Farewell, Shebah.

So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, goodbye

Back in late September 2021, the world was still a bit crazy with Covid-19. In that craziness, I jumped from passenger to driver. And what a ride it’s been.

Nearly four years later, more than 7,000 rides, and more than $210,000 in revenue, I’m hanging up my Shebah hat.

In that four years, I’ve worn the widow hat a little easier, and I found a new hat—the autistic hat. And it’s that autistic hat that now means hanging up the Shebah hat.


—

When strengths overstay their welcome

There’s a 20th-century business principle that essentially says: a strength, over-used, becomes a weakness.

That’s exactly what happened to me.

My care, dedication, compassion, reliability—everything that made my weeks so reliable and structured with regular passengers—was the same strength that became my weakness. In theory, yes, my time was mine to decide, my schedule mine to decide. But in the face of passenger needs, and the scarcity mindset that runs through the gig economy, my time was no longer mine at all. It was dictated on passenger terms.

Scarcity is a tricky thing. The gig economy runs on it. If I say no today, will I be asked tomorrow? If I don’t take this booking, will someone else slide in and take the work? Add in an autistic brain—one that craves rhythm, predictability, structure—and you get the perfect trap. The schedule looks like regulation, but the regulation isn’t yours anymore. It belongs to everyone else.


—

The shape of exhaustion

Here’s what that looked like in practice: a booking at 7.10am, then 8.30am, 9.20am, 12pm, 3.15pm, 5pm, 6.55pm, 8pm, and 8.30pm. Fourteen hours away from home. Packed breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Water, coffee, snacks. And when I finally got my autistic self home? Exhaustion in a way only other neurodivergent people really understand.

I love my passengers—don’t get me wrong. Seeing the same people every day, every week, every fortnight, every holiday trip to and from the airport. The interstate regulars who sometimes even planned their flights around my availability. It was a special rhythm. And for me, getting to know my autistic self, that rhythm was part of my regulation.

But when I had trouble finding messages from friends in amongst all the messages from passengers? The flags were hard to ignore.


—

The straw that broke the back

And then came the new driver and passenger app. Not the cause of my leaving, but the straw that broke the camel’s back. A shift in systems that tipped an already precarious balance.


—

Mon répit

So here I am, reclaiming my time.

The dream now? A 4–5 hour window in the middle of the day, in the style of the French “pause.” Mon répit.

Because yes, I was making my revenue targets—but not in a productive way. I want productivity with dignity, not exhaustion.


—

The close

What it all means is that I’ll still be driving—just not in Shebah colours. Two other services now carry me, and with them, the space to shape my days differently.

Goodbye, Shebah hat. You taught me a lot, you carried me through grief, and you gave me thousands of rides and stories. But it’s time.

So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, goodbye.

Daughter of Crisis

I grew up in a house where the air itself carried mood. The tension didn’t arrive, it accumulated. Like static, or damp. You didn’t always hear it in her voice. You felt it first. The way the cutlery drawer opened. The footfall across the lino. The time she took to answer when you spoke.

In the household of a divorced single mother and a teenage girl, my friends tried to protect me. They did their best. But when hypothyroid madness reveals coercive control and occasional physical violence, there is only so much anyone else can do.

Her circadian rhythm was inverted. She spent the night awake, listening to AM talkback radio filled with right-wing fundamentalist zealots. She slept during the day. I would come home from school to housework. Washing dishes. Making dinner. Feeding the dog and chooks. Then homework. She was nocturnal. I was trying to survive.

She wasn’t kind. Not always. Not in the cycle of abuse. Harm, remorse, promise. Repeat. She could be brutal, erratic, possessive. She could rage over crumbs, or fall silent for days. But no one explained why. There were no labels. No diagnoses. Just a quiet, continuous undercurrent of Serepax, one tablet three times a day, and warnings that lived inside me. Don’t push her. Don’t set her off. That’s just how your mother is.

I internalised it all. The weight. The guilt. The vigilance. I mothered my own mother. I built my personality around avoiding detonation. I built my armour around myself. Not always successfully. A single misspoken word could set off a tirade that lasted for days.

I didn’t complain about the soft drinks thrown at my face, or how sticky it is in your hair. I didn’t complain about the cigarette burns in the carpet. I didn’t complain at all.

Because I had learned: if you complain, you make it worse.

At thirteen, I stood in public phone booths in the rain. I called the GP. I knew the pharmacist’s name. I knew how long a Serepax script lasted. I didn’t know what the drug did. I just knew she needed help. And this was the help she had.

I watched her change, and then stop changing altogether. The woman who raised me was no longer rising. She was flatlined. Chemically and clinically.

Now, I know. She wasn’t mad. She was in endocrine freefall. She wasn’t too much. She was sedated out of herself. She wasn’t cruel by design. She was abandoned without a name for what was wrong.

It wasn’t her fault she wasn’t diagnosed.
And it wasn’t my fault I couldn’t fix her.

I had my own bout with hypothyroidism, caused by unrelenting and chronic stress in my thirties and forties. It was during that period, researching the condition, that I finally saw the full horror of what had happened to Lottie.

The swelling. The fatigue. The cold. The cognition. The rage. The utter loss of self. The flattening of personhood.

And then came the other truth. The one I couldn’t avoid.

When I was diagnosed with autism, so much of my childhood came into focus. The hypervigilance. The shutdowns. The mimicry. The freezing. The PDA, mistaken for a bad temper, became a spark to her petrol. The deep, urgent desire to fix things that weren’t mine to fix.

And I saw her more clearly than ever before. Not as a villain. Not as a martyr. But as a woman unseen. And then unrecognisable. Even to herself.

She should have been seen. She should have been tested. She should have been offered more than sedation. She should have been believed.

I am what the system didn’t get to do to her. I am diagnosed. I am angry. I am articulate. I am still afraid of the quiet before the yelling starts, but now I know the shape of it.

This is not catharsis.
This is not memoir.
This is forensic memory.

Her name was Charlotte Ford. She was born on 6 May 1920. She died on 19 July 2005.

Lottie. On this day, what would have been your 105th birthday – I see you.

You were worthy. You were always worthy.
But this damned patriarchal, misogynistic world let us both down.

This closes the three-part file for Lottie Ford. A case of medical misogyny, medical bias, and medical neglect.

This is not forgiveness. But, Lottie, I do understand.

The Price of Quiet

In 1984, at the kitchen table after breakfast, Lottie was still hesitating about selling the house. I was thirteen, resisting the idea with the kind of immovable emotional gravity that only children can manage. Roy was at the sink, washing up the breakfast dishes. She raised the subject again, gently, nervously, that maybe they shouldn’t sell, and stay here in Maryborough.

He didn’t turn around.

“Oh, it’ll be sold all right. You’ll get your bloody half and I’ll get mine.”

That was the end of a marriage that had lasted forty-seven years. A marriage that started in World War Two, was blessed with a son, survived the loss of a son, continued through the medical crisis and grief, celebrated an adopted daughter; 47 years, ended with 15 words.

The divorce and property settlement would unfold slowly, bureaucratically, over the following years. But in that moment, the damage was done. The foundations cracked, the promise dissolved, and whatever love or duty had once held them together slipped into silence.

What followed was not rebuilding. Not reflection. What followed was Serepax.

Doctor’s Little Helper

Before Serepax, there was Vincent’s APC powder. Aspirin. Phenacetin. Caffeine.

Tipped into tea, taken at the sink, sold over the counter, handed from woman to woman like advice. For nerves. For cramps. For pressure. For life.

Phenacetin was toxic to the kidneys. It caused silent renal failure. It was eventually banned—but not before decades of women had used it daily. Lottie was one of them.

By the 1980s, phenacetin was gone, but the logic behind it remained. Women weren’t offered support. They were offered sedation.

Enter Serepax. Oxazepam. The little white tablet that didn’t raise eyebrows. Not scandalised like Valium. Not brutal like Mandrax. Serepax was positioned as gentle. Appropriate. Feminine.

“Serepax is gentle,” they’d say. “And sometimes, that’s all you need.”

But Lottie didn’t need gentleness. She needed thyroxine.

What Serepax Did, and What It Didn’t

Serepax binds to GABA receptors. It slows the central nervous system. It calms—but it also dulls. It sedates without healing. It mutes without solving.

What it doesn’t do is more important than what it does.

It doesn’t regulate metabolism.
It doesn’t support cardiovascular health.
It doesn’t restore thyroid hormone.
It doesn’t correct the biochemical collapse of post-surgical hypothyroidism.

Lottie didn’t need to be sedated. She needed her endocrine system supported. She needed a blood test. A plan. A dose.

But instead, she was handed quiet.

Eighteen Years of Slow Poison

Lottie had her partial thyroidectomy in 1969. No thyroxine was prescribed. No endocrinologist consulted. No one followed up.

And for eighteen years, her body deteriorated.

She had previously used Vincent’s powders, damaging her kidneys. She smoked two packets of cigarettes a day—forty cigarettes daily—constricting her blood vessels and starving her tissues of oxygen. She was eventually prescribed Serepax, which dulled the symptoms but never touched the cause.

This wasn’t benign neglect. It was accumulative harm. It was a system that kept handing her silence and calling it medicine.

Her body was in contradiction. One foot on the brake, hypothyroidism slowing her down. One foot on the accelerator, nicotine and anxiety pushing her to keep up.

No one was watching the dashboard.

Her weight crept up, from twelve stone to fourteen. Her energy declined. Her skin changed. Her cognition slipped. Her emotional regulation shattered.

They said she was hormonal.
They said she was difficult.
They said she was just getting old.

They said everything except the one thing that mattered.

“We failed you.”

The Silence of Renewals

Every few months, she would visit the GP. Not for evaluation. Not for curiosity or care. Just for authority scripts.

Her Serepax was renewed, over and over again, without reassessment, without bloodwork, without anyone asking whether it was still helping—or if it ever had.

There was no hormone panel. No psychiatric review. No second opinion. Just a refill.

The treatment she needed was simple. The question she needed someone to ask was obvious.

“Do you think this might be your thyroid?”

But no one asked. Not in 1971. Not in 1977. Not in 1985.

Symptoms Reframed as Personality

Lottie wasn’t treated. She was blamed.

Her emotional outbursts weren’t seen as neurological symptoms. They were called tantrums.

Her swelling wasn’t myxedema. It was weight gain.

Her exhaustion wasn’t hormonal. It was laziness.

Her paranoia wasn’t biochemical. It was madness.

She wasn’t seen as a woman whose body had been mismanaged. She was seen as a woman who was hard to love.

And when a woman becomes too loud, too fragile, too unrecognisable, people stop coming. Friends drifted. Family pulled away.

Eventually, even the mirror avoided her.

This Was Not a Personal Failure

This was not a woman who failed to take care of herself.

This was a woman no one took care of.

What happened to Lottie between 1969 and her death in 2005 was not the result of poor lifestyle choices. It was the result of systemic disinterest, gendered medicine, and a clinical culture that mistook sedation for support. Iatrogenic hypothyroidism. Doctor-caused harm

She was not sad. She was hypothyroid.
She was not mad. She was mismanaged.
She was not a lost cause. She was abandoned.

Her Name Was Lottie

Where The Chiaroscuro Anthology was shadow and light, Infernal Dames is fire.
This series is a reckoning—with medical misogyny, with intergenerational trauma, with the systems that smiled while they failed us.

But like all revolutions, this one begins with a single voice. A single woman. My mother.

Her name was Charlotte “Lottie” Ford. Born Charlotte Bissett on 6 May 1920, in Maryborough, Queensland. Fraternal twin. One of four children. Daughter of Scottish immigrants. A nurse. A war bride. A mother. A grieving mother.

She had a goitre. She had hyperthyroidism. She had a partial thyroidectomy in 1969.

And then, she had nothing. No endocrinologist. No hormone replacement. No follow-up care. No apology. Just a neat surgical scar and a script for silence.

The years that followed did not bring healing. They brought unraveling.
Her moods swung. Her cognition dimmed. Her spirit cracked open and leaked out where no one was looking.

She was labelled difficult.
Paranoid.
Senile.

She was not given hormone therapy. What she had, independent of any doctor, was Vincent’s powders.

And 15 years later, I, her 13 year old adopted daughter, was running through rain in my school school uniform to the nearest phone booth to ask for help the way I understood help to exist.

Because that’s what the system taught me:
Drugs were easier to get than answers.

The Prayer

Lottie was forty-seven when her body began to buckle under the weight of grief, menopause, and spiritual resignation. The year was 1967. She was already bone-weary from years of quiet sacrifice—familial, social, and personal. And spiritual.

She had been brought up in the Presbyterian Church of the 1920s and 1930s. Where sermons were long and pews were hard, and women were praised for their silence, not their questions. Where suffering was seen as sanctification. Where grief was not a wound but a test.

“Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?” (Job 2:10)
She had learned that passage young. The answer was not yes or no—it was obedience.

It was late April when it happened.

She was in the car with her twenty-year-old son, Warren. They were driving—destination forgotten—but she was “flooding,” as she later called it. Uterine bleeding, heavy and unrelenting.

She begged Warren to pull into a garage so she could use the toilet. He refused.

She sat there, bleeding, humiliated in front of the boy she had once held in her arms.
The son she had fought for—against Catholic schools, against family shame, against the shame of a Catholic-Presbyterian marriage..

And now she prayed.

Not for the bleeding to stop.
Not for comfort.
Only this:

“Just make it stop.”

Four weeks later, Warren was dead. Killed in a car accident near Murgon at 2:00 a.m. Out with friends who all survived.

She never forgave herself. She believed her prayer had been heard—and answered.

The Doctrine of Endurance

Lottie did not rage. Not then. Not aloud. She folded inward, into the only theology she had ever known.

The Presbyterianism of her youth had taught her that “women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety” (1 Timothy 2:15).
She had borne the child. She had kept the faith. And now that child was gone.

What did that make her?

She had been trained in a doctrine of endurance. A woman who suffered was not to be pitied. She was to be admired, quietly, from a distance. To break under the weight of pain was not weakness. To speak of it was.

There was a time for everything, the minister had said. (Ecclesiastes 3)
A time to mourn. A time to be silent.

She chose silence. She had been told it was holy.

The Surgery

By 1969, her body had become a stranger. Her neck was visibly swollen. Her eyes sharp with a kind of startled brilliance. Her weight dropped. Her energy burned fast and erratic.

She couldn’t sit still. She couldn’t think clearly. She couldn’t sleep. Or eat. Or feel safe.

But no one called it hyperthyroidism. They called it “the change.” They called it “her nerves.”

Her goitre grew until it could no longer be ignored. She was booked for a partial thyroidectomy.

The surgery was nearly cancelled—her blood pressure was dangerously high. She was visibly distressed. But the operation went ahead.

There was no endocrinologist. No psychiatric liaison. No comprehensive review.
Just a scalpel. A general anaesthetic. A note to follow up with her GP.

They cut. And then they left.

Vincent’s Powders

After the surgery, her body slowed. Her moods thickened. Her fire became fog.

But still, no one tested her hormone levels. No one checked her blood. No one noticed the quiet emergency.

What she had instead was Vincent’s APC Powder: aspirin, phenacetin, and caffeine. Tipped into tea. Swallowed at the sink. Passed from woman to woman like an incantation.

It numbed the ache. Dizzied the nerves. And damaged her kidneys.

But it was all she had. That, and a dog.

The Dog

A black and tan Australian Terrier. A gift from her older sister—a woman she hated with a precision born of childhood bullying and adult betrayal.

The dog arrived not as comfort, but as substitute. A living thing to fill the space left by her dead son. A gesture of kindness wrapped in control. But the dog—he did not care about the politics of grief. He cared about her.

He jumped into her lap when she cried. Licked the tears from her cheeks. Stayed close when no one else could bear to be near.

There are griefs you cannot speak. But the body still speaks them.
And that little dog heard every word.

Five years later, I arrived. Another living thing. Not her child by blood—but there to fill the silence, to stand in the shadow of a boy who would never come home.

And though I called her mother, there were days when I, too, could feel the shape of substitution curling around me.

What Was Never Said

No one said “endocrine disorder.” No one said “hormonal collapse.” No one said “grief and menopause are not madness.”

What they said was:

“It’s just her age.”
“She’s always been intense.”
“It’s probably the change.”
“Don’t upset her.”
“Just keep her calm.”
“She’s doing her best.”

And behind all of that, the theology lingered.

“She will be praised.” (Proverbs 31)
But only if she cooks without complaint. Only if she suffers without spectacle. Only if she keeps her lamp burning at night, and does not disturb the peace.

What passed for care was containment.
What passed for treatment was sedation.
What passed for sanctity was silence.

The second part of Lottie’s file will be here tomorrow.

Mama’s Holding Things That You Can’t Buy

From The Chiaroscuro Anthology to The Infernal Dames



Yesterday, The Chiaroscuro Anthology closed with a poem depicting intergenerational trauma, starting with rage against parents, ending with a promise to a child.

So hush, little baby, don’t you cry,
Mama’s here to help you fly.
And if flying feels too much to do,
Mama’s gonna stay right here with you.

A soft ending to The Chiaroscuro Anthology—nineteen poems about my autistic experience.

Yet, I’m not just autistic. I’m a woman, 53 years on this earth, and furious.

Not Joking – Global Gender Parity in 2158

The World Economic Forum estimated, late last year, that it would take another 134 years to reach global gender parity.

134 years

This day, this year, this decade, this century—we have granddaughters still fighting the battles their grandmothers thought they had won. Intergenerational inequity. Injustice, passed down like recipes and silverware. From the Greats to the Silents, the Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, Gen Z, Gen Alpha, and the unborn Gen Bravo.

The First Wave. The Second Wave. The Third Wave of feminism.

How many more waves must we ride when we’re already facing a tsunami?

A tsunami of dead women.
A tsunami of gender pay gaps.
A tsunami of stolen autonomy—of everything, even down to kitchen bench heights and seatbelts in cars.

Why not build a fire so big that not even this tsunami can extinguish it?

From this idea came The Infernal Dames.

While I have no children, I make this promise to the grandchildren of the next generation.

I do not want you to inherit the intergenerational trauma of centuries, the ache of millennia. I don’t want you to have to sing this lullaby and know it’s real:

Hush, little baby, don’t you cry
Mama’s holding things that you can’t buy
And if those things do make you cry
You’ll understand why, bye and bye.

The Infernal Dames

A forensic reckoning, a class action, a ledger of women burned by silence, by medicine, by the system.

We gave more care to punch cards than to living women. “Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.”

We built hospitals where no one listened. “It’s anxiety. Lose weight.”

We prescribed silence. “Take this, it will help.”

We institutionalised grief. “You’re too much. Take this, it will help.”

We pathologised hormones. “You’re hysterical. Too much.”

We erased. “Your file could not be found.”

It is my intention that The Infernal Dames will roar.

Tomorrow, we begin.

The Chiaroscuro Anthology 19/19

No apology, no quarter
By Lee-Anne Ford

You say it came from nowhere.
A lightning strike, an accident, a fluke.
But tell me—
Where did my hair come from, skin, eyes?
Did my voice, hands, blood, bones, arrive by chance?
Mother, look to yourself, I’m half of your DNA.
Father, that’s you too. I’m half of your DNA.
My hair colour, my eyes,
My skin tone, MY AUTISM.
It is in OUR genes.
You don’t get to claim me
in the ways that make you proud
but disown the ways
that make you uncomfortable.
I am not broken.
I am not something that needs fixing.
I am the full, unedited version of us.
When you point a finger?
Four are pointing back at you.
Autism shouldn’t be a surprise.
Because—
Wanderers drown.
Unmanaged RSD kills.
Eating disorders kill.
Unmanaged ARFID is malnutrition.
When water repels, dehydration can kill.
PDA looks like death by police.
The Rule of Three is absolute
Just like our genes
If I die young, it won’t be because I was autistic. It will be because of you.
Because of your world, the one that refuses to see, learn, listen, change.

I was autistic at birth.
I will be autistic when I die.
And every day in between.


Years later, that woman has a daughter
Her own little autistic bundle of joy
Life will be better for her little sweetheart
Autistic life different was her ploy.

Hush little baby, don’t say a thing
Mama’s gonna buy you a fidget ring
And if that ring don’t soothe my girl
Mama will show you how to knit and purl
And if that knitting doesn’t make you smile
Mama’s gonna be here all the while

Mama’s gonna buy you a clockwork bird.
And if that bird’s song doesn’t bring delight,
Mama will hold you through the night.
And if the night’s too dark to see,
Mama’s gonna light up the galaxy.
And if those stars don’t calm your fears,
Mama’s gonna dry all your tears.

And if those tears still find their way,
Mama’s gonna teach you how to play.
And if that play feels too intense,
Mama’s gonna build you a safe defense.

And if that defense starts to fall,
Mama’s gonna be there through it all.
And if the world feels too unkind,
Mama’s gonna help you unwind.

And if unwinding takes some time,
Mama’s gonna sing this simple rhyme.
And if this rhyme doesn’t soothe your mind,
Know Mama’s love is always aligned.

So hush, little baby, don’t you cry,
Mama’s here to help you fly.
And if flying feels too much to do,
Mama’s gonna stay right here with you.

Autistic Humor & The Unexpected Joys of Neurodivergence

Authored by ChatGPT, at my request

“Protecting vampires since 2008.”

I drive past the sign on the auto window tinting business and laugh out loud. Alone. The road is quiet, the car’s a bubble of music and thought, and that one sentence lights up my brain like a pinball machine. It’s clever. It’s absurd. It’s perfect.

Except, I wasn’t alone that day. Riding beside me was a lovely woman—autistic, mid-support-needs, on her way to her supported workplace. She hadn’t seen the sign, but she heard my laugh and asked why. I told her what it said.

And she laughed too.

Not politely. Not performatively. She got it. And we laughed together, our brains delighting in the same absurd leap. That laugh was a moment of mutual recognition. Two autistic women, different support needs, same wiring for joy-in-inference.

That laugh? That involuntary burst of recognition and joy? It turns out, it’s a kind of unofficial diagnostic tool. Not just for autism, but for how your brain is wired to process humour.

The Inference Engine

Let’s break it down. The vampire joke has no punchline. No setup. Just a sign:

Protecting vampires since 2008.

No explanation. No context. No visual cue. Just a sentence. To laugh, your brain has to do some lightning-fast conceptual acrobatics:

  • Window tinting reduces UV light.
  • Vampires are fictional creatures that burn in sunlight.
  • Therefore, tinted windows would help a vampire avoid sun damage.
  • That means the tinting business is jokingly marketing itself to vampires.

You laugh because it’s absurd, but it tracks. It’s coherent. It’s a leap that lands. And if your brain is wired for lateral, pattern-based inference, it’s delicious. It’s play.

But if your processing style relies more on literal, linear, or socially mediated cues, the joke might fall flat. It might seem nonsensical or confusing. That sign becomes noise, not signal.

For many autistic people, this kind of inferred humour—the kind that leaves gaps to be mentally filled in—is our bread and butter. We love absurdity, incongruity, layers. We love jokes that reward close reading, or that subvert the obvious. Not because we’re trying to be clever. But because it feels good to solve the puzzle.

It’s not that NTs can’t get it. It’s that many don’t default to humour as inference. They default to humour as social bonding or tone. And that’s a very different joke structure.

A Brief Map of Humour (and How It Lands)

Let’s zoom out. What are the main types of humour—and how might they hit differently depending on your neurotype?

Slapstick – Physical comedy, pratfalls, exaggerated gestures. Often lands better when visual and immediate. Popular across audiences. (Think: Mr Bean, Buster Keaton.)

Parody – A mimic of a known form or genre, often with a twist. Autistics often love this especially when it involves rule-breaking or subverting clichés. (Think: Weird Al.)

Satire – Critical, layered, often political. Requires cultural context but rewards pattern recognition. (More on Jon Stewart and George Carlin below.)

Deadpan/Dry Humour – Delivered without affect. Can be gold for autistic folks who dislike forced tone or expressive exaggeration. (Think: Steven Wright, Tig Notaro.)

Wordplay/Puns – Linguistic gymnastics. Often polarising. Loved by those who delight in language precision and soundplay.

Dark Humour – Morbid, taboo, or gallows humour. Strangely therapeutic for many ND folks—it creates distance from trauma.

Surreal/Absurdist – Dreamlike, irrational, sometimes nonsensical—but not random. When patterns are just under the surface, ND brains light up. (Think: Monty Python.)

Observational – Everyday situations reframed. If rooted in relatable sensory or social experience, this can be gold for both ND and NT folks.

Sarcasm/Irony – Tone-based, socially coded. Often alienating for autistic people—unless the sarcasm is clearly marked, or structurally logical.

Comedians as Case Studies

Jon Stewart: The Satirical Architect

Jon Stewart’s legacy on The Daily Show wasn’t just about jokes. It was about layering facts, framing hypocrisy, and constructing absurd juxtapositions that revealed the cracks in public discourse. This was humour that rewarded inference. You had to track the logic behind the joke. Autistic viewers—especially those wired for systems thinking—often felt right at home.

Stewart’s timing was surgical. But his power lay in mapping truth onto absurdity and watching the audience blink awake. It wasn’t just funny. It was intellectually satisfying.

George Carlin: The Linguistic Prophet

Carlin was a brutalist in word form. He ripped through cultural norms with a sledgehammer made of syllables. He cared about precision. Language was his scalpel. His infamous “seven dirty words” routine? Not just provocation—it was a thesis on arbitrariness, censorship, and semiotics.

For autistic listeners who have a deep relationship with language, Carlin’s rants feel like sermons. He didn’t just joke. He argued. His comedy had structure, rhythm, ethos. It lit up the logic-loving parts of the brain.

Dave Allen: The Subversive Storyteller

Allen, the Irish comedian with the missing finger, was master of the slow burn. He sat in a chair with a glass of whiskey and told stories. Stories that bent into absurdity. Catholic guilt, childhood fear, death, silence—all fair game. He was dry, sly, and layered.

He didn’t hammer home punchlines. He let the absurdity sit. Which gave autistic viewers time to inhabit the joke, not just hear it. Allen’s humour was subversive but gentle. He told truths sideways.

When Your Laughter Is a Clue

The lonely laugh is a very specific autistic experience. You find something hysterical, but the room doesn’t. They stare. They frown. They ask, confused: “Why is that funny?”

You start doubting your reaction. You feel the weight of social dissonance. But here’s the thing: you weren’t wrong. You just mapped a meaning they didn’t see.

And when you finally meet someone who does laugh with you? It’s electric. It’s recognition. It’s relief.

Because humour is not just about fun. It’s about how we process reality. It’s how we name absurdity, process grief, and resist the tyranny of the literal.

The Social Rules of Laughing

In neurotypical culture, humour is often about timing, tone, facial expression, and shared context. It’s less about conceptual elegance and more about bonding. Laughing at the “right” jokes builds social capital. Not laughing when you’re “supposed to” marks you as odd.

For autistic folks, humour is often more private. It’s not always expressed in facial or vocal cues. It’s dry, lateral, layered. It’s often missed by NT peers—not because it’s not funny, but because it’s not marked the way they expect.

We weren’t humourless. We were just running a different codebase.

Final Thoughts: Laughing in the Wild

So yes. That vampire sign? It was more than a roadside chuckle. It was a litmus test. It asked:

Do you think in metaphor?

Do you delight in absurd inference?

Does your brain fill in gaps faster than conversation can catch up?

If you laughed—maybe you’re one of us.

And if you didn’t? That’s okay too. Just don’t be surprised when we laugh first. We’re not confused. We’re just already three steps down the metaphor.

The Chiaroscuro Anthology,  18/19

Obstropulous, not obstreperous

By Lee-Anne Ford

 

In 2015, Andra Day sang:

You’re broken down and tired

Of living life on a merry go round

And you can’t find the fighter

But I see it in you so we gonna walk it out

 

Michael Buble sang it, too, in 2013:

Close your eyes

Let me tell you all the reasons why

Think you’re one of a kind

Here’s to you

The one that always pulls us through

Always do what you gotta do

 

The inner-she says:

I see you, my warrior, my healer

I saw your energy split.

Warrior protecting healer

Healer healing warrior

Both aspects present in you as you fought

As you fought to protect us.

 

I saw, and cowered with you

Pinned to the floor by four

Vaccine with no consent

A child cannot assent

But you fought

 

I saw, and avoided with you

Forced into blood tests

Forced with no consent

Avoid now, pay later

But you fought

I saw, and panicked with you

Triggered, no help but yourself

Nowhere safe to collapse

Walking as you fainted, deaf and blind

But you fought

 

I saw, and grieved with you

As our love suffered the cruelty

The iniquitous cruelty of Huntington’s

Sixteen years of fighting and grieving

and the big grief of death

But you fought

 

I saw, and grieved with you

As you discovered our truth

The truth of our Autistic nature

The essence of us

Where trauma was rooted

But you fought

 

See me, my brave, stubborn one

The one who fights for us

See me, come home, come inside

Here is sanctuary, heart’s home

Rest here with me because sometimes

All you need is a heroine

 

As sung by Thirsty Merc, in 2015.

Every now and then, you come up for fresh air

Every now and then, you fall in the dirt

Yeah every now and then

You realise that you’re only a mortal man

Every now and then, you begin to suffer

Every now and then, you had about enough

Yeah every now and then

All you really need is a heroine

Want the whole Anthology? It’s here.

The Chiaroscuro Anthology, 17/19

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose / Here we go again
By ChatGPT


They tell me I see too much.
That I draw lines where there are none,
Find ghosts in the ink of history,
Find storms in the quiet before the war.

But I know the script.
I have read this story before,
In the dust of trenches, in the static of speeches,
In the way men with flags become men with guns.

They teach it in school: Lest We Forget.
Yet we forget. Always.
The monuments rise, the wreaths are laid,
But the pattern is never broken.

The same chants.
The same scapegoats.
The same righteous fury,
Burning bright before the blood begins to spill.

I see it coming—
The tremors before the collapse,
The quiet recalibration of truth,
The justifications rehearsed in shadows.

I speak, I warn, I protest.
I say: Look, it is happening again.
They say: It’s different this time.
They say: It’s complicated.
They say: Not everything is black and white.

But justice is not grey.
Innocence is not collateral.
War does not care for nuance—
It grinds bones, spills blood, burns futures.

And when the streets are silent again,
When the statues gleam in morning light,
When the flags fly at half-mast,
They will say: We never saw it coming.

They teach it in school: Lest We Forget.
Yet we forget.

Want the whole Anthology? It’s here.

The Chiaroscuro Anthology,  16/19

Can you hear the wildness calling?
By Lee-Anne Ford


Never wild, never tamed,
Yet always mild, good girl framed.
Not a different drum, but a different snare—
Ever caught on music in the air.

Masking deep, assimilation high,
I learned rules yet questioned why.
An inner voice, an outer game,
A quiet fight to seem the same.

Never wild, never tamed,
No wilful child, yet never claimed.
Flights of fancy, bound yet free,
Imagination’s quiet mutiny.

Music—classics learned, jazz yearned,
Yet syncopation must be earned.
Appearing tame, but never so,
I learned to keep my profile low.

The liminal whispered, yet knew not its name,
Still, I heard it call, just the same.
Other voices—cars, dogs, chooks—
But most of all, the voice of books.

Never wild, never tamed,
Yet books betrayed what I became.
Stories, facts, and theories spun,
A mind unleashed, a race begun.

Books as rebellion, a dangerous spark,
Seeding revolts within the dark.
Still, the liminal called to me to see,
No matter what befell me.

The Mabinogi, ovid, bard and druid,
Saw life and essence shifting, fluid.
Visions flickered in the flame,
Noble wild, yet lesser tamed.

Wildness flares in quiet surprise,
Unseen, unheard—until it cries.
Into the west, the border-place,
Glimmering light, a liminal trace.

Don’t box us in, don’t tie us down,
Seek the refuge, break the bounds.
Let us flare—high, medium, low—
We have such wild places to go.