I feel like too much of an autist to be at a Weird Al concert
AI Voice: "And that's on me."
WARNING: another stream of consciousness tl;dr post no joke - this is mostly rambling and over-externalizing stuff
lol, as much as I wanna blame good ol' 'tism + CAPD + shit vision + a lack of natural spatial awareness, a lot of what fucked up an otherwise, at least, ok performance by Al last night (boomer nerd humor has not aged well) was stuff I absolutely could have prevented.
#1 we could have not gotten floor seats. A year ago when we got these tix, it was like "wow, look how close we'll be." I would have taken a much shittier seat if I knew how bad floor seats at concerts could be. We were packed, quite literally, ass to ass with little to no space in between seating. There is no reason the venue couldn't lose like one or two seats per row, like even an extra inch or two between seats would have helped. You have to constantly stand up and sit back down with the crowd, like secular reddit church. It just plain sucked ass. Getting out of the middle row sucked ass. I felt like such an asshole anytime I had to leave during a song or whatever. Like, there is almost no room for getting in or out. Every inch that could be occupied in the most optimized, unergonomic way possible.
#2 I didn't look up the seats ahead of time. You just have to accept that, in the modern concert going thing, the onus is on you for knowing where you're seated. The event staff is, more likely than not, not going to be able to tell you where your seat is just by you giving them the seat number - especially if you've forgotten that they were floor seats. I've accepted that this part was self-imposed.
#3 I really, really should have checked to make sure we had the process for ticketmaster tickets down ffs
#4 completely forgot abt the "never got to shows without a neurotypical person as a social buffer" rule - not that I was in an especially social mood. I guess my question for non-pattern recognizers out there is "Can you clock an autist by their idle animation?" I can, and I hate when I observe the same "what do I do with my hands, I am visibly not normal" in my own body language. I just want to make people as uncomfortable with my presence as possible.
#5 biggest faux pas - that was too much weed. Sorry to keep bringing up drugs, but weed is really an annoyingly core part of my personality at this point. And the weed giveth and the weed taketh away. They make crazy shit with added terps now. No joke, White Boy Rick RSO type stuff can bring out suicidal ideation. Idk. Not going to get into the more biohacking aspects of Strawberry Sherbet. When you tell people that you have a slight mental dependency on a leaky ai art riddled dispo cart, expect some looks. Also, it's the only way to make Remy a viable character against my friend's Urien.
side note: kinda mourning my Compaq 7500. it looks like it might be finally gone. fuck. if I ever get enough money, I'm buying enough of these vga crts to last the rest of my natural life. modern shit can't pass the little alien ufo test, not as effortlessly. you cannot beat the motion clarity of even the crappiest 1280x1024 60hz display.
#4.2 Oh yeah, my point: I should have taken less weed. I always think about this indian restaurant I went to like a decade ago where the dude was like "We can always put on more spice, but we can take it off or make it less spicy once we put it on - so be careful." I was not careful. 100mg was more spice than was called for. def another "that's on me." Live by the sword, die by the sword, I guess.
#5 fuck, why did I leave my sunglasses in the car? Sometimes I like to pretend that bright lights blasted intermittently don't bother me. Sorry again for making this about me being weird, but I really can't decouple myself or my quirks from my disabilities bc all of my physical and personality quirks are kind of downstream from them. But then I kind of over correct. I'll mask to the point where I'll just ignore my own discomfort. Like, for years, I'd be bothered af by sensory unfriendly clothes, up until I was like "Oh yeah, I can just research stuff and buy a bunch of clothes with fabrics that don't fuck with me." I'm just now getting to the point where I can tell myself "put on the damn sunglasses so you don't have to squint and strain your eyes the entire time."
#5 being a hikki for a year is not a good way to acclimate yourself to being around large crowds. I've experienced various levels of NEETdom in my life - it's a huge tl;dr. That, along with being too high to properly mask - oooof, that fucked me up pretty bad lol.
I say lol, as a millennial stereotype, but god damn do I not mean it. Masking is important. I need to just not do weed for a second. It has its benefits. It also clearly affects certain ppl much differently than others. Idk who is using different types for targeted stat boosts. That biohacking market seems to be dominated by the peptide people. Anyways, super productivity and shit aside, it may have helped me get away from alcohol, but it is making me scare the hoes. And I don't mean like actual women. On a spiritual level I am scaring the hoes. The goal of any autistic person should be to make others cringe as little as possible. That's the social contract. It's easier to pretend that everything is cool. Forcing yourself into a super present version of yourself is just something you have to do sober tbh. I'm not gonna naturally not run into tree branches and shit. It's an active battle. Special shit, body movements, verbal stuff - it's like a system of shit you just gotta do. Running stuff in software without hardware acceleration is the way I look at it. Not even trying to be quirky, this is my go to analogy. I mean, you can do multiplication and division with just subtraction and addition with loops as a workaround.
Getting back into masking after dropping shit for an extended period fucking suuucks tho. This is maybe like my 3 or 4th rodeo lol. The longer the break, the harder it is to saddle up again. It's kinda like acting. I've gotta observe the normal person and mimic their shit. Gotta start making silence breaking small talk. Fuck people who shit on small talk btw. Small talk is probably one of the best weapons an autist has. People like others who can provide for others. Being the funny weird guy is much preferable to being the quiet weird guy. Even in "professional" settings, people will still roast your ass for being a quiet autist. I still remember this one dude who decided to seek employment elsewhere just before this abortion of an acquisition -super nice and smart dude, just so happened to keep to himself. He leaves, and people are just openly like "Yeah, that dude was giving me a weird vibe haha." I wasn't particularly offended. The shit talking was more out of general office gossip. These were normal progressive minded people who will tell you they support marginalized groups, and they do - at least on paper... though a lot of it is related to general social stuff and non-profits run by their friends (who also happen to come from upper class backgrounds, go to the same schools and work in the same gatekept fields). Idk There was no real malice IMO, just fun convos. Still, it was like, we can't even just exist and not get shit. You have to force yourself to be an active and interesting part of everyone's life. That's autistic salvation.
Rly hoping to be working soon. I fucked up hard by deciding to take a break from working during the destruction of the knowledge fields. If I could just work on propaganda all day, I would, but there's no way my depression or bank account are gonna let me do that. They really, really do not want me back at my old place, even after giving them like a months notice. Their loss. I'm not gonna let that shit get me down anymore. There's still a chance that I haven't completely ruined my shot at making decent money in IT ever again. Prolly. Idk. I'm actually considering cucking on my "I'd never pay for IT certs" position and getting a M$ft on this week. I hate it. All of their docs are AI, all of their videos are AI. Better than nothing, I guess. But not by much. You used to be able to get actual books for shit with fully up to date shit. WTF. Now it's just the slop docs. Read the slop docs. Take the slops tests. But yeah, if I can round that off by the end of the week, I can prolly be good. Really, really hoping this other place decides to hire me tho.
At this point, I can either 1) choose to play the social game and ask for letters of recc that were promised to me (probly not doing this as it requires human contact) or 2) play the int game and get a quick cert for stuff I already mostly know. Either way, getting employed before the AI bubble pops should be my main goal.
Oh yea, and my wife isn't going to leave me. felt like putting it out there lol
I had a little thing about it that I was going to post but, given what came up the next day, I really, really did not want to post a thing about andrade and his character work. Shit was all so sudden. It was a beautiful match, both men, on top of an amazing night. these men and women give all of themselves to the sport. fucking rip.
here are some stills from all out, rly wish I had some of the first match. didn't think to in the moment, and I'm not at a place where I'd like to revisit it
