I remain cynical about online anything - are you sure this is what it looks like?

 Yet again this year I've been reminded just how shallow and bizarre this medium is.  An apparently confused man (by which I mean he appeared to not understand some of our dialogue and was genuinely confused by some of what I said.  Which he either ignored or just interpreted any way he wanted) called Dave Francis turned up, trolling and trawling for screen grabs in order to make me look....whatever he felt like.  Lying as they do, reinterpreting my materials online in order to make me out to be...well, what he wanted.

I had to make a very long, experimental documentary commentary just to explain my experience of him.  (See my YouTube for the epic film with his name on it.  A close encounter with Dave Francis of Being Frank Autism Channel.  You will understand why he's ADW whilst saying he's not got a clue what that means.  Which is not possible as I have enough screen shots to link him to Jill Escher, Thomas A McKean and the whole infrastructure they have built in America).  

For this I am grateful for the experience.  The whole dialogue we had hinged around asking him some simple questions around some statements he was making.  Which seemed to be the whole point of all his films on YouTube and engagements on social media.

DO YOU HAVE ANY PROOF THAT SELF ADVOCATES, WHO GET A LOT OF MAINSTREAM MEDIA ATTENTION, DO ANY HARM TO THE FAMILIES OF THE SEVERELY DISABLED, AND THEY THEMSELVES?

DO YOU HAVE ANY EVIDENCE THAT FUNDING IS BEING TAKEN AWAY FROM THE SEVERELY DISABLED WHO ARE AUTISTIC, BECAUSE OF SELF ADVOCATES LIKE MYSELF (and himself, I kept trying to explain to him.  Because if you claim to have a wife of 20 years and 3 disabled children that you manage to look after and make films and use social media AND describe yourself as autistic...well...you are basically the very Neurodiversity Movement you seem to reject.  Default you see?  Also he provided zero proof they existed whilst in his character and posting, typifying the opposite.  The classic mature man who has grown up living with his parents type.  Check his films).

If you look at my YouTube film to the end you will see that I received z e r o answer.  Because he was lying his head off to himself.  He's part of a whole cult of such people.  

This my friends is the point of my post here.  My buddies in the great advocacy field tell me to ignore anyone with these unprovable ideas.  I told such people that they could go to the Police or Local Government if they felt that autistic advocates were taking away services and financing to their loved ones and even themselves.  It's easy.  But do they?  Erm....well...Ever heard of that?

In the film I omitted references to the bizarre mother of two disabled children, Jill Escher.  The American who co started the infamous NCSA.  The National Council for Severe Autism.  She who promoted to the point of interviewing the arch troll Tom Clements.  Who I see as being 'behind' the Autistic Dark Web trollers in 2019, on Twitter.  One reason for this is that stories of her paying people to attack others online emerged.  I have a screen grab one one Thomas A McKean point blank admitting he was paid an awful lot of money by NCSA (Escher) apparently to do nothing but the activity I have explained.

All of which, as far as I can see, amounted to zero again.  Achieved nothing.  

Which brings me to the idea that a smaller number of people than they realise, seem to spend their time in the world of autism in a bubble like world of their own, wasting their time whilst thinking it means something.  Which I see as very much a trait of social media and the internet in general.

Here in the real world, the UK weather has now gotten rather cold.  Will it warm up?  Ah, we shall see.  Meterology is not an exacting science.  Climate changes.  No I will not talk about planetary environmental damage.  That seemed to me to be something painfully obvious - and that was in 1979 as a school boy.  Now I still think we do not know the half of what goes on in terms of pollution, all over the world.  

The above is REAL.  It's something rooted in empirical actuality.  It's not made up in peoples minds and then actualised/realised in some corporeal form on file servers.  Even then, can you touch and taste it?  No.

Here in my home the weather manifests in terms of cold and damp.  You can do something about both those things easily.  You can go walking, swimming or use my local gym, and do something about your own body and mind.  I often find myself working and down my olympic sized sports centre pool, reflecting on how this is all you need for a fix on reality.  

Why do people need to overcomplicate life?  To feel substantial.  My wife was saying that this morning.  That most people are simple in themselves.  That they complicate their identities and their minds in order to induce an experience of meaning something in life.  Stories of people doing self harm to themselves due to what is (very loose use of the term) existential crisis are commonplace.  

It seems to me that having decided to do more reading of paper and less of social media right now, I am heading back to reality.  I am rebooting Stealth Aspies, and it's script reading time.  Suddenly I am critiquing and deciphering work in order to find out if it does the job.  Do these scripts mirror the autistic experience?  Are they uplifting and positive?  Do they achieve anything for audiences of autistic people?  Are the goals of my Buddhist faith achieved?  Is there self love here, or is self loathing that one is not neurotypical (perfect according to the likes of Francis) equally if not more pertinent to portray?

Are we all aspiring neurotypicals?  Do we all really just want to be able to achieve things and function.  If you do not have a relationship, a family or a job it's understandable that you may want those things and go blame being neurodivergent for not having them.  I CANNOT RELATE.  I CANNOT MEET PEOPLE I CAN RELATE TO.  I CANNOT DO THOSE THINGS...  Well yes I have been there myself.  But now that is not the case.  Because I found ways to achieve them.  

I mean, lets face it, if you did not have your autistic/Neurodivergent nature, you'd be able to do things you think you cannot due because you are disabled/disordered.  Right?  It's that simple for everyone?  Well no actually it is not.  In fact these things can come and go.  You can have the family and the job and lose the lot in one car crash.  You can wake up one day and find it all gone.  A note on the kitchen table.  The family cleared off.  One woman I knew came home to find herself locked out of the house and her husband refusing to have anything to do with her again.  He never did either.  

The garden we have is full of leaves that need scraping up again.  I may go out there later on and do that.  I have things to do.  Presents to wrap.  People to talk to.  Meantime the internet goes on and on, as if it's changing anything when a reality wall often presents it's leaking out into reality to make any real difference.

You see, the severely disabled are never fully supported.  I have seen this year after year.  Families ALWAYS think they never get enough support and understanding.  So any kind of initiative to change that is welcomed by many.  Just one problem.  WHAT EXACTLY IS IT THAT THEY REALLY NEED TO MAKE EVERYTHING BETTER?  Ultimately in the world of autism you get the usual - to remove autism and leave the subject not autistic.  MOTHER!  FATHER!  I AM FREE OF AUTISM!  IT WAS HELL IN THERE....The very words of an advocate from 2011.  Funny at the time.  But with a very serious point.  He himself had a very disabled son in his early 20's.  He had the authority that many parents involved in such a scene seem to treasure above all else.  

What you just read was words.  Perspectives.  Engineered ways of seeing life.  I believe there are no 'cures'.  There will be no 'recovering' people who 'autism' as they characterise it.  Just the writing, the agitating and the complaining.  Just the reacting.  I do of course wish I was wrong about this and all could be different in the future.  But get real.  Care about people.  Grow up and accept that all over the world there are families who need substantially more support than they may ever receive.  This is how desperate they can become.  They can end up like this bizarre figure on social media.  

I never wanted to be an artist.

 I have never wanted to be what I was clearly born to be.  An artist.  A creative person.  Someone who goes around innovating and making stuff up that did not exist before.  

I wanted to do that with electronics in the late 70's and then silicon chips in the 80's.  I used to put circuits together from Practical Electronics magazine and small A5 project books you could get from Tandy's.  I loved a bit of soldering and etched circuit boards I had drawn out with ferric chloride.  I built a working digital clock with TTL circuits.  In fact one summer's holiday my childhood friend and I took over the top of his families freezer as a work bench and built the thing on top of it.  They could not get anything out of it for six weeks.

It was recalled in legend how disciplined we both were.  My turning up there every morning for work.  We loved that.  It eventually worked too.  I took the time pulse from dividing the 50hz mains signal by 50 then by 60.  four Led readouts.  A lot of peripheral work was done on the box alone.  Vero, I've never forgotten you.  What a great company.

Sadly I never had the mathematics ability.  But nonetheless I can now admit that I spent years in O and A level exam subjects that I was never destined to be any good at, trying to develop my self.  Whereas ordinary lazy youths would take the easy paths, I always tried to force my intellectual and academic growth.  That's okay up to a point.  It did my head in and I crashed and burned around march 1983.  Within weeks, courtesy of the now legendary actress Cathy Tyson calling my home one Tuesday evening, I had been inducted into a theatre group called Loose Hinge to do 27 venues in 3 months.  Our play was called the same as the group, and we got paid nothing but love and butties.  

That started me off, and the rest should be detailed in one of these blogs at some point.  But this was not the point.  I had wanted to make something of my life that was nothing to do with bouncing around on stages.  I couldn't.  Which explains a lot about my cv.  What I could not understand was why the only thing I could put energy into and gain more out was being creative.  Arts.  Designing, inventing, improvising, doing stuff like that.  

Now I am worrying about how to store small sets for WarZoners season 2, my making YouTube film with old Action Men dolls.  I finally understand why adults make ships in bottles.  The problem solving.  The techniques you have to learn and use.  The painstaking detail work.  It's great.  So many problems to solve.  So much to achieve the finished product.  Here is the first image of what I am up to.

To the trained eye, a number of elements are present.  The magazine they are reading was put together with downloaded images via MS Word which allows enough scope with the capacity to insert text and picture fields you can move around.  Then colour printed.  That technology alone was a luxury when I was torturing myself day and night simply to finish a philosophy degree that many would have casually moped through after a hard terms drinking and smoking.  Then there is the composition of the image with four rows of images.  Magazine at the front, the two action men reading it with a third on the right relatively behind and in shade.  Then the 4th sailor somewhat out of focus and view.  Finally the bulkhead, which will be reused as the ships corridors, and what is meant to be a torpedo.  

If the water - missile had been on it's side I am sure that would make sense.  As it stands, literally, it looks like an ICBM that a nuclear submarine would launch vertically.  Or an air tank.  So win win.  The business of how the picture was lit is not to be underestimated.  Three different light sources were used.  One overhead floor for the back, one spotlight for the two heads at the front and one beneath the magazine.  I had to research film lighting to see the possibilities.  

Lighting will be a thing in series 2.  Certain cliche'd set ups as I love to call them now, will feature characters as much defined by how they appear as what they actually say and do.  Dare I say this is my gateway to using real people in the future?  Ach, I am far too old for such nonsense now.  I mean, what do I have to say about life that a film could capture?  Hmmmm.....

Yes, the boys need cleaning.  You can indeed see 47 years of accumulated fungus on their faces. I was going to incorporate this into a story.  Yes there is indeed a new model of Action Man present.  I went and bought him on Ebay.  A solid toy with good joints.  Chunkier and more indestructible than his predecessors.  That folks is the chief engineer and a character he will be.  So much so that you won't ever understand a word he says.  Except for the subtitles permanently following his every scrambled word.  

WHY AM I DOING THS?  Well, because it's fun and I want to see how far I can develop the art form before either sanity stops me, or I come off furlough and get back to real working.  So far feedback has been good.  If there was say, real money or wider media interest I would have been inspired to work on the project more than I have so far.  Damn you sanity, you ruin everything.  

Project for tomorrow - getting to our local arts and craft shop to check out balsa wood and how I am going to build an internal corridor hatch.  Complete with wheel and chunky hinges.  Then spray the whole thing silver.  Crazy!  So far I have two foam blocks to use, one as the doorframe, and a 2 litre bottle of pop to cut up as the actual curved door itself.  If it only has to be seen open or closed I think I can build a prototype.  An actual working hinge you can see moving may not be necessary.

Having a hatch would mean you had a corner and a second angle to block the end of a set up.  The characters are against a wall or a pane, but if you tip the camera at an angle you will only see off the edge.  Aha - put in a hatch!  Simple as...

Last week I started the song that features in episode one as well.  I have not recorded a tune like this in years and was surprised how easy it was to come up with a simple verse/chorus glam rock tune.  One you had the drums on my sequencer to ride, it was easy to come up with the bare bones of such a cliche'd genre (Its' all on the beat.  The drums lead with lots of HEY!'s going off).  My vocals were done on my Zoom R16's onboard microphones and sounded terrible.  After Sunday's day of rest it's time to use my proper microphone and re do them.  It was noticeable that the song failed due to elements not working.  So the drums are okay, the bass and lead work but the vocals killed it.  I think the drums and the vocals are what make a glam song.  The actual music kind of supporting it all.  Hey!  

I recall the Stranglers were a band where the guitar was actually often the most inconsequential instrument.  The strong drums, the eloquent arpeggios of the keyboards and the deadly rotostrinq power of JJ Burnel's overdriven lead on the bass were signatures of the band.  But of course, that's a generalisation that every Stranglers fan could easily argue with me over, song by song.  

All this observation from a man who just wanted to master basic transistor theory, eh?  

Spaced out and simple minded. Why I am someone to be wary of.

Some people on occasion encounter this weird, pathetic looking old man.  He appears to be overwhelmed.  Now, when you look like you cannot handle a social situation you are in, the obvious conclusion is that you are not intelligent enough to keep out of the way of it.  Or, if it is understood you had no choice but to be there, some allowance maybe made in the mind of the person encountering you.

Generally people who encounter others who look childlike, overwhelmed and vulnerable assume they are of a lesser intelligence than themselves.  You face someone you can 'handle'.  Someone who is not a threat.  Someone child like and simple.

This is how I have often come across to people.  It is in fact, a lie.  But am I lying and deceiving others with my appearance?  Is this my responsibility?  Also, what exactly is happening in the social intercourse taking place?


Many autistic people dont have the capacity to relate the way the neurotypicals around them do.  We are a kind have universal properties, one of which is a disconnect between how we are within and how we relate externally.  This can get bigger the more stress is put upon us both in the world and as develops within ourselves.  Internal stress is not necessarily due to external stimuli.  It can be a very traumatic business being autistic and you can easily grow up so used to abuse, you miss it.  So you work within to keep it going.

I can recall many social moments when I have been patronised and humoured.  Which is a bit paradoxical if you consider I was aware it was all happening.  Oh, so why didn't I make some sort of indication to the other people involved that I knew this?  That would have been all they needed.  Unless they deliberately played on my weaknesses and wanted to rejoice in that fact by seeing that I knew there was nothing I could do about their actions?

Dark stuff, eh?


So I posted this on Facebook:

Ever had that experience where you have been humoured, patronised and treated like you were simple minded but you knew full well what was happening to you? So how could you be those things when you had awareness?

Am I right that this single experience expresses the reality of being autistic relative to neurotypicals really well? Also that you never thought anyone would state it like this for you to relate yourself to?

Within 10 minutes, three friends had reacted positively, two of which wrote that it was like explaining physics to monkeys trying to make neurotypicals understand this?


The experience of being misunderstood or even seen as something you are not is clearly universal, since at lest one response was not from an autistic person.  It happens to everyone etc.  I would say the chief reason I get upset with myself is my inability to deal with this single issue?  Its the main thing in the real world and I always saw it as 'standing up for yourself'.

Assuming of course, my perception of such situations is accurate?

Maybe the other person or group has me right?  I am vulnerable and relatively feeble minded?  So accept it.  Well, how can you when you are that simple that you think you are not.  Quite a common thing in the Polytechnic of North London I was at I can tell you.


This is the issue with existing in a society that often means you go into situations where people don't know you, don't care about you and why should they do these things anyway?  Do you know personally and in detail everyone you walk past?  See in shops and clubs?  Interact with in lifts and on trains?  Do you want to personally care about them?  Well actually many of us do want to have consideration and respect very much.  So note the paradox?  Being considerate whilst being private from others.


I think it is time for a new slide in my show?