I’m okay in social situations. I’m okay. Meeting new people? No problem. Sitting around a table in an old courtyard in Vienna, with clematis-covered walls housing singing blackbirds, drinking wine and eating and talking (us, not the birds)? No problem at all.

Once I get warmed up, that is.

Until then I’m autistic. I basically sit there and rock back and forth and avoid eye-contact. And it takes me hours to warm up. The few of you who have met me in real life know I’m not exaggerating. Why is this? How long does it take you to warm up in a new situation? Or are you one of the lucky, garrulous, loquatious, outgoing ones?

Is it a Taurean thing? No, it can’t be – six of the eight people around the table last night were Taureans I think. And most of them were charming and funny. Only Gamma and I were being weird.

Yes, Gamma is exactly the same. For the first two hours of a party or other social gathering, we stay on the fringes observing and thawing out. By the end of the night, we’re in the thick of things dancing with a lampshade on our head, but it takes forever.

We do better in small groups. Like one-on-one with a friendly, likeable person.

There is this book. Die Entdeckung der Langsamkeit. Which is called The Discovery of Slowness in English. By Sten Nadolny. And the protagonist is an explorer who is very slow. By slow, I mean he perceived the world at a different speed – slow. Mentally he was fine. It’s a very interesting book. He eventually developed a coping strategy – it took him so long to react to a situation, that he planned in advance how to react – what to say or do – in a given situation. In order to appear normal.

So what I want from you is two things. First, how long does it take you to warm up in a situation and why and how? And second, what are your coping strategies?

I’m thinking, it would be good to have a small library of funny or interesting stories to tell about myself to new people I meet. So like, when the attention turns to Mig and they’re saying, “Now tell us something about yourself” I would actually have a story to tell, rather than going, “uh, nothing to tell, really…”. Something interesting that would pique their interest.

And some other class of statement of some kind that sounds interesting and fairly normal, but makes them leave you alone, like, “I was just at the dermatologist about these ulcerous sores in my crotch, he gave me a salve that he said would clear them up in no time.”

And another class of response, something to say when Alpha tells everyone that Mig has these two websites he devotes a lot of time to and which are fairly famous and everyone around the table says “URL! URL!” Something besides, “eh, ehm, uh…” that would make their eyes glaze over, like, “well, I write a lot about the interface of technology and social interaction, and it’s effects on credibility and credulousness.”

Another glass of that fruity white, please.

So, again, what classes of social situations are there, and what would be appropriate stock responses? Thanks.

[Found at A Constant Reader]

New shoes at the Shoe Project. Thanks Bill.

I never thought I’d see the day when I implied that Richard Nixon had a shred of decency, but at least Nixon had the decency to commit his crimes in secret, whereas Bush commits his openly, and so far, with impunity.

1. There’s a lot I’ve always hated about the United States: the culture of waste and stupidity most people living there are so saturated with they can’t even perceive, the chauvinism, rednecks, corporate power and general greed and a couple other things. It’s not why I left, over 20 years ago, but it made being away a lot easier. But I still have my U.S. passport because I love what the U.S. stands for – the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, mostly, liberties unequalled in most other countries of the world, and the current attack on those liberties by people claiming to defend them sickens me. People who, if someone else did what they themselves are doing, they would call radicals and terrorists.

2. The U.S. media are so fucked in the head it amazes me, and I’ve always been cynical about the media. I mean, what is their product that they’re selling? An audience. You, being sold to advertisers. (Not me, pal, because I don’t watch television.) The media have always been biased, in every country in the world. I read 5 newspapers a day as part of my job, and each one has its bias, I’m reminded of this daily. But this has reached scary proportions now. Well, it’s always been scary, now it’s threatening. The media in the United States do not inform, they entertain and lull. It is Brave New World all over again, with a little 1984 thrown in. The U.S. media, actually, piss me off more than W. himself. Because W. has from the beginning played with a completely open deck, doing nothing more than faithfully serving his clientele – transferring the federal government’s $20 billion or so surplus to the military industrial complex via the bombing of Afghanistan, and installing a government there that will comply with the oil industry’s desire to build a pipeline through the country, which the Taliban opposed. I wish I could say there was some secret Bush conspiracy, but it’s no secret. The man is alleged to have pulled strings during the Vietnam War to avoid active service and eventually gone AWOL from the Texas National Guard for the last 2 years of his service; he’s alleged to have violated securities laws four times, abused drugs and what else? And what do the media say? Nothing. Why aren’t they asking him about this? Why is there no dissent in the mass media? Why are only bloggers dissenting?

Happy Independence Day, United States.