#autisticwriters — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #autisticwriters, aggregated by home.social.
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The Dark Lord
“I’m afraid we’re dealing with the actions of The Dark Lord.”
“Never heard of that individual.”
“Oh, The Dark Lord is known by many other names.”
“Like what?”
“The Lord of the Infernal Realms.”
“The Lord of the Infernal Realms. I see.”
“And The Master of Darkness.”
“Oh, I’ve heard of this one. So The Master of Darkness and The Dark Lord are one and the same?”
“Yes, they are.”
“Are there more names?”
“Yes. The Outhouse Shit Fly of Annoyance.”
“Really?”
“Yes, and Mr. Poopyhead.”
“Mr. Poop… Wait! What?”
“Also, Wibble Flibble Bong Bong.”
“Okay, now you’re just making shit up.”
“I swear I’m not!”
“I’m going to go back to my study now. Good luck with The Dark… er… I mean with Wibble Flibble Whatever.”
#TheDailyIsotope #AutisticWriters #microfiction #TheDarkLord
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Two Cockroaches
“Give it to me straight, doctor.”
“Alright. Inside of you, there are two cockroaches. One of them is dead, and the other is dancing.”
“Cockroaches? Ew… Take them out, right away.”
“No, no, no. You don’t understand. I was speaking metaphorically.”
“Why are you speaking meteorically? I said give it to me straight.”
“Alright, it’s metaphorically, not meteorically, but let’s forget the cockroaches.”
“I’m afraid I can’t. You’ve painted quite the picture.”
“Okay, I’ll put away brushes, paint, and easel now.”
“Thank you.”
“I’ll give it to you straight. You’ve got cancer.”
“Okay. I don’t know where you were going with your cockroach metaphor. At any rate, that’s a relief.”
“It is quite serious. Why do you call it a relief?”
“I thought you’d say I have explosive diarrhea.”
“No, but judging by the trail of shit behind me… that’s what I have.”
“Hahaha!”
“I wouldn’t be laughing if I were you. With the chemo you’re about to get, you’ll get a good idea of the explosive diarrhea experience. Hahaha!”
#TheDailyIsotope #AutisticWriters #microfiction #cockroaches #shit #ExplosiveDiarrhea #cancer
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The Fediverse Is A Countercultural Garden
Had I been born earlier, I'd be a beatnik or a hippie... Photo by Vasilios M on Unsplash I was cogitating about how to convince someone to give a shot at getting into the fediverse. My first thought went along like this: The fediverse is a decentr... And then I stopped myself. It does not matter how true what I was about to think is. For most people who would listen to this, it just does not make for a great argument. So what if it is decentralized? There are benefits to decentralization, […]https://www.yourautisticlife.com/2026/07/26/the-fediverse-is-a-countercultural-garden/
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Three Little Farts
“Is that the song ‘Three Little Farts’ playing on your radio?”
“Yes, I love that song.”
“Aha! Did your ears DARE listen to the notes of this song?”
“Er… I wouldn’t say that they dared, no.”
“Dammit!”
“But they did hear the song.”
“YES! I must FIGHT you to DEATH, then!”
“Why?”
“Scallywag! I OWN the rights to that song.”
“Oh, you wrote the song, or made the music?”
“Now, don’t be silly. I did none of this. I just, you know, own the RIGHTS.”
“Ah.”
“I’m picking copyright law as my WEAPON. What WEAPON do you choose?”
“Er… common sense?”
“Drats!”
“What?”
“You win. I cannot do anything against COMMON SENSE.”
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Three Little Farts
“Is that the song ‘Three Little Farts’ playing on your radio?”
“Yes, I love that song.”
“Aha! Did your ears DARE listen to the notes of this song?”
“Er… I wouldn’t say that they dared, no.”
“Dammit!”
“But they did hear the song.”
“YES! I must FIGHT you to DEATH, then!”
“Why?”
“Scallywag! I OWN the rights to that song.”
“Oh, you wrote the song, or made the music?”
“Now, don’t be silly. I did none of this. I just, you know, own the RIGHTS.”
“Ah.”
“I’m picking copyright law as my WEAPON. What WEAPON do you choose?”
“Er… common sense?”
“Drats!”
“What?”
“You win. I cannot do anything against COMMON SENSE.”
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New people
“How was work today?”
“It was Bring Family To Work Day. So I met a bunch of new people.”
“How did it go?”
“Well, the first person I met was crying all the time.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah, we tried to cheer him up. We tried giving him food and drinks, doing a puppet show. Nothing worked.”
“A puppet show, eh?”
“Yeah. Then the second person I met regurgitated all over me.”
“Wow. Do you know what was wrong with this individual?”
“No. That’s just something that new people are liable to do.”
“Er… I’m not sure what this has to do with being a new person, but okay…”
“Then, the third new person I met was a complete stinker.”
“What do you mean?”
“Her diaper was full.”
“How did you know she was wearing a diaper? She could just have shat herself.”
“That full diaper was visible for everyone to see.”
“What?! What full-grown adult would go around the office with their diaper visible for all to see.”
“Who said it was a full-grown adult? I was talking about *new* people. People that are new to this world.”
“…”
“In other words, babies.”
“That does not make sense. New people means people *you* did not know beforehand.”
“Oh? Let’s see. If I say ‘I saw a bunch of old people at the grocery store.’ what do you understand?”
“I understand that there were people of advanced age at the grocery store.”
“Right. You do *not* understand that there were people I already knew there.”
“So?”
“Consequently, when I talk about *new* people, I’m talking about people who were born recently. Babies. Ergo ipso facto.”
“Semper ubi sub ubi!”
“What?”
“Oh, I thought we had switched to Latin.”
#TheDailyIsotope #AutisticWriters #microfiction #NewPeople #babies
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Feeld: Still Not Great
Feeld being the least awful of an awful bunch does not count for much. Photo by Denny Müller on Unsplash I used to pay for Feeld, but the changes they made in this application put me off, and I stopped paying, for about a year. I recently resubscribed, and what I discovered is not pretty. Now, I'll be frank. All the online dating apps suck. Without exception. Yes, the people who think nothing of matching with you, only to string you along fruitlessly, are part of the problem. However, the […]https://www.yourautisticlife.com/2026/07/14/feeld-still-not-great/
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Feeld: Still Not Great
Feeld being the least awful of an awful bunch does not count for much. Photo by Denny Müller on Unsplash I used to pay for Feeld, but the changes they made in this application put me off, and I stopped paying, for about a year. I recently resubscribed, and what I discovered is not pretty. Now, I'll be frank. All the online dating apps suck. Without exception. Yes, the people who think nothing of matching with you, only to string you along fruitlessly, are part of the problem. However, the […]https://www.yourautisticlife.com/2026/07/14/feeld-still-not-great/
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A 350-year-old fly
“Tonight, folks, we have a special treat. We’re going to do an interview with a 350-year-old fly. It is really a great privilege to have you here tonight, fly. Please tell me, how do you feel?”
“aaaaarrrrrrrmmmmmfffffffffffflllllblbllblblbl…”
“That’s great to hear. I wish I’d feel like this too when I get to be your age. What advice do you have for the younger folks out there?”
“…”
“Hello?”
“…”
“Well, this was the interv… I mean… the funeral of a 350-year-old fly. Stay tuned for the news.”
#TheDailyIsotope #AutisticWriters #microfiction #interview #flies #funeral
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No hamsters
“I’d like to order a burger.”
“Any special instructions?”
“No hamsters.”
“Er… okay… I can assure you there won’t be any hamsters in your burger.”
[Later.]
“Here is your burger.”
“Excellent! Wait. What’s this?”
“Let me look… Ah. Yes. This is the complimentary gerbil.”
“I said no hamsters!”
“Yes, and this is not a hamster. This is a gerbil. If you did not want a gerbil, you should have said ‘no gerbils.'”
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No hamsters
“I’d like to order a burger.”
“Any special instructions?”
“No hamsters.”
“Er… okay… I can assure you there won’t be any hamsters in your burger.”
[Later.]
“Here is your burger.”
“Excellent! Wait. What’s this?”
“Let me look… Ah. Yes. This is the complimentary gerbil.”
“I said no hamsters!”
“Yes, and this is not a hamster. This is a gerbil. If you did not want a gerbil, you should have said ‘no gerbils.'”
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The Seer and The Knight
“What can I do for you, young man?”
“I am a Knight of the Round Table, and have come to have my future foretold.”
“That will be five pounds.”
“I’m a Knight of the Round Table. Don’t you understand?!”
“Yes, I understand that you sit at a table which has a round shape. Five pounds, please.”
“Alright, here are your five pounds”
“Excellent! Take a seat.”
“May I take this one?”
“Yes… What are you doing picking that seat up?”
“You told me to take a seat, so I am taking a seat.”
“Put that seat down and sit down, you oaf!”
“Alright, alright! No need to get angry, old woman!”
“Old? I’m only 35, you know.”
“Yeah, well I’m 15 so…”
“At any rate, I’m going to read you now.”
“Okay.”
“Hmm… I see… something.”
“What do you see?”
“You… you masturbate… a lot.”
“That’s none of your business.”
“I see what I see, young man!”
“Anyway, what can you tell me about my future?”
“Give me a second… I see something else. You will be betrayed.”
“I knew it! It is my second in command, isn’t it? That bastard is going to betray me to the enemy.”
“No… not him… you will be betrayed… by your farts!”
“My farts? How so?”
“While hiding in the bushes, you will fart. The enemy will hear it, and kill you.”
“You must be seeing wrong. I do not fart. [Fart noise.]”
“Oh, what was that noise?”
“A frog… that was a frog.”
“Sure it was. Anyhow, this future can be averted.”
“Averted? How?”
“That will be another five pounds.”
“Listen, old woman, I am on a very important mission.”
“Five pounds!”
“Alright.”
“Thank you.”
“Now will you tell me how to avert this future?”
“Don’t eat beans.”
“Don’t eat beans? That’s it?”
“Yes. It will rob your gut from the fuel it needs to produce farts.”
“Well, then I shall eat cauliflower.”
“Great! And stop masturbating. You’re going to get hairy palms.”
#TheDailyIsotope #AutisticWriters #microfiction #knights #masturbation #farts
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The Seer and The Knight
“What can I do for you, young man?”
“I am a Knight of the Round Table, and have come to have my future foretold.”
“That will be five pounds.”
“I’m a Knight of the Round Table. Don’t you understand?!”
“Yes, I understand that you sit at a table which has a round shape. Five pounds, please.”
“Alright, here are your five pounds”
“Excellent! Take a seat.”
“May I take this one?”
“Yes… What are you doing picking that seat up?”
“You told me to take a seat, so I am taking a seat.”
“Put that seat down and sit down, you oaf!”
“Alright, alright! No need to get angry, old woman!”
“Old? I’m only 35, you know.”
“Yeah, well I’m 15 so…”
“At any rate, I’m going to read you now.”
“Okay.”
“Hmm… I see… something.”
“What do you see?”
“You… you masturbate… a lot.”
“That’s none of your business.”
“I see what I see, young man!”
“Anyway, what can you tell me about my future?”
“Give me a second… I see something else. You will be betrayed.”
“I knew it! It is my second in command, isn’t it? That bastard is going to betray me to the enemy.”
“No… not him… you will be betrayed… by your farts!”
“My farts? How so?”
“While hiding in the bushes, you will fart. The enemy will hear it, and kill you.”
“You must be seeing wrong. I do not fart. [Fart noise.]”
“Oh, what was that noise?”
“A frog… that was a frog.”
“Sure it was. Anyhow, this future can be averted.”
“Averted? How?”
“That will be another five pounds.”
“Listen, old woman, I am on a very important mission.”
“Five pound!”
“Alright.”
“Thank you.”
“Now will you tell me how to avert this future?”
“Don’t eat beans.”
“Don’t eat beans? That’s it?”
“Yes. It will rob your gut from the fuel it needs to produce farts.”
“Well, then I shall eat cauliflower.”
“Great! And stop masturbating. You’re going to get hairy palms.”
#TheDailyIsotope #AutisticWriters #microfiction #knights #masturbation #farts
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The K9 Unit
“I came as fast as I could. I was in the middle of being turned into a newt when central called.”
“You still look human to me.”
“That’s because the witch who cast the spell starts with the genitals.”
“So… you’ve got the genitals of a newt now, but the rest of you is human?”
“Yes.”
“I see.”
“So what have we here?”
“It’s an abduction case.”
“How do you figure?”
“Do you see a victim?”
“No.”
“There you go! The victim was abducted.”
“There’s a question I’ve gotta ask.”
“Shoot!” [Gun fire.] “What the hell are you doing???”
“You said shoot, so I’m shooting.”
“I meant ask me your question, and put that gun away.”
“Alright. What’s up with the pile of dead dogs over there?”
“I called the K9 Unit. These are cadaver dogs here to help in the search.”
“Did they turn up anything?”
“Not yet. We’ve given them the victim’s clothes to sniff, but so far no reaction on their part.”
“That’s a bit vexing. What’s the name of the leader?”
“Rex.”
“Come here, Rex. I’ve got a treat for you!”
“Nothing.”
“Yeah, tough crowd.”
“We’ve got to give it time. They haven’t been at it long.”
“Oh, they’re recent graduates of the cadaver dog academy, I take it?”
“Yes, a freshly minted batch of cadaver dogs. Top of their class too. They are excellent at playing the role of cadavers.”
“Well, if those dogs find something, please let me know.”
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Prostate Exams
At the primary care physician’s office:
“Am I good to go, doctor?”
“No yet. I must ask you to drop your pants.”
“Why?”
“Prostate exam.”
“Okay.”
At the ophthalmologist:
“We’re almost done. I just need you to drop your pants.”
“Why?”
“Prostate exam.”
“Hmm, unexpected but… okay.”
At the grocery store:
“Please drop your pants.”
“Why?”
“You bought cheese. Our cheese comes with a complimentary prostate exam.”
“What if I say no?”
“Well, then no cheese for you.”
“Hmm… alright then…”
At the bank:
“Hands up! This is a hold up.”
“Okay.”
“Alright, now please drop your pants.”
“Why?”
“Our hold-ups come with a free prostate exam.”
“Wait a second. I’ve been checked by my primary care physician, my ophthalmologist, and my grocer. My prostate is fine.”
“Well, I guess my father was right.”
“How so?”
“He kept telling me that I’ll never make it as a doctor. That’s why I rob banks as my main job, but I was trying to keep the dream alive. You know, by doing prostate exams on the side.”
“Oh, well… alright then, you can do your exam.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you! Hear that father???”
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Lawyer talk
“[On the phone.] Yes. Yes. Yes, with extra sauce and cheese. [Hangs up]”
“Sauce and cheese? I take it you were ordering a pizza.”
“No, I was talking to my lawyer.”
“Your lawyer??? Why were you talking about sauce and cheese, then?”
“I was teaching my lawyer how to order a pizza.”
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The alien abduction
“I came as fast as I could. I was curling my hair when central called.”
“That explains the hair curlers still in your hair.”
“What have we here?”
“By the looks of it, an abduction.”
“Ah. You know what they say, right?”
“No, what do they say?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I was hoping *you* would know. Anyhow, is that the victim’s underwear, on the floor?”
“Yes. Judging by the content of the toilet, she was abducted by aliens in mid-shit.”
“How do you figure?”
“Look at the floaters, and there is no toilet paper in the bowl.”
“No, I mean, how do you figure it was aliens?”
“Look at what they left behind.”
“That’s alien alright. I can’t read the writing.”
“You’re looking at my notepad. Look at this, here.”
“The latest issue of Aliens Abducting Women Mid-Shit. It’s a bit on the nose, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know about that.”
“I’ll show you. [Holds mirror.] See that booger on your nose?”
“You’re right. It is right on my nose. Thanks for the heads-up. I’m going to have to go see my dermatologist before it multiplies.”
“I wouldn’t worry too much about it.”
“How do you figure?”
“It looks too young. Probably does not know multiplication yet.”
“Hang on. I’ve got to take this call. [Picks up phone.] Yes. Yes. It was an abduction. Yes. [Hangs up.]”
“You were on the phone with the coroner, I take it.”
“No, I was ordering a pizza from the flower shop.”
#TheDailyIsotope #AutisticWriters #microfiction #aliens #AlienAbduction
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David Green is an autistic writer of the epic and urban, fantastical, cosy and mysterious. He's also a mega-mega-mega fan of Supernatural, which celebrates its 21st birthday this year. David will look at the Winchester's "family business" of hunting monsters, dealing with Heaven and Hell, and trying to figure out exactly what happened to their parents. 🧵⬇️
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The Alfredo sauce tastes funny…
“Oh, waiter!”
“Yes.”
“I’m not satisfied with this Alfredo sauce.”
“Oh. Let me taste it. […] It tastes like perfectly fine Alfredo sauce to me.”
“It does? To me this tastes like my husband.”
“Your husband?”
“Yes, husband. I mean I do like the taste of my husband, but Alfredo sauce should not taste like him.”
“You like the taste of your husband?”
“Yes, I do kiss him every day.”
“Is that your husband there?”
“Yes. It is.”
“Don’t you see the issue?”
“What issue?”
“He’s a block of Parmigiano cheese!”
“No, no, no… He would have told me if it were the case.”
“Let’s try something. [To the husband:] Sir?”
“…”
“Sir?”
“…”
“See. He’s not reacting. That’s because he’s a block of Parmigiano cheese.”
“Okay, bucko! Now, you’re just insulting us. I’ve told you he’s not a block of Parmigiano cheese.”
“What is he, then?”
“A block of Romano cheese.”
“Aha! There’s Romano cheese in the Alfredo sauce!”
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A question at Eastercon had David Green pondering why neurodivergent creatives seek out other neurodivergent creatives: It’s all about acceptance.
https://britishfantasysociety.org/searching-for-people-like-me/
#writers #writing #writingcommunity #autism #autismawareness #autisticwriters #creativity #creativetoots #neurodivergence #neurodiversity
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A question at Eastercon had David Green pondering why neurodivergent creatives seek out other neurodivergent creatives: It’s all about acceptance.
https://britishfantasysociety.org/searching-for-people-like-me/
#writers #writing #writingcommunity #autism #autismawareness #autisticwriters #creativity #creativetoots #neurodivergence #neurodiversity
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The cat burglar
“I was kissing a cow when central called. I came as fast as I could.”
“I see. That explains the smell.”
“What smell?”
“You smell like a cow.”
“Oh. That’s not the cow.”
“What is it, then?”
“My deodorant.”
“What fragrance are you using that smells so bad?”
“Barnyard Animal. Why?”
“It figures.”
“Anyway, what do we have here?”
“A burglar was killed.”
“Is that the burglar?”
“Yes. It is the cat you see on the floor, bleeding from a gunshot wound.”
“A *cat* burglar then…”
“You know what they say?”
“A cat in the hand is worth two in the bush?”
“No. Why would this apply here?? What they say is curiosity killed the cat.”
“Okay. How do you figure this applies in this case?”
“Look at his face.”
“Ah, yes, that’s the most curious case of resting hamster face I’ve ever seen.”
“Yes, that’s what killed him.”
“But how?”
“I think curiosity works slowly, more like an amoeba going after a shark than like lightning fellating a tree.”
“Fellating a tree???”
“I mean felling a tree. Anyway, you laugh at the amoeba but slowly, slowly it does its work and kills the shark. And then who has the last laugh?”
“I don’t know.”
“Not the shark. That’s for sure… because it is dead.”
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The leading cause of death
“Good morning.”
“Good morning, doctor.”
“How are you doing?”
“It’s probably best not to tarry. I’m parked in the metered zone. Give it to me straight, doctor. How much time do I have left?”
“Let me get the right visual aid. Ah… yes. You see this display with the time ticking down?”
“Yes.”
“That’s the time you have left.”
“Shit! That’s less than five minutes!”
“I’m very sorry.”
“I won’t even have time to put my things in order.”
“Wait, what???”
“If I’m going to die, I need to put my things in order.”
“Who said anything about you dying so soon?”
“You said my time is being counted down by this display.”
“Oh. Yes. That’s the time you have left on your parking spot. I thought that’s what you meant.”
“Oooohhhh… ha ha. So I get to live then?”
“For a while, yes.”
“Say, you’ve never told me what I have.”
“Oh, yes. You’re not going to die within the next five minutes, but you do have a terminal condition.”
“Shit… what condition?”
“You have an acute case of being alive.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, did you know that being alive is the leading cause of death, not only in this country, but everywhere on the planet?”
“So I won’t die soon?”
“No, you’ll die of ocular burnout 10 years from now.”
“Ocular burnout? What is it?”
“That’s top secret, I’m afraid. At any rate, you’ll live long enough to pay the parking ticket that will be automatically generated for you, just… about… now, according to my display.”
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Of tigers and krakens…
[Knock at door]
“[Cracks the door open] Yes, what is it?”
“Pest control. I’m coming to take care of the tigers.”
“The tigers?”
“Yes.”
“I find hard to believe that you take care of tigers.”
“Here is our flier. Look at that list.”
“Cockroaches… Mice… Chupacabras… Krakens… Ha, yes, tigers. It is on your list.”
“The building’s management has specifically asked us to take care of tigers. They want to make sure that no tigers bother you.”
“Well, that seems to be legit. Do come in.”
“Thank you.”
“I have to tell you though. I’ve been here three years, and I haven’t seen any tigers.”
“Oh?”
“In fact, I don’t think there are tigers in this entire country… Well, except in zoos.”
“You never know when a tiger will escape from a zoo, hitch a ride in a taxi and show up at your doorstep. As one might say, better safe than sorry.”
“I suppose, but I think you’re wasting your time with tiger prevention.”
“Now, you should clear the living room.”
“Why?”
“Those tigers are big fellas. The trap will take your entire living room.”
“Really? There are no tigers here! Your trap is pointless. Hmm… say, can I interest you in taking care of Krakens?”
“Krakens? Where?”
“I saw a couple of them last week behind the fridge.”
“Oh, boy! Oh, boy! Oh, boy! You know what this means?”
“No, I don’t.”
“I get to use the nukes!”
“Nukes! How does this fit with better safe than sorry????”
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Of tigers and krakens…
[Knock at door]
“[Cracks the door open] Yes, what is it?”
“Pest control. I’m coming to take care of the tigers.”
“The tigers?”
“Yes.”
“I find hard to believe that you take care of tigers.”
“Here is our flier. Look at that list.”
“Cockroaches… Mice… Chupacabras… Krakens… Ha, yes, tigers. It is on your list.”
“The building’s management has specifically asked us to take care of tigers. They want to make sure that no tigers bother you.”
“Well, that seems to be legit. Do come in.”
“Thank you.”
“I have to tell you though. I’ve been here three years, and I haven’t seen any tigers.”
“Oh?”
“In fact, I don’t think there are tigers in this entire country… Well, except in zoos.”
“You never know when a tiger will escape from a zoo, hitch a ride in a taxi and show up at your doorstep. As one might say, better safe than sorry.”
“I suppose, but I think you’re wasting your time with tiger prevention.”
“Now, you should clear the living room.”
“Why?”
“Those tigers are big fellas. The trap will take your entire living room.”
“Really? There are no tigers here! Your trap is pointless. Hmm… say, can I interest you in taking care of Krakens?”
“Krakens? Where?”
“I saw a couple of them last week behind the fridge.”
“Oh, boy! Oh, boy! Oh, boy! You know what this means?”
“No, I don’t.”
“I get to use the nukes!”
“Nukes! How does this fit with better safe than sorry????”
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Taimi: The Unserious Dating App for Unserious Folks
If it walks like a duck, and it looks like a duck… Photo by Bryan Padron on Unsplash … sometimes it is indeed a duck, but sometimes it is a skunk cosplaying as a duck. Taimi is the latter. Taimi stinks, it already stank, but now it stinks even more. It brands itself LGBTQ+ Dating and Chat. However, Taimi is an unserious dating app pretending to be serious. It fails at this, badly. If you haven't done so already, I do invite you to read my previous take on Taimi. You'll see there that […]https://www.yourautisticlife.com/2026/03/18/taimi-the-unserious-dating-app-for-unserious-folks/
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Taimi: The Unserious Dating App for Unserious Folks
If it walks like a duck, and it looks like a duck… Photo by Bryan Padron on Unsplash … sometimes it is indeed a duck, but sometimes it is a skunk cosplaying as a duck. Taimi is the latter. Taimi stinks, it already stank, but now it stinks even more. It brands itself LGBTQ+ Dating and Chat. However, Taimi is an unserious dating app pretending to be serious. It fails at this, badly. If you haven't done so already, I do invite you to read my previous take on Taimi. You'll see there that […]https://www.yourautisticlife.com/2026/03/18/taimi-the-unserious-dating-app-for-unserious-folks/
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He died doing what he loves best
“I came as fast as I could. I was frying air when central called.”
“Frying air?”
“Yes.”
“How do you fry air?”
“You know how a hair drier dries hair? An air fryer fries air. I got a new air fryer. It fries air to a crisp.”
“I see. Your grammatical logic is impeccable.”
“So what happened here?”
“A murder.”
“And I suppose that this is our victim, lying on the floor, covered in blood?”
“No, that’s Sergeant Fox, resting after a mishap with a ketchup bottle. The victim is over here.”
“Ah. What does the coroner say?”
“Apparently, our victim died doing he loves best.”
“And what’s that?”
“Masturbating.”
“Ah, yes, that would explain the hand down the pants, and the ridiculous smile on his face.”
“No, I’m afraid that’s a congenital feature.”
“You mean to tell me that this man was born with his hand down his pants? It must have been a difficult birth.”
“No, I’m talking about his face.”
“Yes, babies are born with a face. Nothing special about this.”
“I’m actually talking about his facial expression.”
“How do you figure that it is congenital?”
“For one thing, the smile was not momentary, look at his badge. [Shows the badge.]”
“Good god! This man has the worst case of resting clown face that I have ever seen. But how do you know it was congenital? It could have been the result of plastic surgery gone wrong.”
“Look at this. Forensics reconstructed the man’s face as a child.”
“Ah yes, even as a child, he looked like a cartoon clown.”
“And look at this. Forensics even reconstructed the man’s dog.”
“A balloon dog! A balloon dog for a clown checks out.”
“Forensics also reconstructed the man’s wife.”
“What gives? I see a blank piece of paper.”
“Exactly. He never married.”
“I see.”
“The kicker is that his wife looks exactly like his goat. Look!”
“You’re showing me the same piece of paper.”
“Yes, that’s because he never had a goat either.”
-
He died doing what he loves best
“I came as fast as I could. I was frying air when central called.”
“Frying air?”
“Yes.”
“How do you fry air?”
“You know how a hair drier dries hair? An air fryer fries air. I got a new air fryer. It fries air to a crisp.”
“I see. Your grammatical logic is impeccable.”
“So what happened here?”
“A murder.”
“And I suppose that this is our victim, lying on the floor, covered in blood?”
“No, that’s Sergeant Fox, resting after a mishap with a ketchup bottle. The victim is over here.”
“Ah. What does the coroner say?”
“Apparently, our victim died doing he loves best.”
“And what’s that?”
“Masturbating.”
“Ah, yes, that would explain the hand down the pants, and the ridiculous smile on his face.”
“No, I’m afraid that’s a congenital feature.”
“You mean to tell me that this man was born with his hand down his pants? It must have been a difficult birth.”
“No, I’m talking about his face.”
“Yes, babies are born with a face. Nothing special about this.”
“I’m actually talking about his facial expression.”
“How do you figure that it is congenital?”
“For one thing, the smile was not momentary, look at his badge. [Shows the badge.]”
“Good god! This man has the worst case of resting clown face that I have ever seen. But how do you know it was congenital? It could have been the result of plastic surgery gone wrong.”
“Look at this. Forensics reconstructed the man’s face as a child.”
“Ah yes, even as a child, he looked like a cartoon clown.”
“And look at this. Forensics even reconstructed the man’s dog.”
“A balloon dog! A balloon dog for a clown checks out.”
“Forensics also reconstructed the man’s wife.”
“What gives? I see a blank piece of paper.”
“Exactly. He never married.”
“I see.”
“The kicker is that his wife looks exactly like his goat. Look!”
“You’re showing me the same piece of paper.”
“Yes, that’s because he never had a goat either.”
-
Can I show you my tits?
“What can I do for you?”
“I would like to purchase a bird.”
“Oh, can I show you my tits?”
“I beg your pardon.”
“My tits. Do you want to see them?”
“Madam, your proposal is quite indecent.”
“Indecent? How?”
“You proposed that I see you in a state of undress.”
“What? I’ve got great tits and I just wanted to show them to you.”
“I care not as to whether your breasts are great or banal. I just don’t want to see them.”
“Would you stop talking about my breasts? I want to show you birds.”
“Oh, I heard tits.”
“Yes, if my great tits don’t interest you, my assistant just acquired blue tits. Do you want to see her blue tits?”
“Madam, for the last time, I do not wish to see anybody’s breasts, no matter what color they are.”
“Let me try another way. Is there a type of bird that interests you?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. Boobies. I’d like to see your boobies.”
“My boobies? Impudent!”
“What? You don’t have boobies?”
“Now you’re just insulting me.”
“Well, then. I shall leave, without having seen your boobies… or your breasts for that matter.”
“Very well!”
“Hmm… what next on my list of errands? Ah, yes, I shall go to the grocer to take a look at her melons.”
“You want to see her melons? Out of my store, you clod!”
“I shall take my leave anon.”
“Good!”
“I go check out the grocer’s melons and then I’ll go to the hardware store to get myself a nice pair of jugs and some nipples.”
“I’m sure the staff there will gladly let you see their jugs and their nipples. Oaf!”
“I must now bid you mammary.”
“Mammary to you too, sir!”
#TheDailyIsotope #AutisticWriters #microfiction #birds #breasts
-
A deadly combination
“I came as soon as I could. I was in the middle of surgery when central called.”
“I see.”
“[Phone rings.] Hold on! I’ve got to take this. [Picks up the cellphone.] “Yes. Yes. Let me know if the patient’s state changes, and remember the hydration. [Hangs up.]”
“How’s the patient?”
“As dead as when I left him.”
“Dead? Why do you need him hydrated?”
“Oh, I don’t need him hydrated. I was reminding the nurse to drink water. I don’t want to go back home to a dead patient and a dead nurse.”
“Home? Your home is equipped for surgery?”
“Yes, my home is complete with solarium, jacuzzi, batcave, and an OR.”
“I also did not know you were a doctor besides being a police officer.”
“I’m just an amateur. I learned my craft by reading the back of cereal boxes.”
“But there is no medical information on the back of cereal boxes.”
“Indeed, that’s why I call myself an amateur. Anyhow, what happened here?”
“An armed robbery, but the perpetrator was killed.”
“Is that the perpetrator on the floor bleeding from a gunshot would to the head, and not breathing?”
“Yes.”
“Look at that attire!”
“You know what they say?”
“What do they say?”
“Dress for the job you are seeking.”
“Well, by the looks of it, this criminal wanted a job as a clown circus.”
“True. Though he has a serious case of accountant face.”
“Yeah, the attire of a clown, and the face of an accountant. That’s a deadly combination if I’ve ever seen one.”
“How do you figure? We’re still alive.”
“Yes, but our victim is dead.”
“I see.”
-
A deadly combination
“I came as soon as I could. I was in the middle of surgery when central called.”
“I see.”
“[Phone rings.] Hold on! I’ve got to take this. [Picks up the cellphone.] “Yes. Yes. Let me know if the patient’s state changes, and remember the hydration. [Hangs up.]”
“How’s the patient?”
“As dead as when I left him.”
“Dead? Why do you need him hydrated?”
“Oh, I don’t need him hydrated. I was reminding the nurse to drink water. I don’t want to go back home to a dead patient and a dead nurse.”
“Home? Your home is equipped for surgery?”
“Yes, my home is complete with solarium, jacuzzi, batcave, and an OR.”
“I also did not know you were a doctor besides being a police officer.”
“I’m just an amateur. I learned my craft by reading the back of cereal boxes.”
“But there is no medical information on the back of cereal boxes.”
“Indeed, that’s why I call myself an amateur. Anyhow, what happened here?”
“An armed robbery, but the perpetrator was killed.”
“Is that the perpetrator on the floor bleeding from a gunshot would to the head, and not breathing?”
“Yes.”
“Look at that attire!”
“You know what they say?”
“What do they say?”
“Dress for the job you are seeking.”
“Well, by the looks of it, this criminal wanted a job as a clown circus.”
“True. Though he has a serious case of accountant face.”
“Yeah, the attire of a clown, and the face of an accountant. That’s a deadly combination if I’ve ever seen one.”
“How do you figure? We’re still alive.”
“Yes, but our victim is dead.”
“I see.”
-
A surprise in every box.
“Is this the Department of Formal Complaints?”
“No, this is the Department of Informal Complaints.”
“Oh, but the sign on the door says…”
“I was joking. This, indeed, is the Department of Formal Complaints. There is no such thing as a Department of Informal Complaints. That would be bonkers.”
“Ah. Well, I’d like to submit a formal complaint. Hmm… no, I wouldn’t *like* to submit it. ‘Like’ is the wrong word. I would be displeased to submit… That does not sound quite right either.”
“You want to submit a formal complaint, right?”
“That’s it.”
“What is it about?”
“Your boxes of cereal claim that there is a surprise in every box.”
“Yes.”
“Well, I opened my box, looked for the surprise, and found a turd.”
“Go on.”
“And it wasn’t just a turd, it was a third of turd.”
“A turd of a turd? I find that hard to believe. Our turds do not produce other turds.”
“No, not a turd of a turd. A third of a turd. How shall I put it? One over three of a turd.”
“Oh, a third of a turd. Would you have liked a whole turd?”
“We’re going astray here. What kind of a surprise is a turd?”
“Well, were you surprised?”
“Sure. I expected something like a toy, or some knick-knack.”
“Okay, so the writing on the box is truthful. There was a surprise in your box.”
“That’s your stance?”
“Yes, I think you’re making a mountain out of a molehill.”
“I see.”
“This is the wrong department for such activity. You want the Department of Making Mountains Out of Molehills, next door.”
“[Picks up phone and dials.]”
“Who are you calling?”
“The Department of Farcical Situations.”
“Why?”
“To report this situation!”
#TheDailyIsotope #AutisticWriters #turd
#AutisticWriters #TheDailyIsotope #turd -
Stupid Cancer
“Give it to me straight, doctor. What is it?”
“Oh, it’s a stupid cancer.”
“Cancer? Jeez… you sure gave it to me straight. What type is it?”
“I’ve told you already. Stupid.”
“Hey now, I may be a little slow but don’t call me stupid.”
“You’re not understanding me. You have cancer of the stupid.”
“What? Cancer of the stupid?”
“Yes, you’ve got a huge tumor right in the middle of your stupidity.”
“What’s my prognosis?”
“Two to three months.”
“I’m going to die in two to three months?”
“No, your stupidity will have been completely eaten away in two to three months.”
“Then what?”
“You’ll become a genius.”
#TheDailyIsotope #AutisticWriters #cancer #stupid #microfiction
#AutisticWriters #cancer #microfiction #stupid #TheDailyIsotope -
Stupid Cancer
“Give it to me straight, doctor. What is it?”
“Oh, it’s a stupid cancer.”
“Cancer? Jeez… you sure gave it to me straight. What type is it?”
“I’ve told you already. Stupid.”
“Hey now, I may be a little slow but don’t call me stupid.”
“You’re not understanding me. You have cancer of the stupid.”
“What? Cancer of the stupid?”
“Yes, you’ve got a huge tumor right in the middle of your stupidity.”
“What’s my prognosis?”
“Two to three months.”
“I’m going to die in two to three months?”
“No, your stupidity will have been completely eaten away in two to three months.”
“Then what?”
“You’ll become a genius.”
#TheDailyIsotope #AutisticWriters #cancer #stupid #microfiction
#AutisticWriters #cancer #microfiction #stupid #TheDailyIsotope -
Five Years In Remission
I entered remission five years ago on February 11th 2021.
Photo from PxHere. (No, this ain’t my brain.)It’s been a wild ride, to say the least.
Ultimately, everybody’s journey through cancer is their own. If you’re a cancer survivor too, your journey is not my journey, and my journey is not your journey, no matter how similar they may be. Some people never make it through. A sobering thought.
A cancer diagnosis is often a gut punch, but my diagnosis came as a relief to me. Prior to it, I had been slowly dying for months, but I did not know why or have a plan to deal with this slow death. My PCNS lymphoma diagnosis not only told me why I was dying, but it provided me with a plan: first chemo and then a stem cell transplant.
So I underwent treatment. After two rounds of chemo, the tumor was gone from my brain. After five rounds, I was declared to be in remission. Its now been five years since I entered remission, and my latest MRI, done in January of this year, indicates that my brain is still free from cancer. If I had gotten this disease 35 years ago, I would not have been so lucky. I would have died, pure and simple. Medicine has advanced.
After the chemo, I had a stem cell transplant. They extracted stem cells from my body, kept them in storage, destroyed my immune system, and finally they reinjected my stem cells so that I could rebuild my immune system. My entire treatment happened at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and yet, I never caught this disease.
It’s been a wild ride, I tell you!
My cancer was not the cause of my divorce, but it was a catalyst. My ex-wife and I had already been seeing a marriage counselor a good two years before my cancer showed up. After my treatment, I just did not see myself enduring through this marriage if nothing changed. I tried to change things, but it was in vain. So my ex-wife and I divorced. It is not what I would have wanted, but it was the way forward.
As we were discussing the divorce, I figured that there was no longer any reason for me to hide from the world the fact that I’m not straight, but pansexual. I knew since my teenage years that I wasn’t straight, and even told my wife before we got married that I was bisexual. That’s the only term that I knew at the time, but I prefer to call myself pansexual. Gender or its absence is just no obstacle when it comes to my desire to get intimate with someone else.
Besides being pansexual, I’m also polyamorous. Provided that I’m kept aware of my partners’ intimate encounters with other people, I don’t get jealous if they have those encounters. What gets to me is if I feel neglect. I suppose I might also get angry if a partner of mine hid their encounters with someone else, but this, to my knowledge, has not happened.
I also discovered BDSM, and that I am a Dom. I was always generous in bed, but BDSM allows me to optimize this generosity.
Then I realized that I’m autistic. The signs were present from infancy, but everybody treated me as neurotypical, so I thought that I was neurotypical. My ex-wife has ADHD, but we never discussed neurodivergence in our household. We both imagined that the other perceived the world in the same way we did. This is woefully incorrect, but we didn’t know any better.
I also realized that I’m nonbinary. The surest way to generate dysphoria in me is to insist that I should behave or not behave this or that way because I’m “a man.” At best, I’ll find the idea amusing. At worst, it will generate anger. At any rate, in retrospect, this is another element that caused friction between my ex-wife and me. She thought she had married “a man,” but she did not.
If my cancer had not happened, how much of this self-realization would have happened? I’m not sure. I was pretending to be a neurotypical man in a straight, monogamous, vanilla marriage. I think I could have gone on pretending for more years.
It’s been a wild ride, and I don’t think the ride is over just yet.
#autistic #AutisticWriters #cancer #CancerSurvivor #CancerTreatment #divorce #queer #remission #YourAutisticLife -
Five Years In Remission
I entered remission five years ago on February 11th 2021.
Photo from PxHere. (No, this ain’t my brain.)It’s been a wild ride, to say the least.
Ultimately, everybody’s journey through cancer is their own. If you’re a cancer survivor too, your journey is not my journey, and my journey is not your journey, no matter how similar they may be. Some people never make it through. A sobering thought.
A cancer diagnosis is often a gut punch, but my diagnosis came as a relief to me. Prior to it, I had been slowly dying for months, but I did not know why or have a plan to deal with this slow death. My PCNS lymphoma diagnosis not only told me why I was dying, but it provided me with a plan: first chemo and then a stem cell transplant.
So I underwent treatment. After two rounds of chemo, the tumor was gone from my brain. After five rounds, I was declared to be in remission. Its now been five years since I entered remission, and my latest MRI, done in January of this year, indicates that my brain is still free from cancer. If I had gotten this disease 35 years ago, I would not have been so lucky. I would have died, pure and simple. Medicine has advanced.
After the chemo, I had a stem cell transplant. They extracted stem cells from my body, kept them in storage, destroyed my immune system, and finally they reinjected my stem cells so that I could rebuild my immune system. My entire treatment happened at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and yet, I never caught this disease.
It’s been a wild ride, I tell you!
My cancer was not the cause of my divorce, but it was a catalyst. My ex-wife and I had already been seeing a marriage counselor a good two years before my cancer showed up. After my treatment, I just did not see myself enduring through this marriage if nothing changed. I tried to change things, but it was in vain. So my ex-wife and I divorced. It is not what I would have wanted, but it was the way forward.
As we were discussing the divorce, I figured that there was no longer any reason for me to hide from the world the fact that I’m not straight, but pansexual. I knew since my teenage years that I wasn’t straight, and even told my wife before we got married that I was bisexual. That’s the only term that I knew at the time, but I prefer to call myself pansexual. Gender or its absence is just no obstacle when it comes to my desire to get intimate with someone else.
Besides being pansexual, I’m also polyamorous. Provided that I’m kept aware of my partners’ intimate encounters with other people, I don’t get jealous if they have those encounters. What gets to me is if I feel neglect. I suppose I might also get angry if a partner of mine hid their encounters with someone else, but this, to my knowledge, has not happened.
I also discovered BDSM, and that I am a Dom. I was always generous in bed, but BDSM allows me to optimize this generosity.
Then I realized that I’m autistic. The signs were present from infancy, but everybody treated me as neurotypical, so I thought that I was neurotypical. My ex-wife has ADHD, but we never discussed neurodivergence in our household. We both imagined that the other perceived the world in the same way we did. This is woefully incorrect, but we didn’t know any better.
I also realized that I’m nonbinary. The surest way to generate dysphoria in me is to insist that I should behave or not behave this or that way because I’m “a man.” At best, I’ll find the idea amusing. At worst, it will generate anger. At any rate, in retrospect, this is another element that caused friction between my ex-wife and me. She thought she had married “a man,” but she did not.
If my cancer had not happened, how much of this self-realization would have happened? I’m not sure. I was pretending to be a neurotypical man in a straight, monogamous, vanilla marriage. I think I could have gone on pretending for more years.
It’s been a wild ride, and I don’t think the ride is over just yet.
#autistic #AutisticWriters #cancer #CancerSurvivor #CancerTreatment #divorce #queer #remission #YourAutisticLife -
Ran out of ideas
“Say, what are you doing boarding up your shop?”
“Oh, I used to sell ideas, but I ran out of them. So I’m closing shop, for good.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I hear there’s a farm upstate where all the writers who ran out of ideas are free to frolic all day.”
“Hmm… there’s something you should know about that farm.”
“What’s that?”
“It doesn’t exist. It’s just a tale they tell young writers. You know… so that they have something to look forward to.”
“What am I going to do then?”
“You should open up a new shop.”
“What would I sell? I no longer have ideas.”
“Hope.”
“Hope?”
“Yes, there’s an endless supply, and folks always need hope.”
“That’s a plan. I almost said ‘there’s an idea’ but that’s not possible, because I ran out of them.”
“And I even have a name for you ‘The Hopium Emporium.'”
“That’s snappy.”
“It will be $500.”
“What?”
“My fee. $500. I’m a traveling salesman. I sell plans.”
#TheDailyIsotope #AutisticWriters #ideas #hope #plans #microfiction #TheHopiumEmporium #writing
#AutisticWriters #hope #ideas #microfiction #plans #TheDailyIsotope #TheHopiumEmporium #writing -
Ran out of ideas
“Say, what are you doing boarding up your shop?”
“Oh, I used to sell ideas, but I ran out of them. So I’m closing shop, for good.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I hear there’s a farm upstate where all the writers who ran out of ideas are free to frolic all day.”
“Hmm… there’s something you should know about that farm.”
“What’s that?”
“It doesn’t exist. It’s just a tale they tell young writers. You know… so that they have something to look forward to.”
“What am I going to do then?”
“You should open up a new shop.”
“What would I sell? I no longer have ideas.”
“Hope.”
“Hope?”
“Yes, there’s an endless supply, and folks always need hope.”
“That’s a plan. I almost said ‘there’s an idea’ but that’s not possible, because I ran out of them.”
“And I even have a name for you ‘The Hopium Emporium.'”
“That’s snappy.”
“It will be $500.”
“What?”
“My fee. $500. I’m a traveling salesman. I sell plans.”
#TheDailyIsotope #AutisticWriters #ideas #hope #plans #microfiction #TheHopiumEmporium #writing
#AutisticWriters #hope #ideas #microfiction #plans #TheDailyIsotope #TheHopiumEmporium #writing -
Boop! And just like that, chapter 19 is done. #autisticwriters
-
Socially mandated love
“Hi!”
“AAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaa… You scared me. I did not see you there, crouching behind the couch.”
“Oh, sorry! I just wanted to surprise you on this day of celebration.”
“You’ve surprised me, so mission accomplished!”
“But that’s not all. My coworkers managed to shame me into performing socially mandated gestures to demonstrate my love for you.”
“Okay.”
“Like giving you this set of dead plants.”
“Oh, flowers. You took upon yourself to go to the florist. How thoughtful!”
“Yes. Though, I think florist is a bad name. They should be called flower undertakers.”
“The socially mandated response is to thank you. So thank you!”
“You’re welcome. Here is a card for you. Open it.”
“Give me a second.”
“None of the cards at the store conveyed the exact message I had in mind. So I edited the message.”
“I see that. How thoughtful! Crossing out the word ‘forever’ is quite sensible.”
“Yes. At best, once I’m dead, I won’t be able to love you. Why make promises I cannot possibly keep?”
“I also like how you scribbled in the words ‘froggy-style’.”
“What? Froggy-style? Er… no… it is ‘doggy-style’.”
“Oh… right. Your handwriting is terrible.”
“Yes. It is. I also have this gift for you.”
“Wow! That’s a big box.”
“Open it.”
“Give me a week! Haha!”
[Five minutes later.]
“Did you find it?”
“I think I did. It is a wad of $20 bills, like I’m a pole dancer or some such.”
“This way you can get whatever you want. However, my coworkers chided me, saying money is not a thoughtful gift.”
“This is surely more thoughtful than the coffee machine my parents gave me.”
“Oh… yeah…. with your difficulty processing caffeine.”
“It gives me hives. Not only that, but they keep forgetting that they gave me a coffee machine already, and they give me that gift every year.”
“At least money never becomes useless, even if you get it repeatedly.”
“I’m sorry, but I have nothing for you. I do love you too, but I am aromantic.”
“Oh, the enjoyment of your presence is quite enough gift for me. Come to think of it… I think I might be aromantic too. The whole thing felt rather unnatural to me.”
#TheDailyIsotope #AutisticWriters #ActuallyAutistic #aromantic #GiftGiving #society
#ActuallyAutistic #aromantic #AutisticWriters #GiftGiving #society #TheDailyIsotope -
Socially mandated love
“Hi!”
“AAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaa… You scared me. I did not see you there, crouching behind the couch.”
“Oh, sorry! I just wanted to surprise you on this day of celebration.”
“You’ve surprised me, so mission accomplished!”
“But that’s not all. My coworkers managed to shame me into performing socially mandated gestures to demonstrate my love for you.”
“Okay.”
“Like giving you this set of dead plants.”
“Oh, flowers. You took upon yourself to go to the florist. How thoughtful!”
“Yes. Though, I think florist is a bad name. They should be called flower undertakers.”
“The socially mandated response is to thank you. So thank you!”
“You’re welcome. Here is a card for you. Open it.”
“Give me a second.”
“None of the cards at the store conveyed the exact message I had in mind. So I edited the message.”
“I see that. How thoughtful! Crossing out the word ‘forever’ is quite sensible.”
“Yes. At best, once I’m dead, I won’t be able to love you. Why make promises I cannot possibly keep?”
“I also like how you scribbled in the words ‘froggy-style’.”
“What? Froggy-style? Er… no… it is ‘doggy-style’.”
“Oh… right. Your handwriting is terrible.”
“Yes. It is. I also have this gift for you.”
“Wow! That’s a big box.”
“Open it.”
“Give me a week! Haha!”
[Five minutes later.]
“Did you find it?”
“I think I did. It is a wad of $20 bills, like I’m a pole dancer or some such.”
“This way you can get whatever you want. However, my coworkers chided me, saying money is not a thoughtful gift.”
“This is surely more thoughtful than the coffee machine my parents gave me.”
“Oh… yeah…. with your difficulty processing caffeine.”
“It gives me hives. Not only that, but they keep forgetting that they gave me a coffee machine already, and they give me that gift every year.”
“At least money never becomes useless, even if you get it repeatedly.”
“I’m sorry, but I have nothing for you. I do love you too, but I am aromantic.”
“Oh, the enjoyment of your presence is quite enough gift for me. Come to think of it… I think I might be aromantic too. The whole thing felt rather unnatural to me.”
#TheDailyIsotope #AutisticWriters #ActuallyAutistic #aromantic #GiftGiving #society
#ActuallyAutistic #aromantic #AutisticWriters #GiftGiving #society #TheDailyIsotope -
Didn’t get the job
“Hello! I’m Jonas James. You called me.”
“Jonas James… Ah… Yes. Please sit down.”
“So did I get the job?”
“The job? Haha. God no. The person who came in first got the job. The person who came in second might have gotten it if the first did not want the job. It’s never happened that both first and second declined. You came in third. You did not get the job.”
“Third? And I did not get the job?”
“That’s right.”
“Why did you have me come all the way over here to tell me this.”
“We thought you’d want to celebrate! You came in third.”
“Celebrate?”
“Yes! You beat 382 other candidates. You should be proud of having come in third.”
“But I don’t have the job. How am I going to pay for my rent?”
“Have you thought about downsizing?”
“Downsizing?”
“Yes, I can put you in contact with one of our downsizing specialists.”
“For free?”
“Free? Hell no! It is $250 per hour.”
“But how am I going to pay?”
“Hmm… Are your kidneys any good?”
“I don’t know. Why?”
“Maybe you could sell them.”
“Both? I’d die.”
“Well, then you wouldn’t have to pay for your rent, would you? Problem solved! It is a win-win scenario!”
-
Didn’t get the job
“Hello! I’m Jonas James. You called me.”
“Jonas James… Ah… Yes. Please sit down.”
“So did I get the job?”
“The job? Haha. God no. The person who came in first got the job. The person who came in second might have gotten it if the first did not want the job. It’s never happened that both first and second declined. You came in third. You did not get the job.”
“Third? And I did not get the job?”
“That’s right.”
“Why did you have me come all the way over here to tell me this.”
“We thought you’d want to celebrate! You came in third.”
“Celebrate?”
“Yes! You beat 382 other candidates. You should be proud of having come in third.”
“But I don’t have the job. How am I going to pay for my rent?”
“Have you thought about downsizing?”
“Downsizing?”
“Yes, I can put you in contact with one of our downsizing specialists.”
“For free?”
“Free? Hell no! It is $250 per hour.”
“But how am I going to pay?”
“Hmm… Are your kidneys any good?”
“I don’t know. Why?”
“Maybe you could sell them.”
“Both? I’d die.”
“Well, then you wouldn’t have to pay for your rent, would you? Problem solved! It is a win-win scenario!”
-
No funny business
“I was eating pasta when central called. I came as fast as I could.”
“Oh, that explains the napkin you still have around your neck.”
“Oops. Just a second. [Pulls on the napkin. There’s another napkin tied to it, and a third, and a fourth…]
[Five minutes later, there’s a waist-high pile of napkins on the floor.]
“Alright. Now that I’ve taken care of this nasty business, are you the witness?”
“Yes. I am.”
“They tell me you saw everything. Can you tell me what happened?”
“Yes. The perpetrator came in, gun in hand, and he shouted ‘This is a hold up! No funny business.'”
“Go on.”
“He ran to the counter, but then he noticed the victim.”
“Can you identify the victim?”
“Yes. It is that man, there, on the floor, with a gunshot wound to the head, and not breathing.”
“Checks out. So the perp noticed the victim. That’s when he shot the victim?”
“Yes, then he said slowly, ‘What did I say? No… funny… business!!!!'”
“Why do you think he shot the victim?”
“I think that’s because he was a professional clown.”
“The perp was a professional clown?”
“No, the victim was a professional clown.”
“Yes, a professional clown *is* a funny business. I can see how the perp would have been pissed. Say, what do you do for a living?”
“I’m an accountant, why?”
“Oh, I would have pegged you as a sex worker.”
“A sex worker? How do you reckon?”
“I use an abacus. What is it to you?”
“No, I mean how to you figure that I’m a sex worker.”
“You know how they say you should dress the job you want to have?”
“Yes.”
“Your nun’s outfit screams sex worker to me.”
-
Taimi: An LGBTQ+ Dating and Chat App
Taimi became my go-to dating app, but it did not last.
Photo by James A. Molnar on UnsplashAll dating apps suck. All of them. Without exception. So, yes, Taimi sucks too. However, they don’t all suck to the same extent, and thus Taimi, for a brief period of time, became my preferred dating app, dethroning Feeld. Alas, this was not to last.
Let’s go over my demographics. They are relevant as they color my experience on the dating apps. I’m nonbinary, pansexual, polyamorous, autistic. I’m also into BDSM. Please do not make the mistake of thinking that any of these identities implies another. There are plenty of pansexual folks who are not also polyamorous, to take just one example.
In the Google Play Store, Taimi is labeled as a LGBTQ+ Dating and Chat app. True to this label, most of the people on the app are indeed queer. However, you can also find a few cishet folks on the app too. Contrarily to Feeld, Taimi is not specifically geared towards kinky folks. At the end of the day, the difference does not matter much. There are kinky people on Taimi, just not wall-to-wall like on Feeld.
Now, let’s get into the mess of an app that Taimi is.
How It Works… Haha! As If…
I’d like to explain how it works, but any explanation on my part would be pointless. See, the Taimi developers like to use their users as lab rats. Every week, some old features disappear, and some new features appear. Or perhaps I should call these features anti-features, because a lot of them stink badly.
Here’s an example of such an anti-feature. The app presents you with a set of potential connections. You decide which parameters the candidates for connection must have: gender, age, distance, etc. For months, when you ran out of new candidates in your set, the GUI would explicitly suggest that you alter your search parameters to get more matches.
Now, it “helpfully” changes those parameters for you. You don’t do long-distance relationships? Screw that. Now you do. You don’t want to date anyone older than a certain age, or younger than a certain age? Screw that. Now you do.
At first, the app would tell you that it changed the parameters. I complained about this, and now the app changes these parameters without telling you. This is proof positive that Taimi listens to their clients. (This last line was said sarcastically.)
Another anti-feature is that the app now, from time to time, presents you with a slate of people to act on. You can pass on them, or you can all like them at once. However, you cannot look at their profile. Do they live nearby? Are they kinky? Are they compatible with you? Screw you! You cannot know.
There are more anti-features I could talk about, but I do not wish to talk about more of these. I think the anti-features I listed above give you a taste.
Annoyances and Bugs
The bio
Taimi restricts your biography to 500 characters. That’s rather pitiful. Feeld allows 1500 characters, and I find Feeld’s limit rather restrictive. I am of the opinion that such length restrictions smack of ageism. Young folks don’t have much of a life history, but us older folks do. These restrictions stink. If someone wants to infodump about their own life, let them. Maybe someone else will like it.
In addition to the restricted bio size, Taimi deleted my bio twice without warning. This is quite annoying. I regularly run into people who have no bio, but if the app is the one deleting it, I cannot blame them.
Travel
Taimi updates your location when you travel, and does not have the notion of a “home base.” Therefore, it presents the same problem as Feeld. If someone is traveling, and there is no note in their profile about this, you can waste your time with them if one of you is not into long-distance relationships.
I’ve had this problem happen at least twice. One of the person with whom I had started an Instant Chat came back saying that they were just passing through. In another case, I had initiated an Instant Chat with someone. They looked at my message but did not reply, disconnect, or block me. I checked their profile back and found that they were now several states away from me.
Just like with the case of Feeld, from the perspective of the developer, there is no reason to fix this.
Admirers
Their “Admirers” tab is laughable. I found in there someone who had admired me four times, and yet had this in their profile:
I’m fun easy going […] No poly situation. No hookups. CIS gendered men and women only please. Straight men only.
Yeah, I bet that you are “fun” and “easy going.” This person is a good example of the problem with the “bisexual” label. They identified as bisexual, which for them excludes trans folks. I don’t want to keep explaining that my definition does not exclude any gender, so I call myself pansexual.
So, this person, who had admired me four times, would, according to their own profile, not want to be with me because:
- I’m polyamorous.
- I am trans because I transitioned from male to nonbinary.
- I’m not straight.
Then there was this woman around my age who had admired me three times. I read her profile, only to find that she’s not into kink or polyamory.
Similarly, a lesbian had looked at my profile four times, according to Taimi. I’m a male-presenting enby and thus am generally incompatible with lesbians. Finally, I did start an Instant Chat with someone who I might have been compatible with, and which Taimi claimed hat look at my profile three times. They rejected me as soon as they saw my message.
In conclusion, the “Admirers” tab is mostly useless. I’m not going to hazard a guess as to why exactly.
The Ability to Instant Chat
As I mentioned above, Taimi allows you to instantly chat with someone. They do not have to like you back to initiate the possibility of chatting. As soon as you send them a message with instant chat, they can reply.
Now, the ability to instant chat is a limited resource. When I started my trial, I did not pay for a while, but I still was getting once instant chat per week. Then I paid, and I was getting three instant chats per week, but I let my subscription lapse, and now I no longer have any instant chat.
As great as this ability would seem, I’ve had no response whatsoever to the instant chats I’ve sent. By this, I mean that my message was not even read. In one case, I got an instant block, but this is it. So the instant chat feature only seems to be designed to generate revenue for the dating app.
Conclusion
Taimi is a mess of a dating app. They keep changing the features of the app, no doubt in an attempt to maximize their revenue. However, I find this approach off-putting, and it does not make me want to spend any more money on the app.
#AutisticWriters #Dating #DatingApp #lgbtq #OnlineDating #queer #Taimi #YourAutisticLife
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Ban all the things!
A new episode of NCIS:STI, Special Transistorized Intelligence… (Stop giggling! We ran out of initialisms, ok?)
“What can you tell me about the new case?”
“The criminals used encryption.”
“What is this encryption you’re talking about?”
“It is a method whereby criminals generate a public key and a private key, and the keys…”
“Whoa! That’s a lot of big words. Can you make it simpler?”
“Let me try. BAD MEN HIDE MESSAGES WITH ENCRYPTION. Get it now?”
“I see.”
“It makes our job harder.”
“Well, our job cannot be made harder, so we’ll have to ban it then.”
“But that’s not all.”
“Oh?”
“They also used a car.”
“You and your big words. What’s a ‘car’?”
“It is a four-wheeled vehicle. They used it to escape.”
“I see. Well, we’ll have to ban cars.”
“But that’s still not all.”
“Still more?”
“Yes, they also used breathing.”
“Please explain.”
“It is an ingenious method they use to stay alive by inhaling air into the lungs and exhaling it.”
“We’ll have to ban breathing too, then.”
[Later]
“We’ve been successful. All three bans are going to go into effect just about… now.”
“Wait! You’re still breathing! You’re one of them!”
“You too!!!!”
[Simultaneous bangs… simultaneous thuds…]
This episode of NCIS:STI was brought to you by ButtOx… No, not botox, ButtOx! Botox is for your face. ButtOx is for your butt. If you confuse your face with your butt, you got some serious problems. At any rate, you’re going to need us with the new breathing ban. We deliver oxygen through your colon! ButtOx, to stay alive!
-
The Adventures of Gobble Gobble!
Narration: On Thanksgiving eve, Gobble Gobble the turkey was headed for slaughter… when… unexpectedly… he was saved by the Johnsons whey they adopted him has their pet. Follow the adventures of Gobble Gobble the turkey in…
The Adventures of Gobble Gobble!
Son: Mooooom, Gobble Gobble did it again!
Mom: He did what, honey?
Son: He shat on my bed!
Laugh track: Ha ha ha ha ha ha….
Mother: Good god! Let me go get my pearls, so that I can grab them dramatically.
Laugh track: Ha ha ha ha ha ha….
Dad: Son, come over here.
Son: What is it, dad?
Dad: Let me first stuff my pipe of seriousness into my mouth so that you know that what I’m saying is serious. Nwww. Awaw flprt..
Son: Dad, I cannot make out what you are saying with that pipe in your mouth.
Laugh track: Ha ha ha ha ha ha….
Dad: [Takes the pipe out:] Alright, I’ll merely gesticulate with it then. So, as I was saying, Gobble Gob…
Son: Ouch! Why did you shove your pipe in my eye?
Dad: I was gesticulating, and your face was in the way. You know better than leaving your face in the way of my gesticulations, don’t you?
Laugh track: Ha ha ha ha ha ha….
Mom: Son, I think what your father was trying to say when you rudely interrupted him with your face is that Gobble Gobble has expressed with his excrement what we all think of you.
Son: I’m shit?
Mom and Dad, together: Yes. Ha ha ha ha ha…
Laugh track: Ha ha ha ha ha ha….
#TheDailyIsotope #AutisticWriters #thanksgiving #Thanksgiving2025 #turkey #PipeOfSeriousness #PearlClutching
#autisticwriters #pearlclutching #pipeofseriousness #thanksgiving #thanksgiving2025 #thedailyisotope #turkey
-
Gestapo Soup
“Here’s your soup, sir.”
“Hmm… wait a second. That’s not what I ordered.”
“Oh?”
“Why is there Third Reich regalia decorating the bowl and a swastika in the middle.”
“What did you order?”
“The Gestapo soup.”
“This *is* the Gestapo soup, sir.”
“I see steam rising from it. Isn’t it supposed to be served cold?”
“Sir is mistaken. *Gazpacho* soup is served cold. Gestapo soup is served hot.”
“Ah, yeah. That’s what I meant to order. Gazpacho soup! Please take this back to the kitchen and give me some Gazpacho soup!”
“I cannot do this, sir.”
“Why?”
“Once ordered, the Gestapo soup must be consumed by the person who ordered it.”
“But… I’m smelling it now, and this soup stinks! It probably tastes awful, too.”
“That’s Gestapo soup for you.”
“I won’t eat it.”
“Eating it *is* mandatory, and you must eat it with a smile because your enjoyment of it is also mandatory.”
“Wait a second! What’s this?”
“What’s what?”
“This, here!”
“Oh… hmm… it looks like an antifascist fell into your soup.”
“Well, well. Take it back to the kitchen, and bring me my soup!”
“As you wish, sir”
[A little later.]
“Here’s your soup, sir, with apologies from the kitchen staff.”
“That’s not my soup.”
“Yes, Gestapo soup, as you ordered.”
“But I wanted Gazpacho.”
“As I said, earlier, sir, once ordered, Gestapo soup must be consumed by the person who ordered it.”
“I won’t eat it!”
“Well… we’ll have to force-feed it to you. Bob! We have a recalcitrant customer here! Now, please smile! Remember that enjoyment of the Gestapo soup is mandatory.”
“Please hold on!”
“Once you’re done with the soup, you can have your dessert. I see you ordered pain au chocolat. Judging by the screams coming out of the kitchen, your chocolate pain is being prepared right now.”
“Now…”
“Ah, Bob! Let’s get down to business…”
#TheDailyIsotope #AutisticWriters #microfiction #Gestapo #gazpacho
#autisticwriters #gazpacho #gestapo #microfiction #thedailyisotope
-
The Colonoscopy
“We have a few questions to make sure that you are ready for your colonoscopy.”
“Okay.”
“Did you finish drinking your prep?”
“Yes. It was disgusting.”
“Now, now. It *was* lemon-flavored.”
“Yes. If your idea of lemons is suicidal lemons.”
“How was your last bowel movement.”
“Squirty.”
“Squirty?”
“Yes, squirty.”
“Did you reach the peeing through my arsehole stage of the prep?”
“Yes. I was peeing through my arsehole.”
“Let’s break into a song. If you pee through your butthole…”
“If you pee through your butthole…”
“… your doctor will love you.”
“… your doctor will l… Say. What’s the monstrosity that the nurse just rolled in?”
“Oh, that? That’s the colonoscope. That’s what we use to perform the colonoscopy.”
“You’re not putting that hideous contraption up my butt!”
“Yes, we are. Okay, now, count from ten backwards.”
“Net, enin, thgie…”
“We’ve got a joker on our hands. Anesthetist! Use your anesthetic mallet to knock the patient unconscious.”
[BONK!]
“I feel sleepy. ZZZZZZzzzzzzz…”
“Good. Now that the patient is out, let’s paaarrr-TAAAYYY!”
[In dreamland…]
“Congratulations! You are now the proud parent of a… turd!”
“Can I see my baby turd?”
“Of course not! We’ve flushed it down the toilet.”
“Murderer!”
“Now, now. It is now in a septic field, living a life of fulfillment.”
[Back to reality.]
“Anesthetist, please bring the patient back to consciousness.”
[BONK!]
“Ouch! What was that for?”
“The anesthetist just undid the anesthesia.”
“I’d like to marry you.”
“Good god! The patient is still under the effects of the anesthesia. Anesthetist!”
[SLAP SLAP]
“Ouch! And what was that for?”
“You said you’d like to marry me. This was to stop the anesthesia’s lingering effects on you.”
“Did I? I don’t remember it.”
“Yes, you suffer from marital amnesia.”
“What about my colon?”
“Good news! You indeed have a colon!”
“Thank god! What more can you tell me?”
“Bad news! You have a rock band colonizing your colon, The Colonists.”
“Hmm… that explains the tinnitus.”
“Nurse, take this patient to the dump.”
“The dump? What for?”
“We’re discharging you, but first we have to charge you.”
“How much?”
“An arm and a leg. Nurse, make sure to amputate this patient prior to the discharge.”
#TheDailyIsotope #AutisticWriters #colonoscopy #microfiction
#AutisticWriters #colonoscopy #microfiction #TheDailyIsotope
-
Why I Prefer Delta Chat To Signal
I find Delta Chat support for multiple profiles to be a killer feature.
Photo by kuu akura on UnsplashI have Delta Chat and Signal installed on my phone and my laptop. I’ve used both platforms to talk to various people. They both work fine. However, I do prefer Delta Chat because I do find it more flexible than Signal. I’m going to give some details of my reasoning in this article.
What Is It?
Delta Chat is an encrypted chatting application. The messages you send to your contacts are encrypted end-to-end. Even Delta Chat servers are unable to read the contents of your messages. Only a bit of metadata is unencrypted. Its closest relative in the chatting application realm is Signal, which also does end-to-end encryption.
What I Like
Delta Chat does not tie your profile to a specific phone number. Signal does tie your profile to a phone number. However, Signal allows you to use a username rather than a phone number to make a connection, and thus hide your phone number from contacts. In addition, Delta Chat allows you to have multiple profiles. Signal, on the other hand, allows you only one profile. These two features of Delta Chat make a world of difference when you are chatting with people who might not take “no” for an answer.
Let’s take the example of online dating. If you know anything about it, it is that you are likely to run at times into scammers and flakes. Now, most of the people on the dating apps are decent and do not fall into these two categories. Still, scammers and flakes do exist. So how do you protect yourself from them?
Well, the first thing to do is to not share your phone number with someone you do not know yet. I’ll note here that your phone number can be used to find your street address. I’m not going to get into the details of how I know this.
Both Signal and Delta Chat got you covered on this front. With Signal, you can just give your username. This username is a relatively compact string, something like “autisticfun.99” With Delta Chat, you can provide a link or a QR code. The link does not really work like Signal’s username because it has annoying features:
- It is too long to put in a dating profile. Signal’s username is small enough to be easily embedded in a dating profile.
- Forget about sharing it by spelling it to someone else. Signal’s username may be annoying to spell out, but it is on par with spelling out email addresses.
- It may scare people who do not know much about Delta Chat. You’re being asked to click on a link. Who knows what is at the other end of the link? The Signal username can be used only for one thing: you input it manually in Signal to connect with someone. End of story.
Okay, so you’ve connected with someone over Signal or Delta Chat. You chat pleasantly for a while, only to discover that you’re 100% incompatible with this individual. So incompatible that you just have to cut contact cold. This is not the option I prefer. I’ve sometimes had to learn that the person was not into me, or had to deliver to the other person that I was not into them, and yet been able to communicate peacefully about this. However, there are times when you just know the other person won’t be able to handle your news peacefully. What do you do?
Your Autistic Life is supported by readers like you. Use one of the links below to support my writing! Thank you.
Join Us Bonfire MerchWith Signal, you can just block them. Okay, what if they decide to come back at you? If they try to reach you from the same phone number, they won’t be able to: you’ve blocked them. However, they can easily get try from a different phone number. It is not that difficult or that expensive to have different phone numbers on a modern cell phone.
If they try this stratagem, then you have only one solution with Signal: you must change your username. However, changing it means that everyone who had your previous username but wasn’t already in contact with you won’t be able to reach you. If you had it in a social networking profile somewhere, you need to remember this and change it.
With Delta Chat, if you have a bit of foresight, you can avoid the need to remember where you used a username. Remember that Delta Chat supports multiple profiles. You create a new profile, only for your new connection. If you then discover that you need to cut things cold, you can just delete this profile. They won’t be able to reach you anymore, and any information you gave them to reach you with this profile won’t work anymore. There is no need to go change usernames anywhere.
This very scenario happened to me recently. I connected with an individual. The chat was pleasant, until I realized that we were not on the same page about something quite fundamental. I wished them good luck in their search, and deleted the profile I had created just for them. (I had to do this on all the devices on which the profile was present.) I also blocked them on the dating app. From this point on, it became impossible for them to reach me.
Note that Delta Chat allows you to reset your QR code and the link associated with it. If you do this, then your old QR code and old link won’t be able to be used to reach you anymore. If you do this, you also are in the same situation as when you change your username on Signal, what you may have shared in the past has to be updated if you want folks to still be able to find you. However, the need for this eventuality is lessened if you have the foresight to create a new profile for people you don’t really know.
The multiplicity of profiles supported by Delta Chat means that you can easily create a personal profile, one for work, specialized profiles for specific tasks, etc. One nice benefit of this support is that Delta Chat does not require all your profiles to be on all devices you use Delta Chat on. My phone currently has a couple of profiles on it, though this may change in the future.
Finally, the ability to have multiple profiles for multiple purposes means that you can put different things in the bios of your profiles. You can have a professional bio for the professional profile, and a personal bio for the personal profile. On Signal, you have one profile, with one bio. If you use Signal both for work and for personal purposes, what do you put in your bio?
A Few Cons
I would be remiss if I did not talk about the few cons I ran into. These are not dealbreakers for me, but they could be for someone else.
As I had implied above, it would be nice if Delta Chat had a username system similar to Signal’s. I don’t think it should be identical to Signal’s system, but the hyperlinks that can be linked to a specific profile are too unwieldy, and can appear suspicious in some contexts.
Both Signal and Delta Chat allow you to create group discussions. In Signal, there is the capability to limit who can add or remove people from a group. Delta Chat has no such capability. Anyone can add or remove people from any group created in Delta Chat. If someone added to a group goes rogue, good luck!
Delta Chat does not allow you to search for animated GIFs in an online database like Tenor. There is a good security reason for this. If you query a database, you are effectively leaking some information from your discussion. It is possible for users to work around this issue by saving ahead of time those GIFs they want to use to a directory which is synchronized between their various devices. Then, you can select images from this directory to add to your messages. (This is what I do.)
Delta Chat does not have a user-friendly system for supporting stickers. Yes, there is a bot. I tried it. It is far from being user-friendly to use.
Addendum: I Smelled Drama
The dreaded scenario happened. I matched with someone on a dating app. I offered my Delta Chat profile, but they preferred Signal. So I gave them my Signal username and the link. We chatted on Signal for three days, and this morning I realized I was smelling drama, and I don’t do drama. I wished them good luck in their search and blocked them on all the platforms we had connected on.
However, I’m sure that my old Signal username was still accessible to them. So I had to change it to make sure that drama would not follow me.
I’ll note that having to change my username could have been avoided, if I had given them the link to my Signal profile or the QR code. However, this strategy completely eliminates the advantages of having a username in the first place.
#AutisticWriters #DeltaChat #security #signal #YourAutisticLife
-
Snug Like A Bug In A… Hole
A short story in honor of those who cannot help digging.
Hello!
I can see by the look on your face that you’re confused. Look down.
Further down.
Hi! Yes, I’m the head that is protruding from a hole in the ground. As you can see by my waiving, I also have arms. I also have a body and legs, but a lot of it is not visible to you because, well, I’m in a hole.
Oh, don’t worry about me. In fact, this hole is exactly where I wanted to be. I ended up here while engaging in an argument with a friend. I was trying to score some points, but lo and behold, the ground started to cave, and slowly, but surely I ended up in this hole.
You know what? I feel rather comfortable in my hole. In fact, I’d like to enlarge it so that I can sink even deeper into it. Do you happen to have a shovel I could use for this task?
Oh, wow, what a stroke of luck! Thank you for the shovel. Now, if you don’t mind, I need to get on digging. Have a nice day!
I regularly run into people who like to dig themselves into a hole.
The latest one was someone who approached me for dating. I sensed drama in their profile. I said, “no, thanks,” and they immediately proceeded to prove me right by tossing drama at my head with their response.
#arguments #AutisticWriters #DiggingOneselfIntoAHole #holes #YourAutisticLife
-
I Still Cannot Recommend Feeld
Feeld used to be my go-to dating app, but no more. How the mighty have fallen!
I let my subscription to Feeld lapse in mid-July. In the year prior, I spent about $270 on this app, in subscription fees and individual pings. However, they raised their prices at the end of Spring or the start of Summer 2025. If I had the same usage for the coming year, my cost would be about $410!
I’ve written an article already about the problems I had with Feeld:
https://www.yourautisticlife.com/2024/05/13/i-no-longer-recommend-feeld/
True to my own advice in that article, I returned to OkCupid. However, this app sucks too. I just had forgotten how much it sucks. I can say that, by and large, there hasn’t been a migration of kinky people to OkCupid. I did find my boyfriend on OkCupid. However, OkCupid was just too irritating for me, and I deleted my account there.
In the article above, I mention how Feeld had a problem with pings not getting through. This was a very serious problem. I’d get a notification that someone pinged me, and I’d tap the notification, but they did now show up among the people who pinged me. This problem has now been fixed.
However, the distance problem I mentioned in the article above remains. This, coupled with the price increase, and a new round of bugs, still keeps me from recommending it. What bugs? Read on.
It has happened twice now that Feeld matched me with people I had not liked. Normally, for a match to occur, both parties have to like each other. It is not possible for someone to just show up as a match if you haven’t liked them.
This first time this happened… I was confused and thought that maybe I had made a mistake somewhere. However, the second time this happened, the individual that showed up was so incompatible with me that I’m 100% sure I did not make a mistake.
What happened?
Did Feeld misdirect one of our likes? Was I supposed to match with someone else and Feeld misdirect the match?
Was Feeld’s display when I was going through the stack of dating prospects messed up and showed me the profile of person A when it meant to show person B? And then when I liked person A, person B got the like?
Did something else happen?
I don’t know. I’ve complained to customer service, but I had no reply.
Then, one recent morning, I got a notification that I had a new connection. I tap the notification, Feeld loaded, and I got a message that it couldn’t load my conversation. When I was able to load my conversations, it told me that the person had left the chat.
Wow… that was fast. Could the person have changed their mind this fast? Yes, they could. However, this is the first time I saw the error message that Feeld gave me. Coincidence? Maybe, but maybe not. I’m betting on maybe not.
“Why are you assuming, without absolute proof, that it is Feeld’s fault?”
Because of my history with Feeld. If you go read my previous article, you’ll see there was a bug so fucking serious that it demonstratably made me miss some matches. Let me repeat this, some matches that should have happened did not happen because of that bug! This was a major problem, that plagued Feeld for months.
So yes, I am assuming that it is Feeld’s fault, even if I don’t have absolute proof. If my history with a platform shows that it operates erratically, then my future inferences are going to point to its behavior still being erratic.
Finally, they tried to entice me to resubscribe with a 15% off offer. I did not want to resubscribe, but I checked it out nonetheless. Well, I went up to the Google Play screen for renewing my subscription and found that 15% off to be absent. Way to go, Feeld!
Moreover, after my subscription ended, I’m getting a suspiciously high number of people who like me without a ping. Since I no longer pay, I cannot see their likes. Yes, I used to get likes from deadbeats who didn’t read my profile even when I was paying, but the quantity and frequency of these makes me wonder whether Feeld is paying for some dunces to like people who don’t pay so that these people will subscribe to see who liked them. This hypothetical stratagem won’t work on me.
I’d like to be able to recommend Feeld. I used to say that it was the least terrible app of a terrible bunch, because, yes, all the dating apps are terrible. However, I cannot in good conscience recommend it, to anyone, in any demographics.
What are the alternatives? I’m only going to talk about those platforms that I consider could be alternatives to Feeld. If I do not talk about some platform in this article, then I do not consider it to be a viable alternative.
Taimi
Taimi is a platform for LGBTQ+ dating. I plan to publish a more extensive review of it in the future. For now, suffice to say that Taimi has become my go-to dating app. It is not perfect, all the dating apps are terrible, but it is decent, and definitely better than Feeld. I’ve made some nice matches on this app.
Masked Kink
Masked Kink is a platform for people into kink or BDSM. It definitely is not great. The geographic search leaves me with no matches within 1000 miles of where I live. However, this app has several bugs, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the geographical search is buggy too. As a matter of fact, I’d be surprised if it weren’t buggy.
One of its bugs is extremely vexing. I managed to be liked by a scammer. I did a reverse image search on their dating profile picture, and found a hit on Threads. Then, I quickly discovered their YouTube channel and their OnlyFans page. I wanted to report this scammer, but try as I may, the UI would not let me submit my report. Tapping on the submit button did nothing.
I plan to let my subscription to Masked Kink lapse when it ends.
KinkD
KinkD was already rather inactive when I left it about a year ago. I came back to it for two or three weeks recently. It is now completely dead. I sent messages to easily eight people. Nothing whatsoever happened. They did not even log into the system to check their messages. KinkD was not worth my money when I first went there, now it is not worth my money and my time. I uninstalled.
KinkD is also a great example of how Google reviews are largely worthless on their face. It has a rating of 4.4 as we speak, and keeps getting glowing reviews. I’d bet a leg and an arm that these are fake.
#AutisticWriters #Dating #Feeld #KinkD #MaskedKink #OnlineDating #Taimi #YourAutisticLife
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Dating: The Attitude Problem
To find a lasting relationship, you have to accept those relationships that won’t last.
Photo from PxHereI’m a strange creature. At 53, I have a fair amount of experience at living. However, when I joined the dating world just over three years ago, I had no experience to speak of regarding dating, and the minute experience I did have was from over 26 years earlier. There were no dating apps back then.
My inexperience led me early on to naively accept behaviors that I shouldn’t have accepted. There was the “polyamorous” woman who used me as a pawn to get her husband jealous. There was also the woman I went on a date with, but who seemed only interested in getting a free meal and promoting her business. They both displayed behavior that now would put me off from pursuing anything with them.
I’m a quick learner, however. My many adventures and misadventures quickly taught me what I call an aphorism of love:
To find a lasting relationship, you have to accept those relationships that won’t last.
I don’t see any way around this aphorism. For one thing, the statistics are operating against us. Still, I was in a relationship that lasted 26 years. We were married for 22 of those years. She was my first relationship. Wow! Lucky, right? I had beaten the odds! I thought I was lucky, until we started talking divorce. Absolutely nothing is guaranteed.
Now, I do run from time to time into those who will declare that the dating apps have always been or have become a large wasteland in which it is impossible to find anyone. I accept that this has been their experience, but such hasn’t been my experience.
I expect the vast majority of such individuals to be straight, monogamous, vanilla, and neurotypical. In all likelihood, they are also trapped by the dominant ideology of our times, capitalism. This entrapment has multiple manifestations. There’s the fact that wages have not risen at the same rate as inflation. This means that they have to work harder to keep their standard of living. This leaves less time and energy for forming connections of any kind, including romantic ones.
Another way in which this entrapment manifest itself is the desire for optimization. A lot of people these days get into debt while trying to impress the crowd. They buy expensive things that they cannot afford. People in this type of situation are likely to look for a specific type of mate. Someone who plays well the capitalist game.
Thus, these folks will compare their dates against an unrealistic ideal of what their mate should be. Thus, their experience on the dating apps will be molded by this attitude. They won’t connect, and when they connect, they will run at the first sign that their date does not hold up to their ideal.
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Join Us Bonfire MerchMy own experience has been different. For a start, my demographics make me a minority. I’m pansexual, polyamorous, into BDSM, and neurodivergent. I do not hide these things from my dating profile. These characteristics make me unpalatable to a lot of people. In addition, I have my own dealbreakers which narrow the pool of candidates even further.
For instance, I do not date cops or the military. Yes, I know for a fact that this requirement of mine has cost me some potential matches. Someone I had contacted, who was polite about it, told me as much. In addition, I pass on all the straight folks. I just don’t think that the random straight individual has any idea of what being queer entails.
My demographics and my preferences make it extremely difficult to meet anybody by just going to social events. I do go to social events that have nothing to with dating. My chance of running there into someone who is looking for a mate and is going to be okay with me being pansexual, being polyamorous, being into BDSM, and being neurodivergent are extremely slim.
I also go to queer events, events for neurodivergent people, or events for people into BDSM. When I go to these events, there is a greater chance at compatibility. However, it is usually the case that the people I find there are going to be compatible with me in all respects, except one. This is highly frustrating. Do not make the mistake of thinking that one characteristic entails the other, especially if you are not part of these minorities. For instance, pansexual people are not all polyamorous.
So this leaves me with online dating. I’ll note here that all my relationships started online. Yes, even the one with my ex-wife, which started in 1996. It started through email. I did not start using the dating apps until after our divorce, in 2022, however. Truth be told, I’ve had my successes on these apps. I’ve heard from several people that they got absolutely nothing out of them.
So what counts as success? As far as I see it, a match is already success writ small. Then there’s having a nice date, which is a bigger success. Then there’s being intimate with your dating prospect, which is even better. Don’t get me wrong, some of these encounters were unmitigated disasters. The net balance, however, is a positive one overall. Ultimately, what I seek is a lasting relationship. However, I feel the need to point out that all relationships last, right up until the moment that they don’t. I do not possess the crystal ball to tell me which relationship will last, and which won’t. Moreover, remember my aphorism of love:
To find a lasting relationship, you have to accept those relationships that won’t last.
Because of this, I always approach relationships with an open mind, and assume that they will last. Yes, I’m most likely mistaken, but it does not matter. I let myself be pleasantly surprised by my partners, and I hope to pleasantly surprise them too. It has happened. And yes, opening yourself to pleasant surprises, means you can also get unpleasant surprises. I’ll say that almost every time a relationship has ended, it was an unpleasant surprise. And yet, these are inevitable.
Furthermore, I do not attempt to make my partners fit into some narrow confine of how my “ideal” partner should be. Now, I do have boundaries. Most of these revolve around money. However, if a partner does not respect those boundaries, the result is not typically a breakup.
Finally, I’ve rejected the ideals of capitalism. I do not aim to optimize my life, or my relationship, and I do not impose such optimizations on my partners. I aim to be present in my partner’s life, and so I do not favor living the rat race that capitalism likes to foist on us.
I am currently partnered with my boyfriend. We’re at the nine or ten months mark, right now. The longest relationship I’ve been in after my divorce. We found each other on OkCupid. Prior to this, I was in a seven-month relationship with a girl. We found each other on Feeld. Other than these two post-divorce relationships, I’ve had unplanned one-night stands, and some relationships that lasted one weekend, or a few days.
It may be a function of my demographics, but I’ve spent a fair amount of time thinking about how I present on the dating apps. I use all the space at my disposal to fill out a thorough profile. There is little I hate more than profiles that have pictures but are otherwise empty. It is pretty much guaranteed that you are going to get likes from misguided people who are trying to fit square peg into round holes, even with a filled profile. How much more of those are you going to get if your profile is empty, and how many of them will treat you as an object? You’ve given them no reason to do otherwise with your empty profile.
Moreover, I go to the apps with the attitude that nobody owes me anything. I’ve had matches, and sometimes short-lived relationships, where I was thanked for my understanding and kindness when things, for reasons that have nothing to do with me, unravelled and the relationship came to an end. I cannot, and do not want to force someone into a relationship with me if it is not in the cards.
I’ll conclude by saying that attitude is not the entire reason people do not find success on the dating apps, but it is a significant reason. The choice of the dating app, and even geography can affect someone’s experience significantly, and yet the effect of one’s attitude is non-negligible.
#attitude #AutisticWriters #capitalism #Dating #love #OnlineDating #relationships #YourAutisticLife
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Therapy: “people call me cold!”
Photo from PxHereThe Daily Isotope has obtained the notes and transcript of the following therapy session. It has been edited for length and comprehension.
Therapist: Welcome to therapy. What’s on your mind?
Patient: I feel like people are asking me to change my very nature.
Therapist: What makes you say this?
Patient: They say that I’m cold. It hurts, you know!
Therapist: I understand.
Patient: Some of them even say I’m downright frigid.
Therapist: How does that make you feel?
Patient: Terrible! What’s more, I have a friend I regularly go out with. Everyone calls my friend warm.
Therapist: Do go on.
Patient: Heck, they even call my friend burning hot at times.
Therapist: Okay, but why does this make you feel terrible?
Patient: It is a bit on the nose, isn’t it? They are intimating that I should change my nature.
Therapist: How so?
Patient: I’m a refrigerator! It is my nature to be cold!
Therapist: I had noticed, but it is good to hear you voice it.
Patient: I do have a warm side, but people ignore it.
Therapist: Oh?
Patient: My coils are hot, but people never think to look at them and comment about how hot they are. They are on my back. It’s not like I can move them to be more evident.
Therapist: You mentioned a friend.
Patient: What about my friend?
Therapist: This friend is…
Patient: Oh, it is an oven.
Therapist: I see. For a second there, I thought it might be a furnace.
Among the therapists notes, we found the following scribbles:
A new pickup line?? How would it go???
“Hello, pretty. You must be a fridge.”
“What? Are you saying I’m frigid?”
“No!!!! It is because your coils are so hot.”
“Fuck off…”
Hmm… maybe not.
In a similar vein:
https://www.thedailyisotope.com/2024/10/30/machines-now-diagnosed-with-mental-conditions/
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I have a book on how to make a comic.
At the first suggestion of creativity, my body screams 'no', much as it did this morning when I tried to get up for my regular chat with a fellow language learner.
Is there a term for Discrimination Fatigue? Like: being so clawed by prejudice and unrelenting hegemonic demands that you stop wanting anything anymore, as a way to protect what's left of you.
#AutisticBurnout #BurnOut #AutisticWriters #NonbinaryArtist #QueerWriters
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Yvonne Rorrer Declares Herself Ethically Non-Monogamous
Good for her, and for those of us who are also into ethical non-monogamy.
Yvonne Rorrer from her campaing website.I have never heard of Yvonne Rorrer until Stephen Colbert talked about her on The Late Show last night. I know she is a Democrat, but I don’t know more about her political positions. At any rate, it is a good thing that she declared herself ethically non-monogamous in a statement. I’m not saying that she came out because I got from a Huffington Post article that she was already out.
Colbert talked about her as a swinger. Mainstream media often does such a piss-poor job at reporting about things they do not understand that I was wondering whether swinger was her expression, or whether the journalists jumped the gun, and assumed. The Huffington Post article I link to above confirms it is her expression.
Ethical non-monogamy is a large umbrella term. Swinging falls under this umbrella, and so does polyamory. (I am polyamorous.) In all cases, of ethical non-monogamy, the assumption is that everyone involved knows what is going on. Ethically non-monogamous people do not hide one relationship from another.
One thing irritated me in Colbert’s talk about Rorrer. It came across to me as mononormative. Colbert said,
She might be one of those people who thinks everybody wants to hear about their thing.
😩 Why did he need to go there? Why?
Colbert, like the majority of our population, monogamous, and straight. People will assume, correctly, those two characteristics about him. When people run into someone like me, or like Rorrer, they make the same assumptions, and they are wrong. We are both ethically non-monogamous. I am because I’m polyamorous. Rorrer is because she is a swinger. I’m moreover not straight, because I’m pansexual. I don’t know about Rorrer’s sexual orientation.
We do not talk about our ethical non-monogamy because we think that everybody wants to hear about it. We talk about it to normalize it, and because some people will benefit from it. In a world where monogamous people are in the majority, we who are ethically non-monogamous are assumed to be monogamous too. That is, until we tell people otherwise.
I’m open, too, about all kinds of things. I cannot count the number of times when, after being open about being pansexual, polyamorous, or autistic, I had a nice chat with someone else who was in a similar situation. This discussion would not have happened if I had not been open about my identity.
Please do not assume that when someone is in a minority group that, when they are being open about their identity, their intent is to shove their business into your face.
#AutisticWriters #EthicalNonMonogamy #polyamory #SexualMinorities #StephenColbert #swinging #TheLateShow #YourAutisticLife #YvonneRorrer
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Healthcare in the US: it all makes sense if you’re a squirrel
Photo by Włodzimierz Jaworski on UnsplashThe Daily Isotope obtained the transcript of a discussion between a customer seeking health coverage, and a customer service representative at a state agency.
Customer: Hi.
Customer Service Representative: Hello. Can you confirm your name [etc…]
C: [Confirms name, etc.]
CSR: What can I help you with?
C: I’d like to buy health coverage, but your site says I’m ineligible.
CSR: That’s correct.
C: But it makes no sense. They are going to cut my current coverage soon. I should be able to buy new coverage.
CSR: Can you take notes?
C: Yes.
CSR: You cannot purchase coverage because you are still currently co…
C: This does not make sense!
CSR: Sir, let me finish. The script I’m following is super important. I must finish what I started telling you.
C: Or what? The universe is going to explode?
CSR: I am offended by your insinuation.
C: Alright, go on.
CSR: Because you are still currently covered. You need to go to [this website] or call [this number].
C: But it does not make sense!
CSR: Yes, it does.
C: Why should I have to talk to a different agency? You are responsible for healthcare in my state. It does not make sense.
CSR: It does!
C: How so?
CSR: It makes total sense… if you are squirrel.
C: What?
CSR: You just have to look at it from the perspective of a squirrel. They do not stash their nuts all into the same hole, do they?
C: No, but this has nothing to do with my situation.
CSR: It does.
C: How come?
CSR: Just like a squirrel spreads his food among multiple hole, we’ve decided to spread resources among multiple agencies.
C: Anyway. What do I do with the information you gave me?
CSR: You’re going to have to make an application for financial help at that website or phone number.
C: What? I know I’m not eligible for financial help. I’m going to have to apply just so that they can reject me before I can purchase coverage.
CSR: How would I know?
C: But you’ve just told me…
CSR: I don’t know. I don’t work there.
C: Good grief! None of this makes any sense!
CSR: Actually…
C: What? I must look at it from the point of view of a squirrel again?
CSR: No, you need a lobotomy for what I’ve just told you to make sense.
This story was inspired by an actual discussion between a customer and a customer service representative.
#AutisticWriters #health #satire #squirrels #TheDailyIsotope #USHealthcare
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Why I Usually Don’t Get All Pissy When A Relationship Fails
I don’t like drama.
Photo by kevin laminto on UnsplashFinding a picture for this article was hard. That’s because a lot of the pictures I found imply feelings that I don’t have. (I’m not crushed, or angry, etc.) Or they imply the end of a long and intense relationship. It wasn’t the case here.
My latest date told me minutes ago that she was polysaturated, and that it would not be possible for us to have a relationship. I replied that I understood, and she thanked me for my understanding.
For those who may not know, the term “polysaturated” implies that we are polyamorous. I already have a boyfriend, and she already has a husband and another partner. I don’t wish to give a lecture here about polyamory. Suffice to say that our existing partners were duly informed about our date. Polyamorous people do not hide their new romantic liaisons from their existing partners.
The term “polysaturated” also indicates that someone has too many partners, and cannot conceivably add another partner to the mix. What this number is will vary from person to person, and from situation to situation. The person in question has four kids, besides her husband, and one other partner. I readily understand the issue.
The behavior I displayed is not unusual for me. This is actually how I want my relationship failures to happen. No drama. Just people who tell each other their truth. This time, she passed on me, but I’ve sometimes been the one passing on the other person. It is never fun, but not devastating. In the case at hand here, we did not have sex, but sometimes the failure happened after we did have sex. Some external factor caused our relationship to end prematurely. I still did not get pissy.
I’ve qualified my sentence with “usually” in my title because it is in fact possible for me to get pissy in these circumstances, but you have to have also betrayed me in some fashion for this to happen. This hasn’t happened often, and the mere fact that our relationship is not going to evolve is not in and of itself betrayal.
However, I’m the type of autistic person who likes, at times, to consider the path not taken. What if? What if I had become pissy and indignant? “How dare you pass on me? Don’t you realize what it is you have in me?” There are two likely outcomes to this hypothetical behavior.
She can respond in kind with her own indignation. In this case, I’ve made an enemy. Not that I think there’s a lot she could do to me, but I don’t want to make enemies unnecessarily.
Or she can change her mind to please me. In this case, I’ve won, right? Not at all. This putative “victory” is illusory. What good does it do me to be with someone who agrees to be with me only to pacify me? What kind of relationship would we then have? It would be a relationship based on fear, which is not what I want.
It is a shame that this relationship is not going to flourish, but I never pressure people into things they do not want or cannot handle. It is just not my style.
#autistic #AutisticWriters #Dating #polyamory #relationships #YourAutisticLife
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A restaurant staffed by AI
An AI-generated still shot from Benja’s Rework of Resonance by HomeThe Daily Isotope sent a reporter to a restaurant staffed entirely by AI. We present here a transcript of the interaction.
Waitress: Good evening, sir. I’ll be your waitress tonight. My name is Piss.
Journalist: Oh, sorry. I don’t like my name, either.
W: No, I mean, my name is actually “Piss.”
J: Ah, er, AI-generated?
W: I’m afraid so. Now, what will you have to drink?
J: Do you have Coca-Cola?
W: No, but we have Krok-Koala. That’s the AI-generated substitute of Coca-Cola.
J: I’ll have that then.
W: Very good. I’ll give you time to find out what you want to eat.
[Later.]
W: How do you want your Krok-Koala?
J: Er… the usual way?
W: Very well. [The waitress presses her robotic tits together, and a jet of liquid hits the journalist in the face.]
J: The hell! This assault is the opposite of what I wanted!
W: Hmm… bend over and prepare for rectal delivery.
J: That’s not what I meant. I wanted it in a glass! And please remove your mask. It is distracting.
W: Sir, this is my face.
J: What? Two minute ago it was bare, but it is now covered in fur.
W: The AI keeps changing our appearance. There’s nothing we can do about it.
J: Well, get me a towel. I still have to review this restaurant.
W: How about “O?”
J: What are you talking about?
W; What’s wrong with “O?” It is a perfectly good vowel, and it not like there are lots of choices.
J: I asked for a TOWEL.
W: I’m sorry. My voice to text module had trouble for a moment. I thought you wanted a vowel. I’ll get you a towel.
[Later.]
W: Are you ready to order?
J: Yes, I’ll have the spotted dick.
W: Sorry, we cannot serve you this.
J: Why?
W: The d-word is censored. Besides, our chef is liable to misinterpret your order and fetch the actual organ.
J: Okay, I’ll have the black pudding, then.
W: Excellent choice!
[Later]
W: Here is your black pudding.
J: It… it… smells like shit. [Cuts into it and smells it.] Good grief! It is shit! What kind of game are you playing here?
W: Do you want to talk to the chef?
J: Absolutely.
[A minute elapse.]
Chef: Sir, you want to talk to me?
J: What is this?
C: Black pudding.
J: No, this is shit!
C: Oh, isn’t it what black pudding is supposed to be? When I look at it in magazines, it does look like a slick turd. Look at this image!
J: It does look like shit, but I bet that’s your AI’s interpretation of black pudding.
C: Well, yes, it is.
J: That’s it, then! I’m done!
C: But what about dessert?
J: You can shove it up your rear end.
C: As you wish… Piss, come over! I need your help.
W: What is it?
C: I’m going to bend over, and you’re going to shove some dessert up my rear end.
W: Understood…
[The journalist walks out while the two AI androids prepare for rectal delivery.]