Days Of Future Past

They say that the two most powerful words in advertising are “new” and “free”. Well, thanks largely to my habit of collecting rewards points and buying all of my tickets to films, I was able to redeem the offer of a free ticket last Thursday. Which made X-Men: Days Of Future Past the obvious choice to see.

Rather than give a detailed review, I am going to reflect on my reactions to the content.

How to “read” X-Men (like a mutant).

In a matter of months, the first X-Men film to feature Bryan Singer at the helm since 2003 will be released. This has brought forth a deluge of X-Men related posts on Fudgebook and other such publicity. But just like there is a How To Read Donald Duck in which analysis of Disney’s material is taken to extremes, I think it is worth taking a look at X-Men for similar reasons.

Mainstream movements and hypocrisy.

There is much wailing and gnashing of teeth at present because Temple Grandin, once the hero of the autistic civil rights movement, has begun telling audiences that abridging the rights of those deemed “low functioning” is perfectly okay. Or something that can be taken to that effect.

Labels, function, and other things autistic.

Before I go into anything else, I want to preface this essay by stating that I have read a small amount of the texts offered by one Amy Sequenzia, and I admire this woman’s bravery as well as her willingness to speak up against the curebie menace. But when I read yet another tirade about “functioning labels” (their words), I feel compelled to step in and offer a few comments.

Being a President requires balls. The proverbial kind, I mean.

So, as I often do, I went looking around for examples of other peoples’ writings. I do not know quite how I came across this article on Sad Bastard Bar, but I am glad I did. In it, The Bastard, as they call themselves, talks a lot about the buzz that has been going around about the “debate” that U.S. President Barack Obama supposedly lost. Let us leave aside for a moment the fact that a victory obtained by lying so hard that your opponent will have months’ worth of material to hit you over the head with is what the expression Pyrrhic Victory was invented for.

Militant autistic manifesto: If we are in this together, why am I so afraid you are going to sell me out?

One of the worst, most deceitful gambits that the curebie movement has come up with to date is the whole “theory of mind” or “lack of empathy” gambit. Seriously, if you are going to try to blur the line between autistic and psychopath, you need to work a lot harder these days than you did in the 1980s, people. But having said all of that, it is worth talking about a few things before I get to my main point.

A dozen things that a Powell type autistic adult wishes you grokked

I have two very specific and very unhappy memories relating to the time when I was told that the reason I was having so much difficulty in life was because I am autistic. Number one, I was told before the diagnosis and immediate plan was laid out that things would improve from this point. Very specifically, I was told, I might add. So the fact that the Commonwealth Rehabilitation Service worker who made this promise to me has not been severely disciplined for making promises she had no intention of acting or following upon makes me angry.