ROW 80 POST 31 – YOU ARE WHAT YOU’RE LABELLED, ONCE AGAIN

This is a repost from October 28, 2011. 

I don't really know if most of the inhabitants at Happy Acres FSJ and my part of Nebraska Avenue are afflicted with some kind of labeled "challenge." But if we are tagged, were we all defective from the womb, or have we worn out certain parts of ourselves with high living? I suspect a combination of both, with a sprinkling of just plain awfulness of personality thrown in. And, if we are so afflicted with shitty personalities, should we join AA? That's for Assholes Anonymous; "Hi I'm S and I'm an asshole. It's been 13 minutes since my last assholery...blah blah" Heh. I actually counted down from 10 to 0 in my very best Dahlek (Peter Cushing Dr. Who era) voice and proclaimed S had achieved "epic and complete and total assholishness,"  after he performed the egregious act of throwing away his dinner, because H "talked behind his back." I did not exterminate him; I should have. There are people here who have no food.

Anyway, The labeling thing is beyond absurd. I've heard "mentally challenged," (stupid as a hammer) "altitudinally challenged," (shorter than 5 feet) or "socially challenged," (for above mentioned assholes) "hearing challenged," (eh?) and "spatially challenged," for fat people. No shit. So I guess I am "bi-ocularly challenged." Does the use of the word "challenge" mean that we will all some day, rise up, grapple with and conquer our "challenge"? Or are we doomed to be Sisyphus and push our rocks of "challenge" up a chasm, for all eternity? This is political-correctness run amok. To me a challenge is cutting up some vegetables without slicing off my fingers. A challenge is getting on and off the bus without doing a face plant in the gutter. A challenge is getting in and out of the grocery store unscathed without being run over by the oblivious ass hats who shop there. I finally broke down and got one of those canes for the blind, with the intention of beating the shit out of the next person who runs into me. Heh.

I wonder if there is a "challenge challenged" type? You know, the type who wanders from room to room and forgets every single thing they set out to do in that moment? And then, when the chore is remembered, the "challenge challenged" challengee dithers for the next four hours over whether or not this chore is worth the effort.

I believe that in the effort to de-stigmatize certain conditions, races, genders, and all other "othernesses," our society has succeeded in completely homogenizing the population. George Carlin talked about this at length in some of his routines. You can no longer say "crippled," "lame," "halt," "retarded," or "deaf and dumb." Now these terms are pejorative. We have the "fill in the blank-challenged," or "fill in the blank-deficient." Bullshit. I associate "deficient" with lack of vitamins. And God forbid, we should use "feeble-minded." Just for the pure music of that term, I love "feeble-minded." But then, I've been called "feeble-minded" for years. Just kidding.

And please, oh God, spare me from "blankety-blank years young" and "handi-capable. I cringe.Enough of this diatribe; I risk becoming "windbag challenged.

We are settling into our new place and it's so nice to have our own space, privacy and belongings again. I hope this continues. I have seen some people who had moved out of Happy Acres move back, because of lost jobs, illness and the usual situations of substance abuse and bad judgment. I would like to feel more secure. Even though I am on permanent Disability and have no (more) vices, things could change in an instant. I have to go back to the doctor next week for more tests. I guess I'll just savor this and quit being a worry wart. Wait. Is it possible to be "peaceful deficient?"

I do know that some of us are "hearing challenged" here. The other night, we were getting ready for bed. O said, "okay, I'm gonna have a turkey and go to sleep now." I was all like, "what?" and had this vision of her tucking into Thanksgiving dinner before going to sleep. Turns out she was going to have a cookie. Once, I asked H who her favorite rock group is. She said, "the Harrassments." I'm like, "oh? And what did they perform?" She looked at me like the Mother ship had just made a stop and let me out. "Are you kidding? You've never heard of Aerosmith?" That's as bad as the time I asked who had written the song "The Wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald" and D told me it was Peter Cetera and it was "The Wreck of the Ella Fitzgerald." I must have missed that one.

Mr. Pimp My Ride, aka Rehab Knife-fight minister got hauled off to the slammer for, you guessed it, brandishing his knife a few days ago. I knew this was coming. He was working up to actual people. He started out with abusing lawn chairs and worked his way up to stabbing the garbage cans.

Here's a picture of him "pimping" his "ride." That's actual tin foil in the spokes. I need to borrow some to cover the chicken I baked. He thinks this will compete with the heavy 20k Chargers, stacked on Neb Ave. Just awesome, man.  

For some stupid reason, I always hum "Baby, You Can Drive My Car," when I see this pic.

Pimp My Ride's blood bro communicates in a way that swamis and linguists would find hard to decipher. B talks like this: "mumble, murmur, Pat... Phone, beedy beedy beedy. My shoes, burble burble." I have never caught more than a word or two that was intelligible. It's as if a broadcast from some far away galaxy was being received and fading in and out. There are several people at HA who ramble on and on and not one word is understandable. Or, if the words are understandable, one has no frigging clue what is being said. "Oh yea, I told her it was all through my symptom and she said she was sending me to a duodenist for a relining." Uh, okay. Good luck with that. Hope they don't have to do too much fragmenting on the ol' bean-pate.

Then, we have the ones that insist you do something that you have never done in your life, but they swear they have seen you do it a thousand times. H has never smoked; she doesn't smoke now. D badgered her for a solid week, trying to borrow a cigaret. H told him she didn't smoke and never had. D called her a liar and said he'd seen her smoke "millions of times." This is the same cat who took a whole carton of Crystal Light and dumped 12 servings into one 20-ounce bottle of water and then bitched that he was out of "pop," after he drank the swill. Yup. So, you see he was a firm grasp of what's real. He finally stopped bugging H, so the following week, she tried to bum a cigaret from him. That really confused him. "But, I NEVER seen you smoke!" There's a neighborhood woman who roams around here bumming cigarets from EVERYONE. ALL of us, smokers or not. We've all quit smoking, we tell her. "Yup, kicked the habit, Barbie. This is my second week of not smoking," I said. Total bullshit. But if I tell her I don't smoke and haven't in quite a while, she'll hound me for a butt. However, if I've just quit, she'll leave me alone. I don't understand this logic. Maybe because it's not logic. Not even close. It's not anywhere near the realm of possibles. There's another lady who will give you some of her food stamps if you'll buy her scratch off tickets. I just quit gambling, so I don't know how that's working out for her.

Anyway, the reason I haven't posted in a while is because I just spent a few frustrating weeks fighting with the OpenCloud Security virus. I absolutely refuse to reload my O/S and all the other applications. We never did it at IBM or Verizon and I'll be damned if I'll do it now. After several frustrating days of poking around in Safe Mode, Safe Mode with Networking, Blue Screens of Death, and yadda yadda, I got rid of the bastard. The supposed "tool" that is free at various download sites doesn't work and is not free, so in the best IBM Break-Fix tradition, I killed it and preserved all my data. But what a pain in the ass. I first dealt with viruses at IBM when idiots would write "prank macros" for MS Word. Hated them then, hate them now.

November 19, 2012

End of a post that was about labeling and is going to be part of my little self-published book; I'm trying to pull together. Right now, I'm in the last stages of a marathon and I'm at the "pacing myself" stage. I slept until nearly 2 pm today. I've been feeling pretty good, but have the usual symptoms, only worse, sundowning like crazy and pain, pain, pain. EMS was here to take my vitals after a very bad chest pain with crushing feeling, during a tense phone conversation with a violinist friend about another friend, but all was well. The subject and issue at question reads this blog and I am fully aware of that. One of THOSE things. So, hanging on until March, 2013 and the "miracle" diagnosis and sinarest or requip or magic beans or juju.

But that is not what I want to confess. This is what I want to confess: during my diggings, I ran across this. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Forgive me Father, for I have sinned:

This was part of that post, but I had written it over the summer of 2011, not yet knowing what was to come;

We have a new "housie" here at Happy Acres. I have never, ever in my whole life met anyone so dyspeptic, unpleasant and vituperative... ever. In my whole life. He is the wart on the  hog. He has systematically managed to piss off everyone in this place, which actually is not that hard to do. There are lots of folks here who are unbalanced mentally, usually for very significant reasons. When Mean Mr. first moved here, he came out on the porch without his shirt. There is a house rule regarding proper dress; shirt on at all times when outside. H tried to tell him nicely that he needed to go inside and put on a shirt. Mean Mr. acted like H had just called him a bad name and was going to soap his windows or something. Jerk.

My turn in the barrel came last week. There is a porch on the back of the house which the owners added. My room abuts this porch at the back. Every jack-leg, douchebag, blow hard, and/or babbling wino sits right on the other side of my bedroom, right where the head of my bed is situated. Last week, Mean Mr. etc, was on the porch, bellowing on his cell phone at about 6:30 am. Woken from a fairly sound sleep, I cranked my window open, and asked him to please be quiet, not once, but three times. I got very cranky at the old crank.

Mean Mr. completely ignored me and kept bellowing away. I had to get one of the "enforcers" to tell him to get the hell off the porch. Mean Mr. blah didn't take too kindly to that, but he left and went off somewhere else, to plague someone else's existence. 

I found out later he has Parkinson's Disease. (note: he was also 64 and was soon asked to leave Happy Acres, for "not playing well with others," or some shit, ed.) Now, I feel for anyone who has any type of physical affliction, but this does not give the sufferer a license to be an asshole.  I asked him the other day if he contracted asshole-osis at the same time he developed Parkinson's.  I have been singing "Mean Mr. Mustard Man" at the tops of my lungs every time he is within my vicinity. Heh. I'm pretty sure he hates me, but he already hates everyone else, too. I'm so going to Hell. 

I believe that we are not given more that we can handle, but I do certain believe that after all I had been through, I really had no right or reason to pass judgment or be so cruel to this man. Or maybe I did. Let’s call this one a draw. He was at FSJ because he was on parole. A parolee with a disease. A homeless person with a disease. Not unique and still hard to live with. This is where compassion gets tricky and I’m still in a quandary over it, a Quandarious, you might say. Or, irony much?