Question catch-up

[vilakins]

It's been a while since I answered some of these, and it's only some I'm answering.

Would you rather lose the ability to read or the ability to speak?
Definitely speak. It would be a pain and very difficult to cope with, but I couldn't give up reading.

Would you rather have all illicit drugs or duelling between consenting adults be legalised?
Since it's "all illicit drugs" - for example I'd legalise marijuana but not meth - I'll pick duelling, but there would be rules. The only permitted duels would be, supervised by licensed referees:
- Paint balls at 20 paces
- Verbal sparring / debate
- Fencing with rubber epees scored by touches

Which film would be greatly improved if made into a musical?
None of them? I've never been crazy about musicals because people suddenly dropping everything and singing totally throws me out of a story, the most recent being Encanto which I otherwise loved. Exceptions are the Rocky Horror Show because that's bizarre enough to carry it off, and anything like Glee which actually includes singing as part of the plot.

What social stigma does society need to get over?
Judging people by their appearance, especially size.

Where do you get most of your news?
Mostly via Facebook friends, Greg telling me about the more interesting, but not depressing or infuriating, stuff, and, rarely, actual TV news as now with the Tongan volcanic eruption.
Re that, this town has a large Tongan population so it's very immediate, and this country has a close connection with Tonga. We're sending air and sea support, and I assume there will be collection points in town for donations.

Comments

[julesjones]

Having lost the ability to speak for over a year, and the ability to read for a different year, I found that it's a fairly close match. Having expressive dysphasia was... not fun.

[vilakins]

Yikes! How awful! Did it affect your writing?

I'm not good at expressing myself orally but am very good in writing, so I probably don't feel as attached to speech.

[julesjones]

Writing by hand was generally okay, although with the occasional loss of a word or wrong word. Typing was mostly okay as long as I didn't go too fast, but I had a lot more dropouts, mixed up words, and typos. Speech recognition software was about the same as typing, with the benefit that the software does the spelling. Speech was struggling to say anything at all. I spent a lot of time communicating with my colleagues in writing and waving my hands around. Fortunately the ones who knew me well were fairly good at interpreting what I was trying to say when I didn't have a pen to hand.

I've always had slight dysphasia as part of my normal migraine aura, which was the source of mild amusement at work until the day it wasn't any more. My migraine flipped from a mild one every few weeks to so severe I was off work for three months, and migraine continuously for a year and half before medication finally managed to get it down to the point where I had the occasional few hours with only aura and not full-on pain and nausea. I wrote half a novel with a fountain pen during those three months, since that and reading paper books were the only things I could do.

[vilakins]

I am in absolute awe of you. I used to have 3-day migraines and thought that was bad enough.