I'd be lying if I said I wasn't nervous. Of course, here in Utah, there's all too many people who gleefully want the moon to fall. Where's the Song of Time when we need it?

Reference for the unfamiliar: http://zeldawiki.org/Final_Day

My accent tends to be fast and clipped. I think it's overall fairly clear, and I certainly know how to enunciate my words when needed (with all their syllables). But there isn't a schwa or schwi in existence I haven't found myself deleting in everyday speech at some time or another. I grew up with this. And when I learnt to read and write, I was surprised that some words I'd spoken as one syllable, were instead considered to have two syllables - or two-syllable words that were considered to have three syllables.

One-syllable words:

air ← error • airb ← Arab • aird ← arid • airk ← Eric • airn ← Aaron, Erin • airnd ← errand • airse ← heiress • airth ← Aerith • bairk ← barrack • bairl ← barrel, beryl • bairn ← baron, barren • bairt ← Barrett • bal ← bowel • beeng ← being • beyrn ← Byron • blahd ← ballade • boarse ← Boris • boorsh ← boorish • brahzh ← barrage • byond ← beyond • brire ← briar • cairb ← carob • cairge ← carriage • cairl ← carol, Carol, Carroll • cairn ← Karen • cairt ← carat, caret, carrot • chairsh ← cherish • clairk ← cleric • clairnce ← Clarence • clearnce ← clearance • cnect ← connect • coarl ← coral, quarrel • coarm ← quorum • coarse ← chorus • creen ← careen • crool ← cruel • curge ← courage • curnt ← current • dairk ← Derek • dairl ← Daryl • dairn ← Darren • dile ← dial • doark ← Doric • doarse ← Doris • dool ← duel (but not dual) • eyrsh ← Irish • fairse ← ferous, ferris, Ferris • fairl ← Farrell, feral • fairt ← ferret • fewl ← fuel • floard ← florid • floarl ← floral • flursh ← flourish • fness ← finesse • foarge ← forage • foarm ← forum • foarn ← foreign • foarst ← forest • foir ← foyer • frire ← friar (but not fryer) • gairt ← Garrett, garrot • geynt ← giant • grahzh ← garage • gram ← graham, Graham • grool ← gruel • hairse ← Harris • hairld ← Harold, herald • hairn ← heron • hoar ← horror • hoard ← horrid • hoarse ← Horace, Horus • jaird ← Jared • jairld ← Gerald • jool ← jewel • joyce ← joyous • jull ← Joel • lill ← little • loarl ← laurel • loarn ← Lauren • loarnce ← Lawrence • loir ← lawyer • lurd ← lurid • mair ← mayor • mairge ← marriage • mairl ← Meryl • mairt ← merit • meer ← mirror • meurl ← mural • meyrn ← Myron • mlaise ← malaise • moarse ← Morris • moarl ← moral • mrahzh ← mirage • mree ← Marie • nile ← Niall • noarse ← Norris • norfk ← Norfolk • nursh ← nourish • oarl ← oral, Orel • oarnge ← orange • pairse ← Paris • pairl ← peril • pairnt ← parent • pairsh ← parish, perish • pairt ← parrot • peyrt ← pirate • pleece ← police • poarse ← porous • poarge ← porridge • rurl ← rural • scairb ← scarab • seyrn ← siren • shairf ← sheriff • shairl ← Cheryl • shairn ← Sharon • sirp ← syrup • slect ← select • soir ← sawyer • sounch ← sandwich • speert ← spirit • sreen ← serene • tair ← terror • tairf ← tariff • tairnce ← Terence • tairst ← terrorist • toarse ← Taurus, torus • toarnce ← Torrance • toarnt ← torrent • toord ← toward • trile ← trial • turt ← turret • val ← vowel • veyrse ← virus • vile ← vial, viol • woarnt ← warrant • yurp ← Europe

Two syllable words:

ainkridge ← anchorage • baltmore ← Baltimore • caircter ← character • chairty ← charity • chawklit ← chocolate • cnaidyan ← Canadian • cnary ← canary • coardnate ← coordinate • coarner ← coroner • coarnteen ← quarantine • doarthy ← Dorothy • dymond ← diamond • dyodrant ← deodorant • floarda ← Florida • gaity ← gaiety • hlairyus ← hilarious • hva'i ← Hawai'i • lyness ← lioness • mairland ← Maryland • mannaise ← mayonnaise • mishgan ← Michigan • mnopply ← monopoly • moargan ← Morrigan • nashnal ← national • oargin ← origin • oargon ← Oregon • owel ← owl • pighty ← piety • ptassyum ← potassium • pyano ← piano • quaprate ← cooperate • speerchul ← spiritual • sroarty ← sorority • syattle ← Seattle • tmorrow ← tomorrow • vrighty ← variety • vylent ← violent • woaryer ← warrior

Where comfortable, my weak vowels are reduced, and a syllable is deleted. But as you may notice in these lists, weak vowels against /r/ are especially vulnerable. This is because the sequences /ər/ and /rə/ both tend to merge as the single rhotic vowel /ɚ/. When this /ɚ/ comes after a vowel, it forms a rhotic diphthong or triphthong with it. This is why words like "carrot" become "cairt".

Still, there are some murky exceptions to this. Words like "Powell" and "towel" remain two syllables. Furthermore, I've always pronounced "owl" was two syllables as well, and it remains two syllables because these rhymes resist syllable collapse.

And yes, mayonnaise is "mannaise". I grew up never saying "mayo", unless it was the name of a county in Ireland. "Mayonnaise" was already two syllables, and I never needed to shorten it to two when it was already two.

This is a recipe of my own improvisation. It is a no-bake pie, and must be refrigerated when not being served.

The pie crust is a pre-made chocolate crumb crust. Keebler makes such a crust, at least in the United States, but there may also be generic store brands of a similar product. I wouldn't care, as long as it gets the job done and doesn't taste terrible.

Pie filling ingredients:
8 oz Cool Whip (or Truwhip - either may be fat-free)
500 g (17.6 oz) plain unsweetened strained (Greek) yogurt (may also be fat-free)
1/3 c cocoa powder
1/3 c granulated sugar (I prefer caster/baker's sugar because its fine grain dissolves more quickly.)

Using a mixing bowl and a spoon, mix the pie filling ingredients until thoroughly blended. Pour filling into empty pie crust. Refrigerate.

Like my other yogurt pie recipes, the pie filling will tend to slump in the pie pan after the first piece has been cut and removed. However, since there's less moisture in this recipe (no fruit added, just cocoa powder), it doesn't slump quite as badly. I have considered experimenting with preslicing the pie and separating the pieces with wax paper (as with presliced cheesecake), but I have not yet tried this. I expect even then it will still slump somewhat (because of the weight of the pie filling), but at least the portions may be more clearly separated.

With 1/3 c sugar you may expect the pie to be very sweet. But the sweetness is undone partially by the sourness of the yogurt and the bitterness of the cocoa. It has sweetness, but I don't think it's too sweet. It may also be possible to use a sugar substitute, but I have not tried this. In my home we have stevia, but as I may have mentioned before, I'm one of the few people alive who cannot taste stevia. And never mix yogurt with xylitol - yogurt has healthy bacteria, but xylitol is antibacterial.

If you cannot obtain Cool Whip or Truwhip, note that homemade whipped cream is not the same thing. These products have added vegetable oil to them to thicken their texture, and whipped cream has no such oil. Without additional research, I wouldn't know how to make a similar ingredient homemade.

·sɹəʍsuɐ uʍop əpısdn ʇdəɔɔɐ ı ¿ɯɐ ı sɐ pəɹoq sɐ ʎɿʇuəɹɹnɔ əuoʎuɐ sı ·pəɹoq ʎɿnɹʇ puɐ ɿɿəʍ ɯ,ı

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u.....wntextgen.html

·sɹəʇʇəɿ əsɐɔɹəddn ʇɹoddns ʇ,usəop ʇı ·ɟɿəsʎɯ sıɥʇ pəɯɯɐɹɓoɹd ı ‘səʎ

I've been a huge Star Fox fan since 1993, when the SNES game and the comic came out. Continued being a huge fan. Funny thing was, I was never much of a fan of Star Fox 64 (yup, played it, beat it and disliked it)...or Star Fox Adventures...or Star Fox Assault...or Star Fox Command. But I did appreciate some of the Star Fox and Star Wolf characterizations in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and I also liked Star Fox 2.

I felt a long time ago like the Star Fox franchise and fandom left me far behind. The 1993 game was one of the video games most iconic of my young years, and I loved it and its characters and its story to pieces. I still do.

Problem is, you can't continue like that indefinitely. I don't feel a huge drive for it anymore. I would like more of that kind of drive, but the old fond memories are getting older and older in the past, and now there are adults who weren't even born when the game came out. The years have been very unkind to Star Fox, and to F-Zero which I also loved.

At least I know I'm not imagining their stagnation. Even their creator, Shigeru Miyamoto, has confessed to disliking how each franchise has developed after the first couple of games. And the Star Fox fandom has been an acrimonious mess for most of its incarnation, with entire camps of fans who cannot even mutually associate without constant flame wars. Who would have thought that such promising franchises would come to experience such a hell.

I even toyed with the idea of Star Fox fanfiction, working out my fanonical universe (independent from any of the games or comics), and everything. But I realized - with such a fragmented fandom, there would likely be no one else to truly appreciate it. And the last thing I really wanted was to express a particular fandom niche that was likely to attract at least as many hostile rival camp fans as it would appreciative fans. Or - worse - jaded indifference from most people who once considered themselves Star Fox fans. I came to truly loathe spending any time in the Star Fox fandom for the reason that every single subtopic of fandom is a holy war. Entire Star Fox fan sites have been derailed by nonstop fan-dumb, because none of us can agree fundamentally on what Star Fox is anymore. Sometimes it's seemed like there's practically no Star Fox fan in existence today that doesn't reject 50%-75% of the entire franchise.

Eh, just felt like bitching about it. I wish my feelings about Star Fox weren't so complicated. Such nostalgia, and such baggage, going hand in hand.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0M6op3afLlI

Love it.

How would you guys feel about me doing more linguistics-related journals here on FA? I used to do them a lot on LiveJournal, but had the same concern there that I have here - that no one is there, and no one cares. Also, looking at the last year of journals, I can see that my mind was dominated by my mom's illness and passing, which probably didn't help the lifelong anxiety-related illness I've always had anyway. But I think...are there still readers who would be interested in linguistics journals? Or is my journal primarily an "emo" journal where no one who likes linguistics would even have the patience to sit through journal entries of personal reflection? I'd like to think there's a little room for everything, but readers can be surprisingly fickle or apathetic when it comes to blogs.

P.S. I still have personal baggage to deal with - my mom isn't going to come back to life. I just like to think that sometimes I can do something geeky and fun.

I can't...believe this.

I've been getting more into Zelda games lately. And having never had a GameCube (but having a Wii), I mail-ordered a GameCube controller, and The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. They finally came in the mail.

So I tried to figure out where to plug in the controller. Not remembering where I kept my Wii manual at the moment, I checked online. Basically, I needed to undo a flap on the left side of my Wii console, and it reveals GameCube controller ports. Okay, so I check the side of my Wii, looking for laps. ...and looking. ...and looking. Couldn't find it!

So I kept searching online for help, and then I found something alarming... Some models of Wii (including the one I was given) don't support GameCube at all. I shouted out loud the moment I saw this. Good grief... It's not like Wind Waker for GameCube is cheap when bought used online - I was lucky to get it at ~$60, when many asking prices were three figures. And I can't even play it on my Wii that I thought was GameCube-compatible?!

I gotta admit. I'm feeling...unsettled. I'm stuck with having bought and paid for a GameCube game I really wanted to play (and a controller to go with it). And not only does my Wii model no longer support those games, but my computer is still slow to emulate them. I'm glad I also didn't buy the GameCube version (the better version) of Twilight Princess at the same time. I was so looking forward to playing Wind Waker right now...

Yes, I know Wind Waker HD is being remade for Wii U. No, I don't have a Wii U. No, I hadn't planned on getting a Wii U. I haven't budgeted for that. I don't exactly have the budget to buy new gaming consoles. I wasn't going to buy the Wii at the $250 it was for years - I was given it as a gift when the price came down.

It's not like I never would have liked a GameCube. But in the day, I got PlayStation 2 instead, for the RPGs I was looking forward to. I believed up to this point that my Wii was GameCube-compatible, so I could still play GameCube games if I wanted to. ...this is not my day.

First, the shocker. (Not really.) Dermot Mac Flannchaidh is not my real name. My real name is withheld, but D.M.F. is not it.

I've been taught since I was little that my father's family came from Ireland and Scotland. Though neither my father nor I were born there, and I've never even been to Europe. I was born in Hawai'i and raised in the Marshall Islands - I'm as much a tropics-loving kama'āina haole as you can get. But for as long as I can recall, my dad has been a collector of fine Gaelic culture - mostly music. I grew up loving it too, and my Gaelic identity was set early.

But then I asked my dad, where our family came from. He said "gall way", which I looked up, and found...Galway. I learnt as much as I could about Galway, in the early 1990s before availability of Internet. I'd always liked the name Dermot, so he became my alter ego from a tender age. When he needed a surname, I decided on Mac Flannchaidh. I had studied beginner's Irish, and learnt some basic vocabulary, grammar, etc. I'd also always liked the name Clancy, which is based on the surname Mac Fhlannchaidh (notice the "fh", which goes unpronounced), but it seemed to violate the grammar rules I had been taught, so I dropped the first "h" and made it Mac Flannchaidh to personalize it. (I only found later on the Internet that the "Mac Flannchaidh" form is practically nonexistent - it's traditionally "Mac Fhlannchaidh". Eh.) Meanwhile, my parents also bought me Scottish Gaelic books. I wondered why...

Turns out, that when my dad said "gall way", he was saying "Galloway", which is actually...in southwestern Scotland. I have no idea where he learnt that pronunciation (perhaps from his own father?), since "gal uh way" is more common. I was rather embarrassed - it made me a Plastic Paddy. Well...yes and no. See, Scotland has three major historical Gaelic regions - the Highlands (the most famous), the Outer Hebrides, and Galloway. The Highlands were part of the Ulster-based kingdom of Dal Riata since Late Antiquity and were Gaelic early on. The Outer Hebrides were settled largely by Norwegians during the Viking era, but were gaelicized in time. But Galloway was very different - it was previously already Anglo-Saxon and Brythonic, having been associated with the historical regions of Northumbria and Strathclyde. But during the Viking era (and this is relevant to Galloway, if you'll bear with me), Norwegians and Danes had also heavily settled the coasts of Ireland. (It was actually from extant colonies in Ireland that Iceland and the Faroe Islands were originally settled - they remain Scandinavian in language and character.) Not long after, those who remained in Ireland also assimilated into Gaelic culture (as in the Outer Hebrides), and they became known as the Gall Gaels ("foreign Gaels"). Then, in the late Middle Ages (like contemporary with Plantagenet-era England), Gall Gaels from Ulster heavily settled the southwest corner of what is now Scotland, in what would become Galloway (named after the Irish Gall Gaels). Galloway was soon gaelicized too. But unlike the Highlands and Hebrides, this could not last - Galloway remained surrounded on land by the Scottish Lowlands, and by a few centuries ago had become predominantly Scots (Anglo-Saxon) speaking. But I took comfort that I was not exactly wrong - we were still practically Irish, as Galloway was settled late by Irish, and Ulster was practically a stone's throw away from Galloway across a sea channel - Galloway is practically East Ulster. (Excuse the high number of "practically"s. :P) But thereafter, I realized it would be awkward to claim an Irish identity, as Galloway is decidedly in Scotland, not Ireland. And we weren't Highlanders, and I felt no particular affection for the Lowlands. So I revised my identity as more simply Gaelic - Galloway is transitional between Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man anyway - a crossroads of the Gaelic world.

Then came this year, when I decided to tag along with my family at the local Scottish Festival. Like many overseas Scottish festivals, it was heavily Highlands-flavored (clans, kilts and bagpipes are iconic symbols). But overall it was very multicultural, with lots of Pan-Celtic cultural items to sift through. And I finally ate haggis (loved it), and Scottish shortbread (loved it), and it all felt so natural. In one of the tents at the festival, we found an electronically-connected genealogical surface where we could find family certificates. So, having a good Galwegian surname (confusingly, "Galwegian" means from "Galloway", not "Galway" - perhaps a contributor to the original confusion mentioned above), we obtained an authenticated certificate of our family's origin. ...it certainly was interesting, but it was about as un-Gaelic as you could get. Our family had previously lived in southeast Scotland - the one region of Scotland that had pretty much never been Gaelic - and they had settled in Galloway only a few centuries ago, when the Gaelic language there was already dying out. And then maybe a few generations later, our branch of the family emigrated to the New World. They had become Galwegian by identity (with perhaps at least some local intermarriage), but in all likelihood had never been formally gaelicized. I felt...a little let down. And it gets better - before the family had lived in southeastern Scotland, they had previously lived......in Dorset. In the West Country, in southwest England. Arrr, matey.

Oh well. I guess we can't pick where our ancestors came from or what languages they spoke. But we can pick our identities, and I was born and grew up with the identity I had. Still, transcontinental migration can have a way of confounding family memories, especially when intermarriage is added to the mix. I think this video best describes the feeling.

The silver lining: The name Dermot is not unknown in Scotland either - the name came from ancient Irish mythology and its Gaelic usage is probably two thousand years old - it was probably known to the earliest Gaelic settlement in Scotland. The name has many forms though - Diarmaid, Diarmuid, Diarmad, Diarmid, Dermot, Dermit, and even Kermit (from the surname Mac Dhiarmada), etc. I've even personalized the name in some other languages - Japanese ダーメット (Dāmetto - a Japanese friend once even cutely called me ダメち Dame-chi), Greek Διθαρμάτης (Ditharmátēs, from *Di-tharma(i)t-), and Marshallese Jierm̧wij (I was raised in the Marshall Islands, afterall). If I'm feeling whimsical enough, maybe Nahuatl Tialmatl because of my affection for Mexico.

Despite the name "salmon cake", this is a dinner entree that is not sweet and not a dessert - compare "crab cake".

Ingredients:
1 can salmon
1 egg
1/2 c either bread crumbs or oats (blend oats in blender to make them small, almost flour-like)
1/4 c milk (this, or don't drain the salmon)

Optional seasonings:
pepper
salt-free seasoning (Italian type herbs)
celery seed
improvise others if you want (onion, red bell pepper, etc.)

Instructions: Preheat oven to 375°F. If you are using milk, drain the salmon. (If you don't drain the salmon, the salmon cake will have salmon juice that is saltier and more salmony, and you don't have to add milk.) Mix the salmon, eggs, oats (or bread crumbs), seasonings and milk (if any). Spray an 8x8 pan with cooking spray. Press salmon mix neatly into pan. Bake for about 30 minutes, until some of the peaks are lightly brown and the center is not wet anymore.

Salmon varieties and alternatives: My mother was very picky about the salmon she ate or used in cooking - she insisted on wild-caught salmon instead of farmed salmon, as wild-caught salmon tends to be healthier and less sickly - she believed fish farming to be animal cruelty, since fish farms were giant aquatic cages and could not be considered free range. And because wild-caught salmon is more expensive, she sometimes used less actual salmon, and used certain kinds of beans (pinto beans maybe, but I can't remember for sure) as filler to make up for the lost difference in bulk. The result tastes relatively less salmony and relatively more beany, and as such is even more of a "salmon loaf" than the original recipe. Fortunately, beans (like salmon) are also a good source of protein.

Calcium-rich variation: Sometimes my mother liked to intentionally add fish vertebrae into the salmon cake mix. The fish vertebrae are chalk-like, and add calcium to the dish while at the same time absorbing the surrounding salmon flavor.

Serving: The salmon cake is baked in a cake pan, so it is cut and served as square-shaped portions, similarly to cake. Traditionally, we ate salmon cake with added lemon juice and/or apple sauce, as desired to taste.

I hope you love our salmon cake as much as I do, along with the heavenly aroma that hangs in the air.

Good news, I'm steadily getting better. I've graduated from saltine crackers to dry-roasted peanuts, and my appetite is steadily returning. I'm still pushing water and vitamin C supplements.

Bad news, is now my sister is sick with the same symptoms I had. And since we don't eat the same foods, this means it was not food poisoning, but a communicable disease - most likely gastroenteritis (the stomach flu). Luckily, we all know what to do when we get sick like this. Rest, water, vitamin C, gentle foods.

Started my day waking up, eating a Clif Builder bar, and then getting violently sick. Stomach on fire, arms tingling, nauseous, and other characteristic symptoms which shall remain nameless. I feel slightly better hours on, but still like crap. I'm still not eating, and I'm taking baby sips of water (though I know I ought to drink more). Not sure what to eat (since solid food is discouraged), or whether we even have it in the cupboard. So, for now, I'm bundled up in my recliner on my laptop. If I feel too sore, I even close that for a while.

I hope I'm well enough by the time my birthday comes around on the 29th - I'm anticipating velvet cake with cream cheese icing. <:3

They're certainly not as bad as they were a week ago, but one panic attack upon waking up is one too many. They're like a kind of drama that acts on its own whether I want it to or not. Can't get much more dramatic than bedridden sickness. I mean, it's totally not fair. If it were up to me, I'd be solving most of my personal crises quietly and more efficiently. Panic attacks all but assure that the whole world knows. But I also know that an inherent part of my panic attacks involve my mental feedback loops during times of stress, and being surprised with situations I have no clue how to deal with. I panic because I cannot bring myself to surrender to a social equation I can't solve.

I was filled with an overwhelming sense of embarrassment and regret and grief over what happened with CGB, making my stomach hurt and bringing back the chilling sensations. I've been trying really, really hard to cope with this, but the truth is that what happened was pretty mind-shattering and scarring.

Thing is, he was always so no-drama, and I tried especially hard to spare him from that. But the one drama that I couldn't cap was the chronic clumsiness and faux pas that come with being so very autistic and having so little useful social foresight or active intuition when it matters. My friends don't necessarily ignore that, but they excuse and tolerate it and develop an affinity for it, and accept me anyway. I (possibly foolishly) believed that since someone told CGB I was autistic and he said he'd try to treat me differently because of that, that all would likely be well if only I tried my very hardest and had the best intentions. In the end, all that made me was mentally overextended and socially brittle, and when I broke, I broke hard.

I'm not going to be socially graceful by neurotypical standards. I'm not. And yet...I still feel so very, very bad about the things that happened. My friends and family have tried to temper my inner chaos with logic and reason over the past week, and my superego has learnt much. I think it has, anyway - higher reasoning is a thought discipline largely theoretical and foreign to the side of me that feels emotion, embarrassment and pain - may as well try to explain it rationally to a house cat for all the good it does. This side of me mostly just wants to forgive and be forgiven, and have things be okay again. But for now, I feel like I effectively know nothing, understand nothing, and foresee nothing, because I feel a seething uneasiness over whether any intuition I might have will be in any way constructive or reliable.

I'm eating again, my heart rate is mostly normal, and I don't as often feel the random need to lie down and feel miserable. Physically, things seem to be going toward a direction that feels more like normal.

Mentally, I still have a strange murky soreness. It kinda dampens my joy and enthusiasm.

Feeling a jumbled combination of embarrassment, shock, soreness...and a strange kind of loss that's not simple to describe or delineate. That's a weird thing about panic attacks - they lay bare lots of things inside you, and even some things you didn't even know you had. And because they're a critical mass of mental stress that turns into physical illness, you can't necessarily control how they show themselves. It's a huge, messy, excruciatingly painful monkey wrench in one's attempts to remain politely reserved and subdued.

...I could go back in time, and tell myself not to bring up that memory. To spare the embarrassment and alienation.

My eldest sister gave me a big hug and told me repeatedly that it wasn't my fault. She didn't believe for a second that my memory was false. My dad suggested that maybe the memory was real after all, but bringing it caused embarrassment to another, or maybe the other person had just forgotten about it. Another possibility was my memory could have actually happened, but it incorrectly remembered a subtly sarcastic comment as sincerity. I'd really, really like to accept these things, if it would turn out they are actually true.

But all in all, it really sucks having all this caring and good will...and being so clumsy. Something that occurred to me only at least a day later, was the possibility that even if the memory was true, it could have not been in good taste to bring up anyway. But day-late hypotheses don't help anyone.

No, the fact of the matter is, no matter how hard I try to meet the demands of other people, I simply don't have the social instinct to reliably plan my social judgments in real time. And when I feel forced to stop and think about it, I stop doing anything else for too long as I badly juggle mental social variables. Humans have social instincts precisely because it is beneficial, and using cognitive thought processes to emulate these instincts is much slower, less accurate and more draining.

My dad reminded me, that the people who know and love me tend to accept me, quirks and all. They know I'm always going to be a savant with critically impaired social skills. They are slow to annoy, fast to forgive, and almost never leave me feeling mortified over some faux pas I never saw coming and maybe not have even realized happened. They try to help me socially, and I study and try to keep useful mental notes. But sometimes it seems like I am inevitably going to offend - badly - when I least expected it.

In my most recent situation, I may have bitten off more than I can chew, socially. I actually tried harder than I had in any situation in a long time. But most of the time I was surrounded by easily annoyed people. I considered it something of an honorable challenge, and I persevered. But in retrospect, I was actually subjecting myself to enormous daily pressures that I couldn't indefinitely sustain without bumps. I was going to slip up, one way or another, at least periodically, and then one of those misjudgments was going to make someone so angry that I would bear real consequences for it.

Or so the life-savvy cynical narrative goes. Truth was I was in the same situation I'm usually in - I don't necessarily know what I'm doing, or what to do next, or what's going to happen. I'm a passenger of each dynamically-unfolding situation. When you have poor social instincts, you improvise nonstop, and can't afford to constantly second-guess every little judgment. To try to give as much active consideration as people demand from me, is a particular cognitive marathon that's a perfect recipe for nervous breakdown.

My heart's still racing a lot, but my waves of physical pain and nausea have gotten less bad. I'm also eating a bit more. Still trying not to overdo it. Still feel weak and have to lie down more often than I sit up. Still feel a little more comfortable freshly hungry than after a meal (but going too long without food makes me feel weaker).

All in all, my body over-excels at turning mental pain into crippling physical pain, as if they're the same thing.

That's the problem.

Yes, I do like CaptainGerBear, as a creator. I have for years.

No, I wasn't trying to be a close friend. I was trying to be supportive and kind. I believe in that sort of thing. I recall he generally doesn't care about the dramas of random fans, and I tried to proceed on this assumption. That he made a mental note of my autism upon learning about it, was itself a surprise at first.

Yes, sometimes he gets on my nerves. I get on his. This doesn't necessarily mean something to me - I expect it because I'm autistic, as I tend to get on a lot of people's nerves, and they on mine. It tends to be part of the package, so I expect at least some of it. I can still like people in spite of it.

No, I wasn't trying to offend or anger him. Most of the time when he gets angry, I didn't see it coming. Sometimes I don't know why he gets mad, and it just plain looks like meanness, unless someone can explain it to me. I very much don't want to jump to fast conclusions, but neither do I necessarily know how to jump to slow ones, especially when I'm trying to figure it out by myself.

Yes, I did decompile ChubPan, years ago, for fair use and for technological curiosity.

No, I didn't think anything of doing so. Maybe I should have, I don't know. But for me it was as easy as view-source. Flash is an insecure media format that has never been difficult for tech geeks to examine, and we routinely examine readily available data.

Yes, as it turns out, CGB and I do fundamentally philosophically disagree on matters of fair use and reverse engineering. I have since tried to ask him more directly about such things, and he asked me to pledge not to try to reverse engineer his newest game project. I agreed to it as a personal request. That, and I currently know nothing about Unity formats.

No, I didn't even know he temp-banned me for decompiling ChubPan back when he asked if I had done so. The next day might have been one of those days I decided to spend a day away from the stream, which might have been likely if I felt the previous day didn't go so well.

Yes, I did suggest filesharing CGB's game for people in developing countries with very low incomes. I said this in CGB's presence, because:

Yes, I also really thought that CGB previously openly suggested it as an option in that case. I recalled a rather vivid memory about it. I would have never brought it up again at all if I thought it offensive or insulting.

No, I didn't foresee him denying it or angering over it. I was horribly embarrassed, and recommended against the suggestion immediately. I felt horrible and wanted to get past it. I also found myself doubting whether my own memories actually occurred, which in itself was especially hard. I found myself seriously wondering if I was losing my mind. I still can't say for certain where that memory comes from, except that it still feels real and memory-like.

No, I didn't foresee being banned from the stream or being blocked on FA.

No, I don't always necessarily figure out what will or will not offend or anger a person, and CGB in particular was never very easy to predict. I have to try to figure these things out in real-time without adequate social instincts to do so, and it is very, very hard when the stakes are high or I'm already under pressure.

Yes, I sought advice from friends over this. I didn't foresee these things happening, and I wanted some clarity and insight. I was told I was spineless and unassertive. I was told that CGB isn't a nice person to begin with. I was told that CGB is a prima donna. And someone even suggested that I'll get a lot of bad advice, casting all the previous advice into doubt. DrakeDragon also said some things that sound perfectly logical, perhaps more than anyone else - CGB's situation is nowhere near simple, and he's the way he is for some very good reasons. But to be perfectly honest, I don't know what to think, at all. And certainly not without help. And while I struggle for answers and foresight, I'm also trying not to leap to judgments if I can help it. But I'd like to have a grasp on something solid.

Yes, I had a panic attack over what's happened. I keep getting waves of physical pain, and I'm sick to the very pit of my stomach.

Yes, I do care if I have done something wrong, or if I have made someone mad. I don't want to do wrong, and I don't want to make people mad.

No, I don't know what do about it all, and I don't know what's coming. I try very, very hard to understand the best I can, and I hope for understanding in kind. But right now, I'm lost, and I don't know what to think or what to do.

And yes...I do figure CGB and I have very, very different personalities like oil and water, which may have made it unwise to attempt to spend so much time in the same place. Sometimes hindsight is 20/20. Foresight is too often blind as a bat.

Call me an idiot, call me a moron, call me clueless, call me thick-headed. All I know for certain is that something bad happened, and I don't know how to make it better, nor do I know for certain what to think about any of it. I don't know what I'm doing, or what to do. I want to know how to make things right, the right way. I want to do something right, for once.

Been having a low-level sustained panic attack all evening today. My heart's been racing, I've had burning sensations in my upper chest and neck and lower arms, and chilling sensations in my shoulders. My face feels intermittent tingles. I periodically feel dizzy. My stomach hurts with waves of light nausea. But I still feel...relatively lucid enough to speak and type sometimes.

Wouldn't be the first or even hundredth time I've had a panic attack - they run in my family congenitally. But I just looked up panic attacks on Wikipedia, hoping there was something useful I could glean from it. And I did find something I hadn't realized before - one of the many things associated with panic attacks, is a lack of assertiveness. I mean, even my friend last night said that I have the spine of a wet mop. Chronically unassertive people get a lot more panic attacks.

I was always taught to be polite and kind and considerate of people, and frequently being scolded for my errors has made me used to swallowing responsibility. But I also believe in a certain moral responsibility, where people are responsible for their conscious choices to do what they believe is wrong, and can be easily absolved from acts where there was no realization of wrongdoing until after the fact. I've always tried to walk a middle road, where I am willing to accept that something was my mistake and courteously try to mend it, but with a rather weak doormat failsafe that rejects moral wrongdoing for being instrumental in wrongdoings that I never saw coming, and all the while trying to adapt better and learn better and think better so that I can more good and less destruction than before.

But the very notion of false memories unnerves the hell out of me. As a thinking biological human being, I depend on my brain to be a record of truth vs. fiction. But if I recall something as a memory that turns out not to have happened...it's like every assumption has to be thrown out the window. And to add insult to injury, even if a memory has been debunked, it still remains in my head as a memory no less compelling than before, but I can't figure out how it's there, or why it feels so vividly real and tangible and exists as a "memory" instead of as something associated with fiction or unsubstantiated belief.

I've been hearing people talk about me lately, so I'll say my peace on this.

For the past several weeks, I'd been sitting in on CaptainGerBear's livestreams, as he's been working on art and new games and such. He recently had expressed interest in using one of my creations in one of his future works, so I decided to stick around and maintain a positive contact.

And, well, apparently, all my autistic quirks started really getting on the nerves of several people, including CGB. I'd try to resolve them amicably, but apparently I don't have the most graceful social skills under pressure, and that affects the quality of my real-time judgment.

Yesterday, one user from a developing country mentioned his $8 is a large part of his weekly income. Then I recalled a memory, where CGB said that most everyone should be able to afford his game, and if even $8 is too steep for third world gamers, they should probably just pirate it. So I raised this point. CGB emphatically refuted that he had ever said that. ...I was immediately super-mortified. I withdrew my suggestion and recommended against it. And for the rest of my time in the stream, I found myself having a mental feedback loop, trying to figure out where that memory came from. The memory was so vivid on its own, but I realized I couldn't recall its context - I couldn't be sure if it came from reality or a dream, except that it continued to feel like a real episode. I wondered if I was losing my mind. When it became clear that I was losing my ability to function socially in the chat, I excused myself and left.

Then, I had a long talk with one of my friends, trying to sort this out. A great deal of counsel and advice. He told me I tended to be spineless in how I always immediately apologized if someone lashed out at me. And he's right - I hate to be in trouble, or be a source of trouble, and try very hard to be easier to coexist with. I have a very strong personal code of honor and integrity, and I strive to be forgiving and nonjudgmental. But having no guile, this can also easily make me into something of a doormat. But that's just the point - all people are imperfect and can have flaws, even with the best of intentions.

Anyway, returned to the stream chat today. Said hi...no one responded. But everyone was talking about me, and about my shameful moment yesterday where I suggested the sharing of one of CGB's commercial games - in CGB's active presence, no less. One person thought I was pretending it was okay. Another person didn't think I was pretending. CGB chipped in, and said he didn't think I was making any trouble on purpose, but that someone had privately contacted him and said they wouldn't be attending the stream anymore as long as I was there. CGB decided I was hindering his creativity, and he had banned me from the stream after I left. ...apparently that didn't prevent me from walking in and hearing them all talk about it. And realizing I had been banned from the stream, it suddenly made sense why no one was responding to my comments.

All in all, it sucks. Contextually, I'd have to agree - what happened made me hard to deal with. And yet I really wish I could have done even better than I did. And I wish I knew I could trust my memories too. In my friend's counsel, he said that people are not perfect, and they make mistakes, and sometimes even memories turn out to be wrong. Hell, even my dad told me that. But I'm tired of making so many mistakes all the time. I'd like my efforts to pan out more often than they do.

I still have a lot of respect for CGB. I really hoped I was adapting better to the stream chat, but I wasn't doing good enough, and his patience ran out. It is his stream, I was a guest, and it is his prerogative. It's embarrassing, but sometimes it happens. Sorry it couldn't work out better.

I spotted two grey hairs in my beard. I'm only 32. :(

I wish I could be on decent terms with my old friend Albaster, even if we couldn't actually be friends anymore. There are just some hatchets that sorely want to be buried.

I was raised in the Marshall Islands. Low-lying coral islands. And rapidly within the past few generations of a 3000 year old culture, living memory has seen the seas rise, the corals bleach from hotter waters (when they did not bleach before), and a modern crisis unfold of land being permanently claimed by the ocean. The same tragedy is unfolding in Kiribati, and in Tuvalu, and in the Maldives, and in many a river delta. The Maldives is even investing more in tourism lately to raise money for a plan to evacuate its population. Kiribati has also announced it will enact a plan to evaculate its citizens.

And a bunch of highly dogmatic Americans have the audacity to say it's not happening? Depraved bullshitters, the lot of them. It's insulting enough that they deny it at all, but there's an entire cottage industry now of coming up with new and different conspiracy theories and unsupportable talking points that appeal to an insidious willful ignorance I cannot begin to comprehend. What are they so afraid of? Why is it so painfully important that global warming somehow not be real? The islanders cannot afford the luxury of denial when the reality threatens their entire way of life.

So, if anyone denies global warming - the existential threat to my beloved Marshall Islands - I refer them here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Global_warming/FAQ

EDIT: If you try to zealously deny global warming or derisively call me names, I will remove your comments. Now...keep this in perspective: Global warming is accepted as fact by the vast majority of the accredited scientific communities of every country on earth, with a 90% scientific confidence that our current global warming is man-made. Global warming denialism exists mainly in the United States, and is a fringe movement outside of the U.S. Even most anti-environmentalists in other countries aren't stupid enough to deny it's real - they just argue over what to do (or not do) about it. For most of the rest of the us in the world, acceptance of the fact of global warming is not a major political issue.

So, last time my mom had an evaluation by the neurosurgeon, her condition was pronounced terminal. And on Friday, 12 January, my mother graduated. She was 64 years old. My dad found out when he went to visit her in the nursing home, and news spread. In a way, I was ready for it...and not ready for it. We'd been expecting this for a while now, but the feeling of permanence about it...was something new and unique. It didn't actually take long for me to regain my composure, even if I was just going hour at a time. Throughout last week we'd been preparing arrangements for the funeral. My sister traveled down to discuss lists of contacts with my other sister - people to contact, newspaper death notices to issue, etc. Other than being a little stunned, things...sort of proceeded along like normal. Family members started arriving little by little. Wellwishers kept sending us very rich comfort food meals - roast ham, baked macaroni & cheese, etc.

The funeral was Friday. The funeral home brought us the ashes, and we held the service at our local church. The service itself was...not pleasant. Of course, they never are - they're not meant to be entirely pleasant, but to help people adapt to the permanence of the situation. But people did their best. There were some talks, and some songs, and I played a piano piece - it was a small miracle I could, as I summoned years-old muscle memories after not having practiced all that time, and apparently did a good job. The church baked us a banquet that we ate immediately after the service, in view of photographs of my mother and a running DVD of her pictures set to music - that was a little hard, but the food was actually very good. They prepared us more ham, and many different kinds of Jell-O dishes (this being Utah and all), and various cakes. They'd even baked my mother's Texas sheet cakes (a chocolate cake) from the family recipe, which was a surprise. The strangest part was..."funeral potatoes" - a potato and cheese casserole topped with cornflakes. Friends and extended family sat down, ate and conversed in good natured discussion. Even today (Wednesday) we still have various leftovers from all this.

Family lingered around during the weekend. One thing I can't always deal with in my adulthood, is how our family always marks gatherings with such vast amounts of sugar. Chocolate chip cookies, doughnuts, the most imbalanced rich high-glycemic junk food, in a family full of people in various stages of diabetes (being prediabetic myself). I prefer my desserts in moderation. I can have a cookie or some cake now and then, but...we were just overflowing with it.

One thing my mom and I had always planned to do again but never got the chance, was watch Howl's Moving Castle together. She loved that movie so, so much. So as soon as she passed on, I swore I would get some of the extended family together and watch it. A few were skittish - "anime's weird!" - and stuff. I reminded them that anime is not one big nebulous genre - it's just animation from a certain country, and has its great and not-so-great stuff like film from any country. So we watched the film together, and my niece especially enjoyed it - she even returned home with a cloned DVD of it.

Now all the family's gone home, and things are quieting down again. My diet is settling back into its normal routine, and my blood sugar feels more stable. Unfortunately this has come on the heels of some of the worst winter air pollution we've seen here in a long time, with the air out there being unbreathable and everyone feeling that much more weak and sluggish indoors. But fortunately another storm is coming, which should wash out the smog...for a few more days before it starts building up again. Whosever idea it was to burn fossil fuels in mountain valleys with such poor winter air exchange, should be remembered with shame.

My dad...seems to be taking things well. He was always affable, congenial, approachable, etc. But I found myself more determined than ever to keep him in good health. He's 69, physically active and in good health, but now every there's an inversion or every time he so much as coughs or wheezes, I keep thinking about his health. But since my dad is a healthy active non-smoker and my mother's passing was technically an accident, I logically know that for now he's just fine. I just want to keep it that way. I think I'm entitled to feeling a bit overprotective.