pandora_parrot | Recent Entries

A friend asked: When looking for potential partners, how much does physical attractiveness play a role?

I answered: " I'm very into looks.... Someone has to look excited about the world, happy about the things around them. They have to look at the things around them and think about them. They have to look at me, and like what they see. I love it when they give me looks of attraction and interest, and I love to give those to other people as well.

I'm VERY into looks like those.

In terms of physical appearance, I like people whose physical appearance tells something about them that I find appealing, like the idea that they don't give a fuck about social norms of beauty. Like bright colors to indicate they're a happy person... Colored hair to indicate a sense of artistry and creativity... geeky t-shirts that indicate they're into things that I'm into... stuff like that.

But usually, when people ask these questions, they mean "looks" in terms of how well it matches the definition of beauty as defined by white heterosexual cisgender US culture. I Don't give two shits about how well someone matches that.. In fact, the more someone matches white heterosexual cisgender US beauty norms, the less attractive I find them."

I was reading about a recent controversy involving Richard Dawkins saying describing a point about logic and comparing things. As I read about the conflict, the amount of inability of Dawkins and his detractors to understand one another across the barrier of communication was staggering. Many people completely missed what he was trying to say, and misunderstood him to a considerable degree. Meanwhile, he completely missed why everyone was upset. He condescendingly described it as an "emotional no-go areas where logic dare not show its face."

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What is "right?" What is "wrong?" These are questions that have plagued a lot of people, and are often used as a strong justification for the existence of absolute morality, and as a consequence, absolute knowledge. After a long time of work and study, I've settled on an epistemological system for evaluating truth and morality that works pretty well for me, for now. I'm going to talk about some of my ideas related to this. This may be a bit stream-of-consciousness-y and not necessarily the best organized thoughts. But I wanted to write it down anyways. Usually in preparation for a subsequent essay that is more focused, coherent, and correct.

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More and more of my posts on facebook lately are getting back to "long form" writing like I used to do here. I think I might start trying to cross-post. I like being able to journal my life. And things are definitely improving.

Today's entry:

"Spent last night playing a very old school game while cuddling with Jessie. Tie Fighter! It runs GREAT in DOSbox, though you need to fiddle with the settings a bit to get the joystick to not act all wonky.

It's so great to play this sort of old game. It's like a step back into the past."

Gosh, I've missed writing in here. :) It's really good to be back. :)

Is this thing on?

I'm not necessarily planning to come back here just now... Just was checking in, as I'm looking around to see what's happening in the world. How are y'all doing?

Anyone still listening?

Facebook kinda sucks these days.

If you haven't noticed this already, my live journal is already pretty much dead.

Yes, it's partly because of the massive exodus from LJ to Facebook/Google+/Dreamwidth/etc.

But it is also because of a lot of things happening in my life that have changed around how I use online media.

I don't know exactly why I've used LiveJournal over the years, but I can tell you some things that have been beneficial for me about it. More than anything else... talking about what's going on inside my head and having people support or approve of it has been incredibly helpful and beneficial, and God knows I've had a lot going on in my head over the past 7 years.

When I started this journal, I really lacked self-esteem. I felt disconnected from everyone and everything. I felt incompetent, incapable, and small. I felt like I didn't matter, that everything I did was shit, and that people really didn't like me; they just put up with me. My thoughts were bullshit wrong nonsense that just needed to be destroyed and ignored or something.

Having this journal, I was able to share about my thoughts and feelings to an audience, and be told that I wasn't shit. I wasn't crazy for thinking about the things I was thinking about. I wasn't a terrible person that failed at everything I did.

I also used LJ as a means by which to reach out and connect with people. I met hundreds of people from all sorts of walks of life, all with different perspectives, interests, etc. I learned so much, and explored whole avenues of thought and being as I associated with various kinds of people. I experimented in many ways, including sexuality, relationships, etc. I sought to find my own identity, especially in the face of the lack of identity that I had had previously.

In any case... it was a grand journey, and I truly adored it.

But that journey is over now. At least, that chapter is over.

My life is the best it has ever been. I am happier and more comfortable and at peace than I have ever been in my entire life. My life is by no means perfect, but it is lovely.

A huge element of this change is simply my career. In the past, I believed myself to be a terrible programmer that would never amount to anything or progress in her career. I now work at one of the most awesome companies in the world, a company that theoretically hires only the "best of the best of the best, with honors." Sometimes, I struggle with understanding why that includes me, but most of the time these days, I just accept that people think well of my engineering skills and leave it at that. I enjoy my work, and people enjoy working with me. That's good enough for me.

I've also been hugely influenced by a very different outlook on friendship. In the past, I would often think that I was just annoying everyone around me and that people were looking for an opportunity to ditch me as soon as they could. I felt that I had to please everyone as I desperately tried to keep them in my life, lest I lose them and everyone else and be alone.

Now, I've built up years of strong relationships with some wonderful people. I've got strong, close-knit friendships that have stood the tests of time and hardship, lasting 15 years, 7 years, or whatever. I continue to meet new and wonderful people that I add to that list. And... I don't try to people please like I used to. People don't like me. Fuck em. I don't like them? Fuck em. I'm not desperate to keep people in my life anymore. Yet people stick around and show me that they like me lots and lots.

And probably the third most important thing I can think of right now that is contributing to my current sense of serenity is that I am now secure in the knowledge and understanding of "What's wrong with me?" For years I tried to answer the question, "Why am I different from other people?" Trying to find the reason for the odd disconnect I felt from people. Now, I understand that it is a combination of prosopagnosia, CAPD, and being LGBT. Armed with the certainty of those three things, the majority of difficulties or oddities about my past are easily explicable.

With all of this going on... what I write about has changed considerably. You might say that my writing has gone from that of a child to that of an adult in some ways. In any case, it feels to me ill suited for livejournal, or at least, this particular journal. It feels like this is more or less the end of this journal. A fitting final story in this particular chapter of my life. Whether it really is the end of it or not is hard to say, but it feels very much like this is the terminus of this particular journey.

Of course, this *IS* the eternal journey. My journey will never end. I'm always going to be innovating and exploring ways of existing, being, etc. While I have found peace and calm in my life, and much of the struggles that have characterized the last 7 years are over... there are so many adventures to be had in the future. Not the same ones. Just different. :)

So with that... For those few left that are still listening... I bid you adieu. I hope to see you again if we cross paths in the future! :)

This is Paradox Puree... signing out. :)

...And she lived happily ever after.

To be continued...

Each year, I do an annual review of the previous year and talk about what's coming up for the next year.

This year I'm doing things a little differently.

2011 was... a very difficult, but extremely rewarding year of my life. Almost all of the loose ends of stuff I've been dealing with came together, and I basically just got my life in order to more or less completely.

I'm going to spend 2012 enjoying it, and sharing my happiness as best I can.

That is all.

I've been frustrated by my CAPD the past few days, because it has been cropping up at work as I start on a new team. There's a guy here with a strong accent that makes it near impossible to understand him without a lot of concentration, and all the initial technical conversation is difficult to follow.

I've also been further delighted by using ASL more lately. I came up with a neat analogy to why I'm feeling better about ASL than spoken English, despite knowing English better.

Trying to understand spoken English is like trying to read some English text on a TV screen with a bad connection, causing it to be covered in static. Trying to understand ASL is more like seeing a relatively clear picture on the TV, but the text is all in Spanish.

In the analogy, I feel more comfortable with the latter situation because I can try to learn Spanish. I can't try to learn anti-static. When the static is bad, I simply can't understand what's written on the TV, or if I do, it takes incredible concentration and effort to do so.

What's additionally frustrating to me is that the "static" comes and goes. Usually, there's not much of it and I understand things just fine. But other times, the "static" increases, sometimes to levels that make it nearly impossible for me to understand people.

A lot of my fear and trepidation around doing things like visiting offices, using phones, etc. comes from my fear of that "static." I wonder, "When I call the doctor, will I get a lot of "static," or will I get a clear line?" "When I go to this office, will there be "static" or not?" I'm fine if the "static" doesn't appear, but if it does, I can't understand what's going on very well.

And because I hear so well when the "static" isn't around, people expect me to hear and understand well all the time, which simply isn't the case.

(EDIT: I wonder if the analogy can also be used to explain the difference between typical deafness and CAPD. Whereas I see the whole image, but covered in static, they see a relatively clear image, but it is missing significant pieces. We both struggle to understand it, but for different reasons.)

I feel as though I've reached the point where I feel like I've resolved some of the turmoil I've experienced over the last few months over finding out that I had CAPD. I feel as though I've integrated this into my self-image, have adjusted my behaviors to better manage my issues, and am now moving on...

A lot of my anxiety and difficulty in integrating this knowledge into myself revolves around the fact that this condition has been with me since birth, but I've never understood it.

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It may only be a mild-to-moderate hearing problem, and it may only affect me a portion of the time, but it affects me enough to upset me and warrant further reaction from time to time.

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I'm going to ponder this out on here because there *are* a few people listening, and I figure what-the-hey.

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Anyone out there still listening?

So, as part of my class on ASL, I'm supposed to go visit Deaf events and engage in communication with folks. I did my first one this past weekend, and... wow.

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Hey... check it out! I made a thing for burning man.

So... I actually signed up for a night class at De Anza to study ASL. It starts September 26th.

In preparation, I've been practicing my fingerspelling and running through practice sentences in my spare time. I've also been researching deaf culture a bit, reading about their perspectives on hearing culture and the interactions.

I'm stunned how familiar this is, actually. Although the details are specific to each culture, I see a lot of parallels in the attitudes of Deaf people and Transgender people towards the majority culture. I read about the annoyance and frustration that many Deaf people experience towards hearing people. I read about the incorrect assumptions and stereotypes that get applied to them.

It's all quite familiar as a member of the transgender community. A similar sense of frustration and angst with a culture that *just doesn't get it* 90% of the time. Even those that try to be friendly often do so in a patronizing or annoying way. It's a rare person from the other world that actually *gets* it.

As I read about Deaf people getting "congratulated" for how well they lipread or talk, or being told, "I'm sorry," when telling someone that they're Deaf... I am reminded of my experiences of being told how well I pass as female, or how someone "had no idea I wasn't cisgender!" and crap like that. It's like... Thanks for the sentiment... but really? REALLY? Just treat me like a normal person! Don't congratulate me on my ability to fit in with the mainstream!

I think a lot of minority groups probably have similar experiences to these... Similar tales of annoyance and frustration. I wonder if there's a "passing" dynamic going on as well... In minority cultures where a member of the minority can "pass" as a member of the majority culture, are certain assumptions and such more likely to take root? Hard to say.

In any case, the whole thing makes me that much more excited about learning more about Deaf culture. It seems like there's a lot it may have common with my own experiences, as well as a lot of new things to learn. I think it may even help me understand better how cisgender people perceive transgender culture by experiencing what it is like to be an outsider to a minority culture and interacting with it directly. (Although I know members of other minority groups that I don't belong to, I don't actually know much about their cultures, which is disappointing. I should probably fix that.)

Anyways... the class is going to be on Monday and Wednesday nights.

I'm also thinking about finally taking that class on Spanish that I've been wanting to take. De Anza offers a Tuesday and Thursday class, but that would mean that my entire week would be taken up by classes after work. Additionally, I'm actually finding that I know more people that know, use bits of, or want to learn ASL than I know people that use Spanish. At least in terms of my more direct social circle. ASL has the advantage of enabling visual communication, which is a really nice capability upgrade to get. :) Spanish is only an additional audio communication system. It doesn't expand my options for communication paths, just alternate audio encodings. Thus I'm currently leaning towards putting the Spanish thing on the back burner until I get enough ASL to sign competently.

It is so awesome when you start to learn a new language. What used to be random gibberish suddenly starts to become actual words and concepts.

This Friday, I finally encountered enough people around me that know and use ASL that I decided it was time to learn it. I memorized the alphabet and began practicing finger spelling about everything I could get my hands on. I downloaded an ASL dictionary app to my iPad and began constructing sentences with

thespatula, who used to use ASL to talk to a hard-of-hearing friend of hers.

On Sunday, I decided to load up the ASL version of Re: Your Brains and watch it again. And that's when that magical moment of understanding happened.

Despite not knowing even enough ASL to carry on a simple conversation, what little I had learned during the weekend was enough to completely transform the video for me. When I first watched it, it was entertaining for the weird hand motions and pantomime that I observed during the lyrics, but I didn't really have a clue when it came to the signs. Now, I found myself picking out individual signs, being able to identify when the person was fingerspelling things, and even catching a few jokes/amusing bits that I hadn't understood before.

Before, my brain only saw static. Now, it saw patterns and information. It's quite a delightful experience to have. I even learned a few signs!

As with most things I try out, I don't know if I'll carry on with this, but it has one of the key elements that I generally need to get a new hobby type thing to continue: Other people around me know, use, and are learning ASL. So maybe I'll actually be able to stick with it.

WHY learn it? A few reasons, really.

1) It's really useful to be able to communicate visually. Whether in noisy environments, or to have a secondary communication channel when there are other people around. It's an entirely new channel of communication. I actually learned morse code to try to do this when I was in grade school, but no one else wanted to learn it, too... so I forgot it.

2) I have at least one friend, if not more, that sometimes go non-verbal. When this happens, they use ASL to communicate. It'd be nice to be able to understand what they're saying.

3) I myself find being verbal hard sometimes. Always have, since childhood. There'll be times when people are trying to talk to me, and I just find it really frustrating and emotionally upsetting to have to speak. Having ASL on hand when that strikes me could be a nice way to avoid the frustration.

4) Although I don't know anyone that is deaf, and only one person that is hard of hearing, I really like the idea of learning another language for the sake of learning that language and learning about those that use it. How cool is it that we get these opportunities to explore the languages and cultures of other people? It expands our understanding of our world and helps us to build better communities that are more effectively inclusive.

5) Every time I learn something new, I help maintain brain health and stave off the possibility of dementia when I get old.

Monkeys in suits wander around empty white corridors
Imbibing fine wine from golden chalice
and complaining of the rising cost of dry cleaning

Outside, she's sitting there alone, sleeping under a tree
Numb to the world and numb to her plight

She's one of the forgotten ones,
hiding within the world
Finding the cracks and eddies where she's allowed to exist.

The monkeys laugh and drink and make merry
while she sits outside and fights to live.

The drowning child makes great headlines
for stories and tales to share
Open hearts and open wallets reach out for those in need

But monkeys shy away from the dirty smelly creatures
that wander the land without chains
For fear... for worry... for disgust...

Open doors do not exist when the needy are real

Drip
Drip
drip

Dark caverns, black and wet
hidden beneath the earth

An age ago, they were filled with light
dry and comfortable
bright and cheery

The elves danced to bright music
Magic and merriment
innocent and care free

What happened to those days?
The times when we danced in the moonlight?
and created our own reality around us?

Music from the past echoes forward
reflecting off the dark cavern walls.
Tear drops fall from the ceiling
weeping for a bygone age

The queen still sits in her gilded throne
But her body is gaunt, and her silver tarnished
The jester sits in the corner, sobbing
The only eyes that still see

The royal court makes webs of sorrow
catching their meals from the air
while servants scurry on many legs
and take their fill from their queen

Buried beneath her own creations
forgotten by the world
she has vanished from the story

Got a request for information about being faceblind today. Thought I'd post my response to the person's questions:

1: When you see a person you've never met before, do you see their face at all or is it just a blur? For example, if someone had say a scar or a facial piercing or bright blue eyes, would you be able to notice them?

Prosopagnosia, or faceblindness, isn't really about not being able to see things. I can see people's faces just fine. I can see a scar or facial piercing or blue eyes or anything. I see it all, and I can even memorize facts about such a face if I need to!

The best description that I've ever come up with for faceblindness is that it is this: There is a special region of the brain that is optimized for doing pattern recognition on faces. It is able to quickly and subconsciously evaluate all of the characteristics of a face and compare it against your memories of all the people you've ever met. For a person like myself, with faceblindness, we don't have this sort of "hardware optimization." We have to do everything in "software," ie. We have to use other parts of our brain to figure out who someone is.

Since these other parts of our brain aren't so optimized, they're not nearly as good. They work slowly, miss a lot of things, and are easily fooled. A close friend only has to put on unusual clothing, cut their hair, etc. to make it completely impossible for me to recognize them, despite the fact that I know them very well. For people I don't know as well, it takes far less for me to be unable to recognize them. Something as simple as a shift in mood, a hair style or color change, or something like that is enough to make someone completely unrecognizable to me.

Perhaps another way to look at it is that I can see all of these facial characteristics just fine. They just don't mean anything special to me, and even the closest people can look like complete strangers to me fairly easily.

2: How do you distinguish between people? Can you recognize voices or hair or skin color or anything?

For me, the big three characteristics that I use to identify people are context, personality, and large scale body characteristics.

So if I run into a short asian guy at work that's really exciteable, I'll know that's Gerry. If I run into a tall happy guy that wears bright colors and is always smiling, that's Bob. If I'm going on a date and a large bearded man comes up seeming to be laughing at the world, that's my boyfriend.

Context is huge. Take away context, and I'll generally completely lose my ability to recognize someone. A guy once tapped me on the shoulder at a supermarket and asked me if I needed help. It was actually a good friend of mine playing a joke on me, but because I didn't expect to see him, I didn't recognize him and thought he was genuinely an employee of the store.

Personality is also huge. So huge to me, that when a person is in a different mood, I can instantly tell. I'm very sensitive to changes in mood, and if someone came to me acting *very* different than normal, I'd run a chance of being unable to recognize them. Personality also influences the way people move, and I've become very adept at recognize people simply by the way they walk, swing their hands, play with their hair, and stuff like that.

And large-scale body characteristics. Stuff like long hair or short hair. Dark hair or light hair. Tall or short. Fat or skinny. Dark skin or light skin. Stuff like that. I'm not good at recognizing people in the middle, though, just on the extremes. Someone with average hair length, medium brown color, average height, average build, and light brown skin will be almost impossible for me to recognize, even after knowing them for a while. But make them pale and fat with short hair, or black, tall and skinny with long dark hair, and suddenly I find them very easy to recognize.

3: Do faces become more familiar the more you see them?

Not really. I become more adept at recognizing people's personalities in those faces though. I start to recognize the smiling bald guy that has a little smirk on his face, or the constantly depressed short woman. Stuff like that. Our brains aren't optimized to memorize these characteristics about people, so it takes considerably longer to learn stuff like this than it would for a normal person to recognize someone else. But over time, prosopagnosiacs learn to recognize people by various means. Just not by their face.

4: Were you born with your condition? If so, when did you realize that you had it?

As far as I know, yes, I was born with it. I realized I had it in college after a friend lead me to the "face blindness and stones" webpage. http://web.archive.org/web/20090525034533/http://www.prosopagnosia.com/main/stones/index.asp

I read that site and went "Yes! Holy shit! THAT is why I have so much trouble recognizing people and remembering faces!" It was an eye opening moment. I had started to suspect that something was different about me in high school, though, and recognized that I had more difficulty remembering faces than most people.

5: Lastly, (this one is kind of personal) how did/does faceblindness affect your relationships with others and/or your view of yourself, if at all?

Bill Choisser's online book goes into this in some detail: http://www.choisser.com/faceblind/

For myself, it has the strongest tendency to affect my ability to connect with people. It's fairly often that I find myself sabotaging potential relationships, both personal and professional, when I hit that inevitable moment of, "I'm sorry, who are you again?"

People are so used to being recognized, that they automatically assume that if you don't recognize them, you don't care about them. I've seen it so many times, my heart tears to even think about it. Imagine lovers, friends, and others being turned away when you looked and them and didn't know who they were. It's horrible, and it makes for a very lonely childhood. When you don't recognize the playground friend you made the day before, it makes it hard to makes friends at all.

As for view of myself? Not really. I guess I don't care about makeup as much as most women, since it makes my face look so very very different that it can freak me out. But that's pretty common amongst people with this condition.

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Pandora Parrot

November 2023

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Bird droppings

Something something stuff

Recent Entries

Standards of Beauty

No, really, cultural context and respect. It's important.

Ethics, and morality.

Writing more

Missed writing

Tap tap tap

One journey ends...

Looking back on 2011 and forward to 2012.

Speech frustration

audio integration

Further reflections on CAPD

Pondering CAPD

Mic Check

My first Deaf event

Project Lightning Bug

Getting ready to learn

Opening the door

Perspective

A lament for the loss of innocence

Face blindness