Tagging-Type Things

I've been tagged with both a meme and a blog award. Here's the award thingy:

The meme is several categories of 'five things' about myself.

5 things found in your bag:

I don't have one. Some things I've been carrying around lately, however, are:

* A big fat German-English/English-German dictionary

* A printout of Hans Asperger's original article

* A little notebook with an attached pen, mostly containing translations of parts of Asperger's article (using Babelfish and the above-mentioned dictionary)

* A tenth of a yarn blanket, attached to a ball of yarn and a crochet hook

* The Saskatchewan Driver's Handbook - I want my license so I can get this one job in which you look after a developmentally disabled adult during the day, so that after graduation they still have something to keep them busy

None of these are currently with me, however.

5 Favorite things in your room:

I don't exactly have a room anymore, either. I've been sleeping on the couch for several years now. By my couch, my favorite things are:

* Whichever book I'm currently using for bedtime reading - right now, it's Lord of the Silent Kingdom.

* My binders, containing photocopies and printouts of disability and disability rights stuff. There is also a large tupperware container filled with printouts etc, and many strewn on the floor getting clawed by my elderly cat when he really wants to be fed.

* My super-soft blanket. It's not actually warm enough most of the time, so I have it underneath my other blanket. The weight of that blanket also feels nice, it's two layers with stuffing in the middle (can't remember what that's called).

* One of our two cat food bowls is there - I like it mainly because it attracts cats, and then I can pet them as they eat or they decide to cuddle me, since they're there anyway.

* The above-mentioned things I carry around get placed there when I sleep.

* Can't think of anything else. There's a second couch, a stereo, a lamp, etc, but none of them are special to me. Maybe the room itself? I feel safe there, like I can monitor everything in the house while still being a bit out of the way.

5 things you have always wanted to do:

* Turn into a cat. I don't think I'd want to be a cat full-time, but I really want to experience it sometime.

* Just exist, without feeling the need to do anything.

* Be younger - I think ever since I was about 7 or so, I've been wanting to be younger. In a decade or so, it'll be normal (not really, because I want to be a little kid).

* Be a publisher author - technically, I've achieved this already, because I entered a story into a contest and got accepted (will post links once I have them). But I want a full-length book published, and preferably more than one.

* Have a child, especially an autistic child.

5 things you are currently into:

* Playing games on Newgrounds or Kongregate, usually puzzle games, though some of the strategy/defense ones I like as well.

* Researching the history of autism and childhood schizophrenia - as you may have guessed from some of my recent posts.

* Crocheting (see my list of things I carry around).

* Playing Rogue, an old DOS adventure game.

* Petting cats - I've always been into petting cats.

Both of these things require tagging someone, but I don't have the spoons (or thermals) for tagging people. So, for the meme, tag yourself by commenting stating that you want to do it. For the award, I'm not sure. Maybe I'll hand out the award to the best contributions to the Disability Blog Carnival I'm hosting here.

Autistic Rebellion in a 1930s German School

I've been trying to translate Hans Asperger's 1944 description of 'autistic personality' from German so I can read it. It's difficult, but already I've discovered interesting things about his first case, Fritz V. In many ways, Fritz V sounds like me, only more autistic. He was a clumsy boy, slow and awkward at self-care skills, but said his first word at 10 months and spoke 'like an older' (I think they mean older child). One big difference between us is his ADHD-like behavior - he was noisy, grabbing everything and interested in everything.
What is most interesting to me is his school problems (if you know German, please tell me if I've mistranslated).

"Er war von der Schule eingewiesen: schon am 1. Tage des Schulbesuches hatte sich gezeigt, dass er 'vollkommen schulunfähig' sei." [The school said he was 'perfectly unteachable' after 1 day of attendance.]

"Von klein auf machte er die ärgsten Erziehunsschwierigkeiten; er fügte sich keinem Befehl, tat einfach, was er wollte, oder das gerade Gegenteil des Befohlenen." [From when he was small, he had behavior problems at school; when given a command, however simple, he would do as he pleased or the opposite of what he was told.]

"'sie reizen ihn nur auf', er wird immer gleich aggressiv, schlägt mit allem zu, was er gerade erreicht, ohne Rücksicht, ob er andere ernstlich gefährdet (einmal mit einem Hammer)" ['he just provokes people', he always became aggressive, had no concern for the safety of others (once with a hammer)]

His school problems are much more severe than mine were, but if I'd been attending a 1930s German school, I'd probably have acted the same way. It sounds like he was in full blown rebellion right from the very first day. The school's comments sound like things my teachers might have said about me. In fact, my teachers actually called me unteachable, though not on my very first day. (My father says "she may be unteachable, but boy can she learn!")
It's odd, I'm noticing something I also saw in Leo Kanner's article - they mention things that I know to be true in autistics I've met, but which are either not thought of nowadays or the opposite is considered typical. Supposedly, Asperger Syndrome kids are usually rulebound and trying to be obediant - their disobediance is due to misunderstanding the command, and they'll often try to enforce the rules on other children. They should do very well in a highly controlled school like the 1930s German schools. I'm not like that, and neither is Fritz V. Like me, Fritz V seems to vehemently resist being controlled.
By the way, once I've finished translating it, I'll put it up on the net. Before then, I might put up a text version of the original, so it's easier to Babelfish it.

PS:
I've translated more of it, and even more than Fritz V, Harro L's reaction to school reminds me of myself:

"Er geht während des Unterrichts aus der Bank, kriecht auf allen Vieren in der Klasse herum." (He leaves his desk during instruction and crawls around on the floor.)

I've never heard of anyone else who did that before! I thought I was the only one!

My Interests

This is my contribution to the current Disability Blog Carnival. The key phrase is 'a few of my favorite things' so I thought I might want to describe the history of my interests.
For those who don't know, a distictive (and diagnostic) characteristic of autistic people is unusual interests. Autistic people often have interests that are unusually intense (for example, spending most of your waking hours thinking about your interest), narrow (only 1-2 interests, the interests themselves often having a fairly narrow focus) and unusual (for example, a 14 year old researching rare syndromes). My interests fit all three of those criteria, although the narrow criteria is only barely met.
My first word was 'meowmi', which probably indicates my earliest interest - cats. When I was 3 months old, one of our cats had kittens, and for awhile in my infancy we had 5 cats. My parents gave one of the kittens away when she got old enough, so then we had 4 cats - 3 of which were highly child-appealing, playful kittens.
I also played with one toy, a shapesorter, obsessively for awhile. As soon as I'd figured out how to not only put the shapes in but also get them out without opening the container, I lost interest in that toy.
My interest in cats broadened into an interest in animals that refocused into an interest in the rainforest. My favorite country was Brazil, where the Amazon rainforest mostly is. I remember meeting a new pastor at our local church and telling him my toy monkey had come all the way from Brazil to meet him, and that he had a prehensile tail. I demonstrated this by tying the monkey's tail around my arm. The interest in the rainforest led to an interest in environmentalism, because every book and movie I saw about the rainforest emphasized how fast it was disappearing and how many species were being lost.
After reading Silverwing I decided my favorite animals were bats. My Dad says I told him that my favorite animals were bats, cats and dogs, to which he asked "in alphabetical order?" This fit into my interest in the rainforest pretty well. My best friend shared my interest in bats and for the Halloween party at school, we both appeared as bats! She's the same friend who made me a twist tye snake at one point and started my whole thing of making twist tye creatures.
I also developed an interest in genetic engineering and at one point said I wanted to be a scientist when I grew up. The kind I meant was a 'mad scientist' who creates weird creatures for no better reason than curiosity and interest.
Somewhere around that time I started reading the book series Animorphs and became obsessed by it. I insisted that it was real, that Yeerks were real. My school decided to try to stamp out this interest, which only made it stronger. I suppose I must've scared them by insisting it was true, but I didn't really believe it. I just wanted to believe it.
I also had an obsessive interest in black holes, sparked by the song Cygnus X-1 by Rush. This also led into an interested in the beginning of the universe, but I disappointed by the lack of facts about how it actually began. And the idea of alternate universes really appealed to me. After awhile I dropped that interest, but came back to it from another angle after reading The Subtle Knife.
My interest in environmentalism broadened after awhile into an interest in world problems, and I obsessed for awhile on famine and war in Africa. Then when my school gave us a 'say no to drugs' drug education thing I became obsessed with drug addiction. I was being badly bullied and was pretty depressed at this point, and in general when I'm depressed I think about societal problems and other unpleasant things.
I also watched a movie, the title of which I can't remember, in which some aliens tried to kidnap children as pets. I latched onto that idea and made many twist tye stories about that. In all of them, unlike the movie, the children actually were captured and were trying to deal with that somehow.
I developed an obsessive interest in languages after awhile. I had a Bengali babysitter and learnt Bengali when I was 1 year old, but later forgot it. I also attended French immersion from Kindergarten to grade 6. After awhile I decided I wanted to learn various other languages, but never stuck with one long enough to really learn it - except Dutch, which my father urged me to learn because his ancestry is Flemish. I'm not really fluent in Dutch, but if you speak it to me in short statements I understand most of it. After awhile I developed an interest in endangered languages, and in reaction to reading Lord of the Rings I became interested in invented languages. Because my Dad is a computer programmer, I also was interested in computer languages for awhile.
In reaction to a Disability Awareness day at school, I developed an obsessive interest in disabilities. I wandered around with my eyes closed, sometimes waving a stick around, begged my mother to let me ride in a wheelchair whenever I saw one unoccupied (she never let me), borrowed the crutches my parents had gotten from the doctor when my mother hurt her foot and never returned (my father now uses them when his undiagnosed arthritis-like joint condition acts up), and learnt Braille, fingerspelling and a little bit of ASL. I lost interest in disabilities after awhile, then returned to it when my mother wrote an article about a glue-sniffing mother that discussed FAS and I decided to research FAS. This led into researching autism, and recognizing myself in Temple Grandin's writings about autism, which led into searching for more stuff by autistic people, finding out about the autistic rights movement, and eventually getting diagnosed autistic.
Also, I developed an interested in the Creatures series, started when my mother bought me Creatures Adventures. This also rekindled my interest in computer languages because you can create your own add-ons. And it fulfilled my wish to be a 'mad scientist', in a way, because you can genetically engineer (gengineer) the creatures in these games.

Learning ASL

I am learning ASL (american sign language). I've been carrying around my old, battered ASL dictionary and looking up random words in it, signing sentences with it. But I want to use multiple methods of learning. One thing I decided to do is look for YouTube videos in ASL that have subtitles, so I can watch them and try to recognize the words as they are signing. (I recently watched a video in Hindi with subtitles and ended up learning that 'ha' means yes, so hopefully I can do something similar with ASL.) Once I know more, I'll
I'm also trying to sign up for an ASL class.
So, here are some subtitled ASL videos:

http://subtitle.in/w/xZTbvvLWziM/E_U1fgUYfBf
A guy talking about having had shoulder surgery.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTzgFPiXz-8
A 2-year old girl demonstrating signs she learnt to help communicate with her autistic sister.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zvul3DC4l4E
A comedy video about a guy translating signs into speech.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vj-U2w0sIfE
A guy signing a song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4h-wEBxekF0
Another guy signing a song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivVr4ogQ5mI
A 6 year old girl singing along with a song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2VW6ry5Ykg
A guy signing and speaking who has intermittent speech problems.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkq610qeOAY
An evangelical signing video, talking in excruciating detail about dying on the cross.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ua4hqGHf2o
Some guy signing 'Hotel California'.

Here are some online ASL dictionaries that have videos of the signs:

http://www.masterstech-home.com/ASLDict.html