The Forbidden Sister

Le Mur by Sophie Robert

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 22:07:50 +0200

Watch it here if you want to see how truly awful things are in France for autistics and their families.
Sophie Robert was sued by some of the psychoanalsts she interviewed for making them look stupid. To be fair, they had a point. She did let them talk.
They won, because freedom of expression is so big in France right now.
Below is my take on this.

Sandrine.

Breaking news - Royal wedding near disasters part II: the zombie invasion.

Mon, 09 May 2011 19:09:02 +0300

While Princess Kate was busy defusing a bomb all by herself, other, darker, smellier dangers were lurking.

We learn that a group of zombies were arrested in a London Starbucks, for a ‘potential breach of the peace’. The zombies were five in number, and reportedly, had eaten brainzz cake earlier in the day. Sixteen policemen stormed the Starbucks cafe where the zombies had taken refugee and were sucking on some overpriced milky brew - they were searched and taken to the station where they were arrested.

Who knows what mischief the zombies would have caused if it had not been for the police’s timely intervention. Studies have shown that in case of a full blown zombie apocalypse, the prince would not have stopped to rescue his princess. Maybe, as she was a ticking bomb, this would have been just as well.

Breaking news - Royal wedding near disasters part I: the terrorist plot.

Mon, 09 May 2011 18:55:00 +0300

We can now breathe a huge sight of relief – but ten days ago, unbeknownst to us, forces were at play to destroy us. Not only did they want to destroy us, but they picked a time when we were at our most vulnerable, basking in the glow of royal love vows and cartwheeling vergers. But the dark forces were very much at work, as we are now finding out.

There was a bomb. Not only was the wedding itself being targeted but it was done from its most vulnerable point – planted inside the bride’s womb! Top lifestyle/career blogger Penelope Trunk explains to us, step by step, how it came to be there and how it was defused. She tells us that Kate was indeed a ticking bomb but that her timely wedding was enough to defuse it, and that we should all be grateful to her.

Just in case the same terrorists decide to plant bombs inside of us too, Ms Trunk advises we follow the same steps as Kate.

1. Don’t bother about a career: it will only interfere with your finding a husband, and you’ll have to give it up anyway.

2. Have children young, before thirty, as otherwise they will have birth defects, and they will probably become terrorists.

3. In order to have children before thirty, you should be married by twenty-eight, which means that you must have found your prince by twenty-five. Ms Trunk links to ‘scientific research’ that proves this and quotes ‘zillions’ of books that back it up.

4. Relocate, relocate, relocate. Give up your career, if you were stubborn enough to start one, and follow your husband. It is a fact (scientific research, zillions of books, etc.) that women do not care much for their careers and that men do not care much for their family. Hold on, that’s not right. Of course men care for their family, it’s just that women care more. Or care better. Or are too stupid to say they care for anything else. Or whatever.

If you follow all these steps, disaster will be averted and the bomb will not go off.

I think we can all learn from this near catastrophe, and avoid making potential terrorists of ourselves by following Ms Trunk’s advice as closely as we can.

Tune in for part II ~~next week~~ in about five minutes’ time.

I went hunting at the weekend.

Mon, 09 May 2011 15:15:37 +0300

For these little buggers.

No fun was had by anyone.

lest you think none of us can draw… here are a few of my...

Mon, 09 May 2011 14:33:28 +0300

lest you think none of us can draw… here are a few of my son’s productions.

The Royal Wedding

Fri, 29 Apr 2011 11:33:17 +0300

All these people who spent the night camping outside Westminster Abbey in their little tents! Imagine their disappointment when they figure out that Kate and William are getting married in St Andrews! We know that’s where they are because why else would they bother to show St Andrews on the TV?

My friend Hannah is the very best

Wed, 27 Apr 2011 19:23:15 +0300

Every now and again a good blogger has to engage in endorsement or publicity.

So today, I give you Hannah Dee. This is because she’s a really cool person who has great houses in places we like to visit, a rather nice husband who keeps bees, and she organises excellent events for female computing students. But mostly, it’s because she has just sent me this:

Yes, people. Google lipgloss. Mango and ginger flavour. How cool is that?

Which reminds me that I also very much like Google. I definitely endorse them too. I like: gmail, blogger, google doodles, google calendar, and picasa. I’m not so fond of google pages and docs, and I don’t like buzz or waves. But, hey! So if Google wanted to send me promo stuff and things, they’d be very welcome. I also like my Android phone and would very much like it if Google were to open their app market to Turkey. I promise I would not just get free apps.

And just in case you’re wondering why I’m not on blogger right now given how much I like google, then it’s because of Digiturk. I am not endorsing Digiturk at all. Not only did they get blogger banned in Turkey (the ban seems to be lifted now, but that’s probably not thanks to Digiturk), but I have spent the afternoon on the phone trying to persuade them that the previous phone calls were serious and that yes, I did really want to cancel my fucking subscription with them, and that yes, I did think it meant they shouldn’t charge me any more.

So let’s hear it again for Hannah and Google. They’re great. And let’s not hear it ever again for Digiturk. They suck.

A light giggle in the family home.

Wed, 27 Apr 2011 13:37:35 +0300

Just sayin.

How to win a pissing contest

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 18:23:37 +0300

Every now and then, if you spend a lot of time around men, you get caught up in an all important social and professional tradition: the pissing contest.

Which, as a woman, you technically cannot win.

You might, if you are a resourceful woman, try to find ways around your very obvious impediment. After all, no one ever said that the urine had to come from an actual flesh and blood penis naturally attached to your pelvis, did they? All that really matters, is how far it goes.

So perharps a hose, with a funnel and a strap - yes, I feel one could take on the men with one of those.

Another solution is to open up the competition a bit, make it more inclusive by choosing a way to expulse liquid from the body that doesn’t require gender specific organs. Like, say, crying.

Just one tiny change in the rules, and we women will win the next pissing contest hands down. Then we’ll feel better about it, right?

More sprout than chocolate?

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 18:48:17 +0300

At dinner last night we played listing 10 famous Belgium people. We came up with nine. And that was counting Jean-Claude Van Damme twice, because we weren’t quite sure about Leonidas.

As I was going to bed I had this flash back from the early eighties (my punishment for having had too much to drink) and I found our number 10.

I wanted to share it with you.

The cheerful punkyness of Plastic Bertrand fits right in with the friendly anarchy Belgium finds itself in. And don’t believe the Youtube comment that says the lyrics are nonsense. They’re weird, sure. A bit lame too. But not quite nonsensical.

May the tune stay in your head as long as it stayed in mine. Just sharing.

Oldie but Dusty?

Wed, 20 Apr 2011 18:00:00 +0300

No, dear. All you gotta do is get him drunk and take him home.

Catchy tune, though.

Zombies can't photoshop.

Wed, 20 Apr 2011 10:14:04 +0300

A member of Orange County Republican party, Tea party activist, Marilyn Davenport, circulated an email with a photo of Obama’s face stuck on a baby chimpanzee sitting with his mummy and daddy chimpanzees, with the comment: ‘Now you why - no birth certificate!’

When asked to resign on grounds of racism, she claimed that she hadn’t intended the picture as racist. It only became about racism because ‘one or two people’ chose to make an issue of it.

She’s apparently been described as a ‘nice old lady’, which to me, an averagely sensible human being, doesn’t seem right. Monster, comes to mind.

When I brought this up at breakfast, my husband suggested that maybe she had once been a nice old lady but had had her brains chewed out by zombies. I considered briefly the possibility that all tea party members might be zombies, along with the members of the French National Front, one of whom was recently photographed executing a nazi salute, and the people who desecrated the site of a new mosque in Belgium by planting a pig’s head with a cross in the middle of it.

But I was called back to harsh reality. These people are not zombies. Zombies would not know how to use photoshop, or email. Zombies would eat the pig’s head.

No: these people are truly human monsters.

Autism Awareness: Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse.

Sat, 16 Apr 2011 21:20:32 +0300

So let’s see. We had autistic kids as werewolves, as vampires. I had to draw the line at zombies so I really thought I was done with this particular series of tasteless posts.

But then I came across this. ‘Le packing’ is French ‘therapy’ for autism that is particularly disgusting. Not only do they wrap children like mummies, but they do it with cold water. Probably because it makes the electric shock therapy afterwards easier. I’m kidding. At least I hope I am.

Anyway, the good news is that at least people are fighting it now.

So let’s join them.

Autism Awareness: When words aren't enough...

Sat, 16 Apr 2011 18:04:20 +0300

… you sometimes need to resort to empty threats.

I bet you’re off to SouthPark yourself, now.

The wonders of Cappadocia

Thu, 14 Apr 2011 09:59:06 +0300

And this, my friends, is called a fairy chimney.

From, I kid you not, the ‘Valley of Love’.

The fucking weather

Wed, 13 Apr 2011 14:54:33 +0300

Tomorrow, the buds on the tree outside my office will all be open.

Except if it snows, or thunders, which it might, like it did yesterday, because that’s the kind of thing it would do.

And then tomorrow my tree might look like this:

Either way, tomorrow, this sage I picked on monday will have dried.

And I’ll make it into a cup of tea.

Do your thing, weather. See if I care.

Botanical action movie

Tue, 12 Apr 2011 18:44:23 +0300

So I thought I’d make an interesting film of my stay in Cappadocia.

Here it is.

Scary cbeebies

Thu, 07 Apr 2011 10:51:07 +0300

Having just written a heart warming post on my other blog all about how watching the teletubbies for eight years non-stop helped my autistic son express himself through the arts, I would like to pause a moment and reflect on another aspect of those incredibly rich and educational cbeebies programs. They are bloody scary.

As witness this video I found on Youtube - well, Max found it, and I swiftly directed him to another, but not before I’d seen enough to make it difficult for me to fetch a glass of water at night unaccompanied, and hence difficult for my husband to keep his cool when woken up in the middle of the night.

So watch at your own risk.

Max, on the other hand, was just fine. It’s probably to do with not having spent years in company with Freddy Krueger, etc.

Nasty brutish and short

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 16:54:31 +0300

I was talking to someone about the horrifying, totally unacceptable treatment of a bunch of women by the army in Egypt a couple of weeks ago. These women, who had fought for the revolution, had been captured, subjected to torture, and forced to take a virginity test. If the test failed, then they’d be treated as prostitutes, and it would go on tv so their family and friends would know, which would result in them being ostracised. I said that this meant that the new Egyptian regime, whenever it came about, would need some serious legislation to ensure that women don’t get treated that way in Egypt. Attitudes need to change, and it’s up to the state to make that happen.

The person I was talking to shrugged. This happens everywhere, they said. It’s just the way things are. As this person was well read, they also quoted a philosopher.

Hobbes, they said, tells us that men are nasty, brutish and short. Therefore it should come as no surprise that men, who are also stronger than women, will treat them that way whenever they get the chance.

At this point, I believe I had to resort to violence.*

But my cooler, philosophical self should have pointed out the following.

First, Hobbes does not say that men are nasty, brutish and short. He is refering to life in the state of nature, not people. I believe what he had in mind was the absence of electricity in the state of nature. Or wireless. Whatever.

Secondly, even if this was right, and men were nasty, brutish and short, I don’t believe they’d have much success harming women. It simply doesn’t add up.

Well, they could try…

Also, has it occurred to any body that J.R.R. Tolkien may have been reading Hobbes? There might be a paper in that.

* No students were harmed in the writing of this post.

No garlic please - I'm autistic.

Sat, 02 Apr 2011 11:11:45 +0300

So it turns out that not only can you cure autism with silver bullets, but tons of garlic should do the trick too.

It’s amazing the things you can learn on the internet. All in the spirit of autism awareness day.