October 23 Disabilities Awareness Item

Paraphrasing a trailer Quaker Tweeter Friend tweeted awhile ago about the forthcoming Muppet movie, this rant rated for APPROPRIATE audiences.



Hi Friends,

Today’s posting is devoted to the Muppets in honor of Muppet Fan Neighbor. I expect there is some Meeting-related point in here, but I have not stumbled over it yet and am open to suggestions.

Muppet Fan Neighbor is one of the regular “building community” customers at the Friendly Neighborhood Center for Extreme Computing, the computer lab in my building. “Building Community” works on the same principle as the woman I heard on the radio recently talking about what a great thing it would be if people spent dramatically more time in online games than they already do now. Muppet Fan is one of many customers who come to watch videos and hang with friends and neighbors and talk obsessively about some topic or another, in her case the Muppets.

Muppet Fan Neighbor earns her Nom de Blog by having an interest in the Muppets almost as obsessive as some guys I knew in college who could, in chorus recite every line of every Monty Python movie ever. Muppet fan Neighbor cannot quite do that about Muppet media, but her enthusiasm definitely puts my earnest fandom to shame.

To the delight of funders everywhere, Muppet Fan neighbor actually sometimes also tries to do many of the necessary activities moving online in our modern age. We know Muppet Fan Neighbor does this because she tends to forget steps needed to do it all herself and needs to ask for help. She cannot really read enough to be able to follow my directions and adding a screen reader would just increase brain overload for her. But through the wonders of teamwork there usually is someone around who can help her across her hurdles.

I also esteem Muppet Fan Neighbor for:
--an inspiring but somewhat worn lime-green reflective safety vest, knee-length to boot.

--this wonderful fold-out hat from somewhere in the International District. It’s not just a lovely broad-brimmed hat, it also doubles as a fan.

--sharing my irritation with strobe light fire alarms. I am glad, I guess, for regular reminders that our building’s fire alarm system works. Strobe lights are a very good thing for deaf people but Muppet Fan Neighbor and I have different reasons these alarms give us headaches.

Unlike me though, Muppet Fan Neighbor does not even get to blame her nearly hopeless inability to read social cues of the “Could we have maybe a little less of…” on vision loss.

I missed a meeting of modest consequence on Wednesday. I have been asking people what I missed and Friday it was Muppet Fan Neighbor’s turn. We were both at a multilingual training event about fire safety and disaster preparedness. As soon as I arrived I heard Muppet Fan Neighbor’s voice from across a large room. I had no idea where she was and needed to put things down but I nearly walked into her after I put things down. Someone had already briefed me about a couple subtle points but I needed to hear from Muppet Fan Neighbor what it was I was likely to be hearing about 100,000 times from Muppet Fan Neighbor and several other neighbors.

Alas. Not even Muppet Fan Neighbor absorbed whatever the news is about high quality nutrition in the vending machines. Still I was really, really glad Muppet Fan Neighbor was there. The information we needed to absorb is not that complex. It was important to get “everyone” in a room with interpreters to sort out misinformation connected with different cultures and histories AND we need people like Muppet Fan Neighbor who, HOPEFULLY can help repeat the key points a zillion times for everyone they meet so introverts like me can pay attention to what else might be needed.

Anyway, now edification written by other people:
Chatter about muppets with disabilities
http://www.muppetcentral.com/forum/threads/muppets-with-disabilities.1949/


Chatter by Muppet fans about their disabilities. Not much about Muppets even though it’s a Muppet forum.
http://www.muppetcentral.com/forum/threads/disability-corner.11568/


The MuppetWiki
http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Characters_with_disabilities


http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3941544,00.html


The word Muppet as slang, disability-themed and otherwise.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/mbouch/F2322273?thread=7268471

The urban dictionary search results about the same topic. WARNING: it’s urban dictionary. Even clicking on the Muppet link will generate vulgarities I would never knowingly have, say, my mother read without warning. The usage show to me reflects more UK usage than US. Other than that, the language ranges between irksome, derogatory, and downright vulgar. Who knew? How dare anyone do that to the Muppets?
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Muppet


In the Light

(RantWoman)