The Yeti\’s Cyber Smithy

Recently, I transposed a couple of names in a post. Nothing came of it. Months earlier, I transposed two names and all hell broke loose. I am not going to share those names because I would really like not to attract the attention of the person I thought I was speaking to. But I do want to share the story so that folk will understand one of the down sides.

At a convention the year before I met my wife, a fellow author decided it was high time I was hooked up. That author had some previous doings with my former lover and announced afterwards that I must have a thing for red hair and big boobs because that young lady had nothing else going for her. Between the time of those doings and the convention, that lover and I had gone our own ways. My fellow author decided me and a certain someone were a good match and mentioned that she would be introducing us at he convention. It uh, well it was not a good match & I did not pay much attention to her at he convention. I can’t relate much more of that story because I don’t really remember the details. Looking back, it might have been the convention where my wife and I met. I don’t really recall. What I do recall is that the young lady I was introduced to was none too pleased that I seemed to ignore her.

Later, I was injured. Since that date, I discover more and more each day how many memories I no longer seem to have. Making things worse, the main problem with my memory is that things do not seem to translate well between short and long term memory. But the absolute worst part of it from an online perspective is that I have a rather serious problem with aphasia. I say one word when I mean another. I hear one word when you say another. Evidently, I read one word when you have typed another.

So, years later someone joins Pagan Nation. She and I had a few private topics back and forth, but when the explosion took place I hadn’t remembered a one. Instead, I looked at her name and saw… yep, you guessed it the woman that I had been introduced to a few years earlier. Thinking I had acquired yet another stalker (not being boastful, I’ve had a few) I went off on the women, telling her that she is nothing to me other than some words on a page. It was months before I figured out that it was not the same woman. In fact, she was not even from the same country. What do you say? Woops?

The truth is, these issues are not something that casual acquaintances are prepared to deal with. Imagine having a conversation with me and I say: “I have absolutely no idea what you are saying?”, what would you do? Well, if you are like 90% of the people I have had this experience with, you will say the exact same thing only LOUDER! I would reply that I can hear the words coming out of your mouth, I just can not understand them. People tend to then become offended, thinking I am telling them that they make no sense what so ever. If I explain that I have a problem with what I call reverse aphasia (a cognitive impairment), then they start treating me like Rainman.

We live in black and white world of stereotypes. If I say I am cognitively impaired, people tend to think that I couldn’t possibly do something like computer programming. Oddly enough while I have almost no luck learning from a book, I seem to be able to learn from looking at source code much better than before the accident. It’s just words that I have a problem with. So what is a professional author to do? The answer is obvious, change his profession.

For this reason, I am announcing that my wife and I are moving to Los Vegas. Naw, just kidding. In all seriousness, I am working on a computer project which I think might be a rather hot topic in a year or so. The concept is based on the idea that the mass media still has control over things the same way they did before the Internet. Myspace.com is owned by the same mega billion dollar corporation as Fox News, it has been since 1995 (and you thought a guy named Tom ran da place). Youtube.com is owned by Google, Facebook is quickly becoming its own mega corporation. I think I have conceived of a way to finally break with the traditional way of viewing the world from the eyes of the multimillion-dollar corporations and begin viewing it from the eyes of the people.

If I ever get the thing running, part of the announcement is going to involve information about my brain damage. I am hoping that my strives will demonstrate to the world that folk with cognitive impairments are challenged just as are people with physical impairments and like people with physical impairments, folk like me can continue to improve the state of their being while contributing to the whole.

Now how does a person explain that without sounding like he is complaining?