Julian Assange has No Soul!

Recently, photographer David Bailey commented that he would have difficulty photographing Julian Assange because "there's nothing in his eyes". I imagine that by this Mr. Bailey means to suggest that there is nothing behind his eyes: no soul, as it were.

My Comments: How clever. I wish Mr. Bailey were a writer, and not wasting his considerable talent in metaphor and subtlety of expression with this photography hobby of his.

In addition to recommending that he hang onto his day job, I have a few other comments for Mr Bailey. First, it would seem to me that a photographer who is unable to bring his subject to life lacks some of the skills that are essential to being a portrait photographer. I suppose that he's covered this off by placing the blame on Assange for being a subject with nothing to offer but empty eye sockets, but that seems a little too simple to me. Second, it may be the case that if the subject is not responsive enough, that the photographer has failed to inspire or charm the subject. If the subject is bored, it won't result in a good portrait. In other words, maybe he thinks you're a stupid twat, and maybe that's why he's looking right through you. Finally , of course there's something in his eyes. It's blinding brilliance. Bow to it if you recognize it, Otherwise, move along.

By way of comparison, let me offer an example of someone who really does have nothing in his eyes, save for the reflection of fish scales:

 
Note that people have actually taken on the challenge of making Lamo look human. The below is the best they could do:

When your only option is to have this fool look out the window and pretend that he's staring wistfully out at the clouds in order to hide the fact that he's mentally MIA, you're doing yourself and everybody else a great disservice.

Time for some cornea cleansing..

You're welcome.

Julian Assange is a Bad Houseguest!

By now, everyone has heard the sordid details of Julian's houseguestly transgressions. He (allegedly) eats all the available food in the place only to replace it (if he does replace it) with rotten fruit; he stays much longer than he's welcome to; he brings home all manner of stray women and has sex with them either in the next room, or on the same bed that the host/roommate is sleeping in (that is if he's not attempting to have sex with the host her/himself); he uses the host's computer and then wipes the hard drive blank; he's dirty, and he tortures pets.  I would link to the actual evidence of these allegations, but the recreated versions are much more entertaining, and quite true to the original accounts. You can view a fun animation here and an annoying re-enactment here. 

My response: Look you pigs - if you're going to have someone like Julian Assange stay at your house, maybe you should make sure that house has a guest room with an ensuite, and that you feed him some real food instead of shit like leberkäse and Ovaltine. I mean, liver cheese? Seriously? According to our friends at Wikipedia, "Most of the time it is served on a semmel (bread roll) while still hot and sometimes seasoned with mustard or pickled cucumbers" Well doesn't that sound delicious. I wonder what the fuck it tastes like when it's cold and not seasoned with these gourmet food items. 

I've learned from this, though. I think next week I'll have Stephen Hawking and Nelson Mandela over to my place, feed them some moldy bread and a can of refried beans and make them share a bedroom.. NOT!!! 

Come stay with me, Julian. I will set you up with 3 delicious squares a day, a plush bed piled high with layers and layer of down, a high-speed internet connection, and buckets of condoms (or not! *giggles*) 

Julian Assange has Become Un-sexy

The word on the web is that while Julian may have been considered hot a few months ago, his sex appeal has slid downhill into the negative zone (i.e. women are paying to not have sex with him) since the police reports related to his alleged sexy-time crimes have been released. The evidence, however, indicates that the opposite may in fact be true. We have it on good authority that our man continues to receive email offers of sex (from lazy bitches who won't get up from their computer screens to go over to Ellingham and throw their undies over the hedge - not judging, just sayin'), and now we have the release of a new and exciting video that makes the request that's been on the tip of fangirl tongues the world over. Watch and enjoy!

Julian Assange has Asperger's Syndrome

There's been a lot of speculation on the web about the possibility that Julian Assange may have Asperger's Syndrome. Aspects of his behaviour that support this "diagnosis" are (1) his reported social awkwardness and occasional ignorance of obvious social cues and (2) his obssession with computers, technology, justice, and crap like that.


My Assessment: As I've said in the past, I'm a social psychologist, not a developmental or a clinical one. That said, I at least have some idea of where to get information about psychological disorders. Let's look at the diagnostic criteria in the DSM IV This more narrative description of how someone with Asperger might behave  on is also quite good. Here are the DSM criteria:


A.Qualitative impairment in social interaction, as manifested by at least two of the following: 

(1) marked impairment in the use of multiple nonverbal behaviors such as eye-to-eye gaze, facial expression, body postures, and gestures to regulate social interaction 
(2) failure to develop peer relationships appropriate to developmental level 
(3) a lack of spontaneous seeking to share enjoyment, interests, or achievements with other people (e.g., by a lack of showing, bringing, or pointing out objects of interest to other people) 
(4) lack of social or emotional reciprocity 

B.Restricted repetitive and stereotyped patterns of behavior, interests, and activities, as manifested by at least one of the following: 

(1) encompassing preoccupation with one or more stereotyped and restricted patterns of interest that is abnormal either in intensity or focus 
(2) apparently inflexible adherence to specific, nonfunctional routines or rituals
(3) stereotyped and repetitive motor mannerisms (e.g., hand or finger flapping or twisting, or complex whole-body movements) 
(4) persistent preoccupation with parts of objects 

C.The disturbance causes clinically significant impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning. 

D.There is no clinically significant general delay in language (e.g., single words used by age 2 years, communicative phrases used by age 3 years). 

E.There is no clinically significant delay in cognitive development or in the development of age-appropriate self-help skills, adaptive behavior (other than in social interaction), and curiosity about the environment in childhood. 

F.Criteria are not met for another specific Pervasive Developmental Disorder or Schizophrenia 
. 
Other than the scraps he's had with some of his former editor-partners and DDB (who is a rodent and doesn't really count), and the fact that he seems like sort of a d-bag in bed, I see no evidence that Julian is unable to engage appropriately with people. He stays completely focused on the person talking with him, maintains steady eye contact, and responds in a normal manner, except for the content of those responses, which is almost impossibly brilliant. He directs people's attention to things in an appropriate manner, in fact that's a large part of his interactions with the media and members of the public. 


As to criterion (B) I haven't seen any reports of ritualistic, stereotyped behaviour. While he may have a preoccupation with computers, technology, and social justice, this is not the same thing as spending 12 hours a day making origami octopuses and ignoring everyone around you. 


Clearly criterion (C) is not met, and (D), (E), and (F) are exclusion criteria. 


A few people have commented that he has some sort of mild form of Asperger. I don't know if they know this, but the whole disorder is about to get booted from the DSM as a separate category, to be subsumed under Autism Spectrum Disorder, so saying that someone has a mild form of Asperger's is about to make even less sense than it originally did. 


So from now on, instead of saying that he has some mild form of a mild form of autism, maybe we can just conclude that he's a pretty introverted person and that you're distracting him from his interactions with his own incredible mind with your idiotic blather (I'm talking to you, Keller). In summary, sometimes it's Asperger's, and sometimes the person just can't fucking stand you.  

The Keller Files 1:3 Julian Assange is "Difficult"

As we read in Bill Keller's delicious piece of crime fiction, Julian Assange is all sorts of hard to deal with. He's got a bad temper that flares up with no apparent provocation, he's overly sensitive to criticism (I assume that's what "thin skinned" means, but I don't normally use lay terminology in a piece that's going to be published on paper), and he cares little for the welfare of others. Similar sentiments have been expressed by the British newspaper the DisreGuardian (copyright @TauxFu, 2011), with which Assange has also fallen out. Sounds like our boy may not know how to work and play well with others!!

My assessment:
     I have two areas of commentary about this. The first is that Julian seems to reserve these behaviours for his interactions with people and organizations he believes have betrayed him. Clearly he doesn't do this all the time - sometimes betrayal is met with nothing more than a dismissive response.  Given that betrayal involves little more than a few keystrokes or a quick visit to a police station in Sweden, it's surprising that there aren't more heads being kicked around by Julian's big boots. Ways to avoid being yelled out by Julian? Don't stab him in the back, don't tell the police that he can't get it up, and don't try to make money off of his hard work. Seems simple,yes?
     My second area of commentary pertains to how difficult it must be for Julian to deal with these people. I walk around most of the day with the word "IDIOT" sitting on the tip of my tongue. It's only with supreme self control that I can prevent this word from screaming out of my mouth like buckshot out of Sarah Palin's hunting rifle. Given that I don't have much inherent self control, you can imagine how much of a psychological strain this puts on me. So here is someone whose IQ is 30 points above mine at minimum. He spends most of his time suffering fools, and the rest of the time he's asleep. While he displays absolute calm, part of him must be dying to unleash a torrent of biting commentary that nobody else will understand. The reason he talks so slowly is probably because he constantly has to think about how he can dumb things down so that other people can make sense of it. I know that this makes me sound like a snobby bitch, but the truth is.. oh wait that is the truth. Anyway, let's be thankful that Julian is such a calm person overall, and is willing to share his thoughts and ideas with us. Thank you Julian. We love you!

The Keller Files 1:2 Julian Assange is a Stateless Person

Occasionally people try assert that Julian Assange is not only homeless, but stateless, like one of those people who lives in an airport because he can't enter the country in which the airport is located, and can't go back to where he came from .

Bill Keller's spy thriller stops short of actually calling Assange a stateless person (because Keller is big on facts, and that is obviously not a fact), instead referring to him as "an eccentric former computer hacker of Australian birth and no fixed residence", and describing him as a "bag lady" and a "derelict". The end result is the same - leaving the reader with the impression that Assange is a person with no home and no country.

But what could the point of this characterization be? Why spend so much time and sacrifice so many adjectives for the purpose of making certain that everyone understands that Julian Assange is a passport orphan??? 

hmmm... well... a great deal of Keller's piece of shit is about how not-Assangian Keller and his colleagues are, so maybe calling Assange "stateless" is intended to set up a contrast between a drifter who is unburdened by fealty to any state, and people who have a home that they love and are completely devoted to.

Keller, as it turns out, is Captain America as evidenced by the following:

• He spews the right rhetoric (" in Europe ...there is often a certain pleasure in seeing the last superpower taken down a peg"; "We live and work in a city that has been tragically marked as a favorite terrorist target, and in the wake of 9/11 our journalists plunged into the ruins to tell the story of what happened here" ),
• He parties with the right people (he gleefully relates story about a party given by Richard Holbrooke, the Obama administration’s special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan),
• He admires the approach taken by the Obama administration with respect to redacting the leaked documents, carefully detailing the cooperation between the NYT and the Obama administration in deciding what to release, and how best to ensure no one gets killed as a result of the leaks, all the while using language that evokes thoughts of a placid lake in the sunshine, the scent of baby powder, and music by John Tesh.  
• He outs Assange as anti-American, and makes it clear that he does not approve of such things.  

All this leaves me wondering if Keller may have leadership aspirations beyond the NYT, having , as men like to say "shot his load" at that job. Maybe he'd like a nice diplomatic post somewhere pretty. He does, after all, know how diplomacy "works" now. Or maybe his aspirations are higher, and more OVAL!!

In any case, Keller, just remember that while you're wrapping yourself in the flag, I can see right through it, and I see that your balls are shrinking, while my man Julian's grow ever larger.

The Keller Files 1:1 : Julian Assange is a Smelly Bag Lady!

By now, everyone is aware of Bill Keller's piece in NYT Magazine, and a few people have been able to stay awake all the way through it. It's long, and peppered with annoying rhetoric, all of which I will point out in the days to come, after I've had my teeth sharpened and I can get my hands on a new  supply of Red Bull.

For now, I just want to touch on the description of Julian Assange as a malodorous street person.

Let's take a moment to look at Julian Assange

Now let's imagine touching that lapel. It's the finest, lightest Italian wool - I can just feel it. I bet he smells of delicately scented moss with a hint of alderwood smoke. That is one fine, fine boy.

Later in the article, BK does discuss Assange's made-over look, saying that he now favors "fashionably skinny suits and ties". Kudos to Bill for being on top of trends in men's fashion,  but how does he do this with the pressures of his job, and having to spend countless days and sleepless nights dealing with the tempestuous and petulant Assange? Let's look at a picture of Bill for some clues.

My Assessment: Pret-a-porter, Bill? Really???  The article in question paints Assange as a difficult man-child who is riding the tide of his new-found fame onto a pedestal of Euro-cult worship, into the consciousness of the celebrity mind, and up women's vaginas. All of this may very well be true, but if and when he starts going to fashion shows, they WILL be couture.