Proof" was especially interesting and it "hit home" in some non-trivial ways. One thing was that the sisters' relationship reflected much of what I wrote above about "typical" women and not "typical" ones. (Paltrow's sister character was the "typical" one.) But of course, no mathematical proofs are involved in my own personal issues, though if I had to pick something to try to prove it would be that God does exist. ;-)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

By a 'typical female' you might mean what they call 'girly,' but figure skating is pretty girly, dontcha think? Those little skirts and all those graceful moves. If I'm not mistaken, women's figure skating pulls in bigger TV audiences than men's, and why do we suppose that is? You may be more woman than what you think, Rae ;-) ...

I do like your device of slipping in song lyrics. Y'oughta start a regular feature here, call it "America's Poetry is in Her Popular Music," and maybe feature contributions from listeners (or whatever they call us). Here, I'll start you off:

There's a dance pavilion in the rain, all shuttered down,
A winding country lane, all russet brown,
A frosty window pane shows me a town grown lonely.

(from the standard 'Early Autumn', 1949, lyrics by Johnny Mercer, music by Ralph J. Burns & Woody Herman)

Rae Ann said...

notorious nanook, welcome! ;-) Well, by 'typical' female I mean more of the mental attitudes than the physical appearance or activities. But even skating I wasn't the most graceful and feminine. ;-) By mental attitudes I mean the priorities and tactics used in social interactions, etc.

Thanks about the lyrics. Your lyrical knowledge surely exceeds mine. I do have another blog, Lyrics of the Moment. ramskates.blogspot.com There used to be a link on the sidebar, but it's disappeared. I'll have to fix that.

To close, here's a not-too-elegant ;-) lyric:

An' I don't give a damn 'bout my reputation
Never said I wanted to improve my station
An' I'm only doin' good
When I'm havin' fun
An' I don't have to please no one
An' I don't give a damn
'Bout my bad reputation

Bad Reputation by Joan Jett

But, please do feel free to contribute lyrics any time. Yours are better anyway. :-)

Anonymous said...

No, it's just that I'm older, that's all. And I grew-up listening to jazz when most other kids were into rock 'n roll, so I know a lot of standard tunes. Though not always the lyrics, have to look those up sometimes. Then later on I got to where I was around pop music a lot too, so I've got memories both ways...

Difference between a lyric and a poem is you can hear the tune in the back of your head. And it's funny, isn't it, how an old song can put you back in the place you heard it first time around, completely back, what it looked like, almost what it felt like. Seen like that, audio has huge bandwidth...

When I was little the city used to flood the wading areas of the playgrounds in winter, so they'd freeze and kids could skate there. I remember my mom would give me a little medicine bottle of rum to take along to keep warm. But I never could get the hang of it and I'm sure you're a thousand times better than I ever got to be. And, you know, even in skating there's all degrees of girly, from Denise Bielmanns to Christy Yamaguchi ('Christy Creme,' I used to call her). Lots of ways to be a woman, Rae. Quit worrying, you'll give yourself frown lines :-) ...

Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids
In fact it's cold as hell
And there's no one there to raise them, if you did


(from 'Rocket Man,' 1972, Elton John/Bernie Taupin)