Don’t forget to look me up on Instagram, and Twitter under “RealAutismSpeak” if you want to follow my daily exploits, for more than what I’m able to put out here–for the time–on this blog! Also on TikTok, Clouthub, Gab, Telegram, GETTR, and Minds as well.
Quickly first wanted to mention….yes, the title is in reference both to Greek mythology, and a classic song by Jefferson; I was actually originally considering calling the entry “Achilles Heel: Knee Deep in the Hoopla”, in reference to the title of the album, but I didn’t think it would really drive the point I want to make here home as well, so…now you know.
So I found out yesterday that with my Godson and his Mom now getting sick, I’m actually gonna be free this weekend, so yes….I could’ve done the new blog entry then, but I decided to proceed with doing it today instead, despite also handling my laundry in the process, and the reason for that is not only to challenge myself to keep focused, but also because…..I kinda need a breather, after these last two weeks, after both getting thru being sick myself, planning around heading to work early yesterday due to how my territory was handling the Solar Eclipse event (which yes I will discuss a little bit about), and successfully getting up a new vlog on TikTok recently which I strongly recommend checking out–and I will be bringing the contents of it back up, upon finally getting to those entries I’ve been “holding back” on–which as of my checking a few moments ago, is now at 280 views, and that’s after only being up since Sunday, so I’d say God is working in amazing ways in our community’s favor….and mine as well, I guess 😉
So before we get to the main topic at hand, a few updates I want to share, and mostly involving the Eclipse here, though I have something else to throw in as well:
Yes, I did view the Eclipse yesterday, while I was at work; I went into the courtyard outside the building, and thankfully only one other person was there, so it was mostly peaceful; I decided actually to check it out not specifically to see the Moon eclipse the Sun, but because ever since I was a child, I’d been told “it gets completely dark outside during a solar eclipse”, and I wanted to see for myself if this were the case; it is not. It gets dark quickly, admittedly, but when I think “completely dark”, I think 11 PM-3 AM dark, not 7-9 PM dark. I was also recommended by Phil Godlewski’s podcast to check out the shadows on the ground as it happened, and admittedly I really didn’t see much difference when I did, so I guess the darkness aspect fascinated me far more.
Now…..the other thing about the Eclipse I wanted to bring up: as many in the “tin-foil” community will tell you, energy transfers were very strong surrounding the build-up to the event, and that energy transfer is likely why I and many others found ourselves getting sick (even though incidentally, my coworkers blamed getting sick on some cookies another coworker brought in, despite my opposing argument); well, something fascinating has happened as a result of these new DNA downloads surrounding the Eclipse: my diet is now changing.
Now, I mostly seem to crave meat and dairy; I can eat carbohydrates, breads, and grains, but only light stuff….and usually when mixed in with meat and dairy. The big kicker is….I can barely consume sugary product, anymore. Like…..on Saturday, I had a cup of ice cream from this place in town called Cobb’s, and I drank a bottle of pop with my lunch at work….and that was it. On Sunday, I drank a bottle of pop with my lunch, and that was it. Earlier today, I had some ice cream when I first woke up, and even that I found a little much. Essentially, I can now consume sugary product very sparingly, but…..I remember how my first set of guinea pigs reacted when I offered them some chocolate (and a damn good thing they did, cause I know now that it’s poisonous to them); they sniffed it, and turned their heads; that’s how I feel now when going near pastries, which until shortly before I got sick, I used to consume on the daily with no issues.
So, if you recently got sick, and you feel an aversion to food you used to eat so excitedly, that’s why.
The other update I wanted to mention, before we get to the main topic today, is that God is continuing to have me go thru all my previous romantic interests, whether actually “looking them up”, interacting with them, or just thinking about the time I knew them in hindsight, to help me understand that while they may have been stepping stones (many of them, anyway), none of ’em were who he has planned for me. I recently in fact had a desire to look up my first girlfriend–Melissa–online, and…..either she’s married to some guy, in the Budd Lake/Flanders/Stanhope area of NJ now, or she’s still living with her Mom; I couldn’t get an exact read, but either way, I’d say God checked that one off the list with that search. As I was telling a buddy of mine last night, as I sent him this fascinating video I found on Youtube about when God is getting you ready for the Right One, I actually attribute two particular songs to the experience I’m going thru of God having me–once again–play every card in the deck to fully understand just how bad all these options would’ve been for me, for what he has planned for me:
“Another One Bites the Dust” by Queen
“Let the Bodies Hit the Floor” by Drowning Pool
Incidentally, one thing in the video that was brought up resonated with me more than almost anything else: partners having a shared vison/goal…a synergy of sorts. It goes back to what I stated before about “energy attracting energy”; again, I don’t care how hot she is, or how nice her body is, or a myriad of other things…..if the energy doesn’t resonate, it doesn’t work; it really comes down to synergy, and why I really think an important aspect of whoever winds up being my Queen (feel free to read that in Goldar’s voice, from Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers) will be wanting to work with me in raising my Godson, and serving God as necessary. None of these are aspects I would’ve even considered before just a few years ago, which is yet another reason God wasn’t yet ready to bring her into my life, and I’m fine with that….so something for you lonely hearts to consider, as well 😉
And with that, now for our feature presentation, and the importance of what I’m about to get into btw will be of very heavy assistance especially to our community over the next several months (in conjunction with this entry), albeit with a caveat…but I’ll bring that up at the end. To kick it off, I’d like to go back to that book I brought up in this recent entry here, Console Wars, as I just finished it, and returned it to the library this past week:
It’s commonly been stated throughout the video game world that the bungled launch of the Sega Saturn–with Sega of America and Sega of Japan constantly butting heads (no synergy, take note)–was the death knell for Sega’s “dominance” of the video game industry in the early-mid 90s over Nintendo, who kept tripping and falling over themselves at the time; well, “commonly” is just that, because as I was reading the book, no…..that wasn’t where I saw Sega’s death knell at all; no, as far as I was concerned that moment had already been laid out years before…albeit as a moment they viewed as “supreme victory” at the time….and it happened before the release of Sonic 2 for the Genesis. They were at an electronics Convention (I don’t remember if it was in Chicago or Las Vegas), and they’d just found out Nintendo was planning to drop the price of the Super Nintendo to $99, and decided to beat them to the punch by spending the entire night before the presentations doing “months worth of work” to cut them off at the knees by announcing the exact same regarding the Genesis, with a few additional tidbits, the next morning. The moment I read that, I said “that was the moment you lost the battle with Nintendo, right there.”
“But Russell, they continued to enjoy plenty of retail success and promotion long after this event, you’re totally wrong!”
Am I? Ok….I will say this: Sonic 2 had one incredible thing working in its favor: Casino Night Zone, which I continue to consider one of the greatest things ever in video game history. Also, the game Streets of Rage is pretty cool. The problem is…..that Sega’s team was so desperate to undercut Nintendo the next day is not the sign of an industry leader, but just someone who wanted to beat the industry leader, with no clear direction beyond that. Hell, the minute that I read they did that, I also thought “Kalinske, I thought you said you were steering this ship in a different direction than your predecessor Michael Katz did?”; by doing this move, it indicated to me that–at heart–Sega never could do that, and it’s why I was mostly always able to respect Nintendo for not simply attacking the competition via its ads, but simply putting out–in my eyes–far superior product.
As I stated in my last major entry, I do understand now part of the mentality Sega had in dunking on Nintendo, as many of their business practices were…..there’s no nice way to say this…borderline illegal, but that being said, the entire basis for rising in the industry can’t be “we’re not them”; ok, then what are you? When the rebel defeats the established leader, who does he have to rebel against? What’s his vision moving forward? Yeah….it didn’t seem like Sega planned it all that far ahead, and as a result, even if Nintendo wouldn’t get in the street with them, and start duking it out, it turned out Sony was willing to, and delivered the knockout punches to them far easier than Little Mac does with Glass Joe in Punch-Out 😉
Of course so much of the populous was willing to go to bat for the hedgehog over the Plumber at the time; Sega had tapped into the masses’ desire for “rebellion, without any actual risk”; the “attitude” of the early 90s had made it trendy….but trendy is just that, and the populous goes thru it like tissue paper; so after they got it out of their system, what did Sega have to offer in terms of consistency and quality that wasn’t already being done, even if they did land a few punches on Nintendo’s chin?
If you folks are wondering, no this entry isn’t specifically about Nintendo Vs Sega, and yes I have more examples, and it is all leading to a much more important point.
In fact, for that next example, let’s look at another case where “the rebel” took on the established leader in the 90s….and lost: WWF Vs WCW
Before I continue on with this example, I’d like to mention that as of late, I find myself very much enjoying interviews I find online with former pro-wrestling alumni Jim Cornette (who btw, I met at a convention in Kentucky), and WCW manager Eric Bischoff, the man behind Monday Nitro and who pulled Hulk Hogan and his crew away from the WWF in the early 90s. Many people seem to refer to the early-mid ’90s WWF experience as “the worst period imaginable” for the WWF, that “it didn’t get properly revitalized til the Attitude Era with the Rock, Stone Cold, D-X, and Mic Foley in the late 90s, only to fall apart when Vince bought out WCW toward the end, and there was no more competition for WWF”; oh dear friends, I completely disagree. First of all, I’d like to mention that I very much continued to enjoy the WWF Wrestling experience on TV throughout most of the 1990s, even after Hogan, Piper, Macho Man, Jake the Snake, and all the others had migrated to the WCW. Despite the big-name stars now having top-billing at WCW, I preferred the writing and character development that the team at WWF employed, getting me excited and continuously invested in the new rising stars, rather than just wanting to keep watching where the previous stars had migrated to; I wished many times that Hogan & crew would return to the WWF the entire time, but I was enjoying Razor Ramon, the Undertaker, Mr. Perfect, Macho Man, and when many of them left, when the WWF brought in Marc Mero, and the earlier years of “Triple H”, or as he was referred to then “Hunter Hearst-Helmsley”…and personally I enjoyed that gimmick far more than the whole “DX Triple H” thing.
I actually very much remember the WWF/WCW wars of the late 1990s; I found the whole NWO concept to be silly beyond words….so that didn’t help any desire to tune in to their brand, not to mention putting virtually every wrestler on the show into the NWO as a member, and it was another case where…..ok, you got to see Hulk Hogan and Macho Man…but what were you staying for, other than wrestlers past the height of their prime? I remember one day, my friend and I tuned in to WCW just so I could show him what the WWF was “up against”, and they brought in to a match a jobber named “Mona Sting” (I never heard of her before, nor ever after either, but I certainly heard of the WWF’s “Brooklyn Brawler”, and so did enough people that Jakks Pacific did an action figure of him); I never forget that because of not only how low-budget and cheap the concept of this jobber was, but the production value of WCW didn’t help, either….which was one of the initial reasons I never liked WCW. It was IMO another case similar to Nintendo Vs Sega; by employing the whole NWO angle, and telling the wrestling audience “here’s what’s gonna happen tonight on Raw”, WCW may have one-upped WWF temporarily, but without the actual backing of the crew behind the scenes, or anything more to offer than riding on the name recognition of stars that had been created by their competitor, I found WCW to simply be running on empty.
Even a podcast I was watching with Stone Cold talking to Kevin Nash, Nash admitted to Stone Cold “as soon as the audience in WCW got excited for the recently-departed WWF stars over what we were offering, I know it was only a matter of time”. Going back to the hit-makers, briefly, btw:
Go ask the average person if they know who Hulk Hogan or Macho Man are. They’ll say yes. Ask most of those same people if they’ve heard of Big Van Vader or Sting; my money will be on “probably not”; Mic Foley was known in the wrestling community as Cactus Jack during his WCW tenure, but he gained actual prominence once he signed with WWF, and in the process became more recognizable and fun for more viewers to watch. Going back to the part about the Attitude Era being what everyone fondly remembers….I hate to tell you folks, I actually believe that’s what killed the Wrestling popularity, not the WCW buyout! As Jim Cornette even stated about the era in an interview, they hired TV writers at the time for a lot of it, and they started writing the storylines like a regular TV show…but wrestling fans don’t associate their favorite ring stars with their performances the same way you’d watch Charlie Sheen on Two and a Half Men, and then as another character completely somewhere else. Yes, the “rebellious” Attitude Era was trendy, and for the same reasons Sonic was trendy over Mario for a while…..but after a while, that “rebellious” trendiness that no one actually has to invest in always loses its luster, and then falls back on its main audience to carry that weight…and I far more preferred watching the build-up to that era, rather than the “big climax”, if that makes sense.
I have two more pop culture examples before I get into “real world” examples to bring this puppy home, and lay out the point I’m trying to make:
So one of the videos I checked out on Friday the 29th, while nursing my glass of apple cider, was Nostalgia Critic’s review of the “Justice League: Zach Snyder” cut; and I remember when it debuted on HBO Max, folks on Twitter and Facebook wouldn’t shut the fuck up about what a perfect movie it was, how they wish this had been the movie that came to cinemas, how “wrong” they’d been about Zach Snyder’s vision, and how the WB had robbed them of it, etc so on and so forth. Well….literally none of that is what I was thinking as I watched Doug’s review. First of all, the movie clocks in at four hours, and apparently WB gave Zach Snyder free reign to do some reshoots, and basically…have all the creative control he wanted over the project. You honestly meant to tell me most of these people yipping and whining what they’d been robbed would’ve been able to sit thru four-hour movies at the theaters, during every single offering of this theatrical universe?! To quote Simon Cowell “it’s a no from me, Paula”. And the thing is….without the advantage of both that full-length time and full creative control, fans would not feel the same way about any of the other offerings Zach Snyder had; hell, I’d also entertain that the only reason they “loved” the Snyder cut as much as they did also came down to timing:
It was released on HBO Max before everything reopened, in early 2021, and the populous was desperate to “get back to normal”, and enjoy life again. Without all those factors in play, I could still see a more positive reception for Zach Snyder’s vision, but I don’t think it would be championed as the gold standard it has been; also let’s keep in mind that this was also never to be followed up, leaving fans wondering what could’ve been, which also adds to that appetite, rather than likely finding out, and hating it as much as Man of Steel, or Batman V Superman.
The final mostly pop culture example will then be proceeded by one that ties into the “real world”:
Todd in the Shadows recently did a video about the decline of the popularity of country music star Faith Hill; how her 2002 album completely flopped. I…..don’t have much to say about it cause not only did I never really like Faith Hill’s sound, I pretty much considered her a goddamn sell-out as soon as I heard that song “Breathe”; to me, she sounded like every other generic pop star at the time that was trying to distance themselves from the grungy sound, and when I heard the album that bombed, it continued that trend, indicating to me that the public had finally caught on to what I picked up pretty much at the start. I remember my former roommate once asked me “you said you don’t like Faith Hill, cause you view her to be a sellout; do you view Taylor Swift the same way?” The answer is no (even though I have other issues with her) because I still think she occasionally has some decent songs, and she does have her own distinct sound; not only did Faith Hill have none of those working her favor, she also still billed herself as “Country”, to the point where my friend once said to me “I have a confession to make to you, and you better not tell anyone: I like Country music now; I like Faith Hill”, to which I responded “oh you’re fine; no you don’t, she’s a total sell-out“; I was actually gravitating toward the Country scene myself before it hit that “peak” of popularity in the late 90s, with Reba McEntire and Allen Jackson, and I even happen to love a song by Jean Shepard from the 60s called “Heart, We Did All That We Could” (which you can thank the Country Bear Jamboree for bringing to my attention), but while I could definitely pick up on a bit of a rock/pop sound/influence from Allen at times, and Reba, when I heard Faith Hill, it was straight up generic 90s pop to me, so when her album crashed in the early 90s, “color me surprised”, as they say.
Now to get into the “real world” examples, before I drive this puppy home, and lay out for you the common denominator amongst all of them, and why I’m doing this blog entry now at this time, at all:
Supposedly the late 1990s were a period of major growth, a great economy, all that (even though Right-Wing Talk Radio talking head Rush Limbaugh agreed with me very much otherwise), and I had a few problems with this mindset, once again citing how bland and drab the culture felt, rather than inspired; during a good economy, shouldn’t the culture be as fun and poppy as the 1980s one was? Well, the big realization that something was very off came before the “dot-com bubble burst”, as it was a pattern I noticed during the Chrismas season of 1999, when I was working as a cashier at Bradlee’s (before leaving to go to Toys R Us):
Everyone was buying Hot Wheels for their kids, citing how cheap they were. If the economy is so good, why is everyone buying up Hot Wheels, in part because of how inexpensive they are? I actually at one point said to one of my coworkers–in front of several customers–“if everyone is buying up Hot Wheels for Christmas for their kids, I wager it isn’t the toys that are cheap…”
Gee…..picking up on a pattern like that, which led to the reveal that the money wasn’t really there; could’ve sworn we heard of a similar instance before of a man who was reading economic numbers, saw major inconsistencies, and decided to short the market, seeing a huge collapse on the horizon; in fact I believe I mentioned this fella, Michael Burry, in one of the entries linked above.
Hell, I’ll even be nice and not just rag on the 1990s, but even the 1980s, while we’re at it:
Everyone has heard of the market crash of 1987…but people don’t bring up often that apparently the market was already volatile at minimum a year beforehand, and two completely different sources publicly acknowledged this, one via testimony to public officials, and one via an album; in 1986, Donald Trump brought up to some elected officials about a tax that had been implemented which discouraged further economic investment, and stated the results actually indicated we were not in a booming economy, but in a lingering economic recession/depression. Before you pounce on me “But Trump, REEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”, the other folks to bring this up was Huey Lewis and the News in their song “It’s As Simple As That” on their Fore! album; the entire song goes into lingering economic uncertainties, and how almost everything they were striving for seems to be going up in smoke, due to how expensive everything is getting, and how folks are starting to barely get by.
This now leads me semi-nicely into my final example before laying my point out, and closing this puppy out:
Everyone and their Mom loves to blame Senator Mitt Romney & his company Bain Capital for the death of Toys R Us, claiming the company was doing great before that; they really, really weren’t. In fact, the founder Charles Lazarus departed from the company in 1993, and I remember Toys R Us in 1993…when I went inside, something…..just felt off. I remember at the time I was staring at some Mighty Max playsets that had hit clearance. I was 11 at this time, and admittedly started to lose some of my drive for action figures, and was about to start getting heavily into Legos a year or two later, so I simply attributed it at the time to my moving on, and no longer being invested, and that’s why I’d felt this way.
No, friends, knowing what I know now, that is not why I felt that way at all, and between the time Lazarus stepped down to the year 2000 when Toys R Us was featured on the cover of Business Week, citing the hopes that the new CEO–who’d had experience with FAO Schwarz–could turn their future around, was all the indication I needed that without Lazarus steering the ship, the board did not understand his vision for Toys R Us, and just a year or two later–before Bain Capital even publicly came into the picture Toys R Us got bought out by three separate entities, one of which being an investment group called Vornado, which usually buys up junk properties, which itself was a very bad omen; that Toys R Us needed three separate buyers because no one buyer thought it was worth the price was another bad omen, yet I notice everyone forgets this, years later; I can even bring up the point to people, and it falls on deaf ears. Incidentally, I see a far bigger pattern involving Toys R Us in the business world that started in the late 1980s, with Child World and Lionel’s Kiddie City, but we’ll touch on that some other time possibly.
So, here’s the common denominator from every single one of those examples:
Literally every single instance, I saw the “end” loooong before it came, the same way Michael Burry did with the housing market, even at a time when people were positive everything was thriving & happy and this and that. I saw it, because my Autistic brain is designed to notice these patterns, and pick up on details in these foundational issues that will have a far greater impact if not addressed, and sooner than later. In this entry here, I brought up about how the populous seems to get a big socializing hit out of a “shared experience”, and then they do it years later on a more “surface” level with the nostalgic memories, that we can’t relate to anyway, unless we were there…what I notice they don’t appear to do is pick up on the details that led to the fall of that “shared experience”, and the collapse is pretty much engineered long before the supposed public “height” of that shared experience….and in my opinion, this is a detail that our intuition can often pick up on, which further hinders our ability to join in fully appreciating that “shared experience” the way the lower frequencies have been wired to, for so long; “bread and circuses”, as the old saying goes, if that makes sense.
Over the next several months, your chess-playing ability to pick up on those details will be very important, as you might be seeing now Normies showing less of an excitement at any given time for movies and TV shows than they would’ve been even 5 years ago, especially now with the release of the TV series talking about the “behind the scenes” at Nickelodeon, and the beans that are getting spilled over the fallout with Sean Combs (or as you referred to him at one point “Puff Daddy”). Our brains are wired to see these details a mile away, and I recommend using that ability starting now to “start making some plans” over the next several months, because the bottom is about to fall out of a lot of things that most people are so incredibly used to with our world and society, and God gave us the ability to pick up on that to navigate it–even if being more resourceful, to be able to do so–than the masses. I’ve said before that the Autism stigma is about to collapse, and my recent vlog on TikTok is somewhat related to that, as is this entry here.
My point is, as it collapses, so will everything else that the masses have known about their society, for so long….but you can get a jumpstart on preparing yourself, and helping them to prepare for it by observing the pattern of inconsistencies now.
It is here that I’d like to quickly point out that many in our community are now showing me their “true” colors & falling for being as phony as the same Normies they’ve complained about for so long, to the point where I’ve had some slight me by claiming they agree with me, only to then turn on me when I remind them that their qualms were brought up in entries I posted that they suggested they at least looked at.
Well, dear friends, I recently read one of the greatest quotes imaginable on Instagram, and am now applying it to my life in ways I didn’t think possible, as it really gave me that much pause; as I conclude this entry, I will no longer insist to you of everything you’re capable of. I know what the Autistic mind can do, but whether or not you are truly capable of that is entirely up to you. The quote I saw went: “The potential you see in other people isn’t real. It is the projection of what you would do in that position”
Well guess what? The Autistic community has plenty of lazy and phony people, just the same way the non-Autistic community does too; how long have I been known to say “If I’d only gotten the proper nurturing as a kid, imagine what I could’ve done? Imagine what most Autistic folks could do with the proper nurturing!” That also comes down to choice, and in many cases, even when provided with everything, many will still play the victim.
So I leave you with this for now:
You have all the equipment you need to carry out God’s mission, starting these next few months, as I’ve laid out throughout this entry; what you choose to do with it is up to you, though to quote John Lennon’s song Imagine “and I hope some day you’ll join us, and the world will be as one“.
Getting Real With Autism 