I suck at posting.

I do. I really, really do.
I have the strangest attention span, which just adds to (or maybe just creates) my problems.
For some reason, I can't focus on something for more than like, a week. Unless it's the sims. I can play that shit for months and not get bored. That's probably some sort of fetish or something, or it means that I'm socially inept (which I am) or that I have a million kinds of mental issues (which I probably do).

ANYWAY.

I'll really like the idea of something for roughly a week or so. Maybe only a few days. Maybe a few weeks. But generally, it only lasts about a week.
Then something else will get my attention and POOF I completely forget about whatever it was that I was just doing.

Back in my days of nerdery (which I will probably post about some other time, because there were many days and there was one hell of a lot of nerdery, mostly in the form of fanfiction, which is still available on both fanfiction.net and quizilla.com if you're curious. Look up Guernica322 on both of 'em if you want to laugh at how I'm ridiculous), I would write stories about anime characters, or about dudes in bands that I thought were attractive, and I would get really into the stories for a little while and then just completely drop them and not update the stories for a month.
Then all my readers would get pissy and forget about me and then I'd post another chapter and be all "JAY KAY I'M STILL ALIVE HAHAHA" and then no one would read it because I suck.

This is the reason why I have a million different blogs going at this very moment.
I've got this one, tumblr, some other one that I only posted once on, another REALLY old one on blogspot, one on xanga, one on myspace, a few more on tumblr, and I guess you could count facebook notes as one too.
That's like 9. Holy shit.
And all of them are testiments to how I can't pay attention to something for very long.

I have no idea where I was going with this.

Um. Yeah.

I was going to talk about this homework assignment that I have to do tonight, but I'll make a different post for it, because I need a lot of room to complain about Pope Gregory VII and his buddy Henry IV the German King.
AKA I don't want to do my homework.

Wooowww this post was really oober lame. I'll try to be funnier next time.
I suck so bad, haha.

Raptors and Bomb-priests

My subconscious is oddly fucked up.
(note: I just typed Fuced and in my head I pronounced it Fewss-ed and it made me laugh. I feel like fuced should be a word of some kind. It sounds so wonderful. ANYWAY)
I'm not talking about like Jeffrey Dahmer fucked up. I don't kill and eat people (I broke that habit awhile back) or anything like that.
Its just that for whatever reason, whenever I dream, my brain decides to pull out all the stops and just let 'er rip, which often creates the most ridiculous dreams I've ever heard of.

One time, when I was in grade school, I dreamt that my friends Sarah, Kate and I got sent on a space mission, and we got into a giant spaceship which had a blue, fuzzy interior room which we shared with a big, purple, fuzzy dog. All of the blue, fuzzy furniture was nailed to the floor (so it wouldn't fly around when we took off or while we were in space) except for the one couch, which happened to fly into us and crush us as we were taking off. The couch somehow turned us into ants, a problem that was only remedied as we reentered earth's atmosphere. We went home, told our parents about our trip, and went to bed.

You may think this is the end of the dream, but you are wrong.

In my dream, we all woke up the next day and went on ANOTHER space mission, only this time we brought our parents, and everything on the inside of the ship was purple and fuzzy, with a blue fuzzy dog. The couch squished us all into ants again, but the dog fixed it so we turned back into people. Then the dog told us that we had been selected to start some sort of spaceship/space station, where we would travel around to different planets but still stay on our ship. We were given materials to expand the ship so we could all have our own rooms and a kitchen and everything, which we all built together.

At one point, we had to stop at a planet and drop the dog off. The aliens living on the planet insisted that we take some horses with us as we left, and we were all too flattered to notice the two fatal flaws in the gift.
One, we had no room for said horses to ride.
and Two, there was no gravity.
Problems, indeed.
So of course, because it was my dream and I wanted to be the hero, I offered to fix the problem by not only creating a gravity-device, but also I was going to attach some sort of place for us to ride our horses.
The gravity-device was no problem. Apparently I was a genius in my dream. Though not enough of a genius to solve the other problem so efficiently.
My brilliant dream-idea for where to ride the horses was to take an entire airplane runway and sew it to the side of the ship.

Yes, my friends, you read that correctly.
I dreamt that I sewed an asphalt runway to the outside of a metal spaceship using nothing but a plain old needle and thread.
Apparently I enjoy completely disregarding the rules of physics, as well as common sense.

Now, granted, we all have weird dreams. I'm sure you've all had a dream roughly that weird, maybe more, maybe less.
The weirdness of one dream isn't what makes my subconscious ridiculous.
What makes my subconscious ridiculous is the fact that I have dreams like that every. single. night. Usually, anyway. At least on the nights when I remember my dreams.
I'm not exaggerating. Every dream I have is completely and totally ridiculous.

Don't believe me?
Here's another example.

Last year I dreamt that my friend Marie and I were running away from these two priests who were chasing us because we had stolen some of their bombs that they had been hiding under the church. They chased us down this one street in my neighborhood, casting spells to try and stop us, except it wasn't working, because I think either Marie knew how to block them or we were just faster than them.

That's all I remember about that dream because I don't know where I have it written down. There are very few dreams I remember in full detail, I normally just remember scenes from the dreams, so while I dreamt about the bomb-priests a lot more and there was a more in-depth story to that dream, I simply can't remember it.
Take my word for it, it was ridiculous.

And finally...the grand finale...the single most epic dream I have ever had in my entire life...
I don't think you guys are prepared for this.
But I'm typing it anyway, just because I'm strangely proud of this dream. Its like a trophy. Like, if weird dreaming was an olympic sport, this would take the gold medal, and also probably a Nobel prize. The Nobel committee would be watching the dream olympics and be like HOLY CRAP, THAT GIRL NEEDS A PRIZE FOR BEING CRAZY IN AN AMUSING WAY!

Okay, so in my dream I was on a cruise ship with two of my friends, Hannah and Elise.
This is a rough version of what the ship was.
More like a chart than anything.

My friends and I were on the bottom level, with all the normal folk.
Level 2 was seriously just a GIANT ROOM with a GIANT POOL in the middle. This will become very important later.
And Level 3 was full of rich people, and there was only one door to get there from the lower decks, and you couldn't go into the rich people level unless you were one of them. It was very exclusive.

All of a sudden, these 3 giant Velociraptors come out of nowhere and just start killing and stabbing and maiming everyone, throwing people overboard, eating other people, and generally making a mess. Everyone ran into their rooms and barricaded the doors, so the raptors quickly grew bored and decided to see if anyone was on the second level, in the pool.

Elise, Hannah and I decide to follow them.

Before we go to the pool deck, we head up to the rich people party club deck and knock on the door. Kanye west enters, acting like he's all tough shit, and tells us to get the hell out because he's about to have a concert and we're not allowed in there, because the concert is for cool people only, and we're not cool.
"But Kanye, there are raptors on the ship!" I say, trying to reason with him.
"You're just trying to get in here to see my show! It's not working, get out!"
He then slams the door in our faces.

We then make our way down to the pool deck, where we see the raptors creeping around, looking for people to nom.
They were about to head up to the rich people deck when I stopped them, shouting some cliche line like "WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU'RE GOING?!"
Apparently whoever writes my dreams isn't very good at dialogue.

Thus ensues a fight to the death.

Before I move on, I should tell you that in real life, I am scrawny.
I am about 2 inches over 5 feet, and I am skinny as hell.
I have no muscles to speak of, except in my legs, and those muscles are really only good for doing ballet. Even though I dance, I am nowhere near coordinated enough to use the little muscle I have in a fight to the death.
Not to mention the fact that the raptors each had a good 600 pounds on me.
Is this a problem for my dream self?

Heck no!

I immediately destroy one of the raptors and toss its dead body into the pool.
Not only did I fight a raptor, I killed it with my bare hands and THEN lifted its massive body (also bare handed) and threw it in the pool.
Apparently my dream self likes to channel the Hulk.

The other two raptors are all "Woah, crazy lady, calm down, we don't want to hurt you guys. We're just really hungry."
It is then that I come up with a brilliant idea.
"Hey, why don't you guys go upstairs and wreck havok up there. Eat all the people you want. I tried to warn them and they wouldn't listen, so they deserve it. Just don't come down to the lower decks. Deal?"

The remaining raptors agree, and go upstairs, where they do indeed wreck havok and cause chaos and (hopefully) eat Kanye West.

And then I woke up.

So you see, sometimes I wish I had normal dreams.
But sleeping wouldn't be NEARLY as fun without raptors, bomb-priests, or the suspension of basic laws of physics.

Why I Should Never Read When I'm Tired (also known as Return of the Nazis)

I don't know if any of you have picked up on this, but my brain works rather retardedly.
It tends to overthink EVERYTHING whenever it possibly can, which causes me to have a highly overactive imagination. And while this imagination makes for some AWESOME dreams, and some really cool ideas for stories I could write, it also causes many problems for me.

The most common problem occurs when I read immediately before bed, or at any time when I'm really tired. And its only a really bad problem when I read scary books, such as almost anything by Stephen King.
What happens is I'll read and read and read, getting so caught up in the story that I stop hearing things and feeling things and paying attention to the clock, so then suddenly I'll snap out of my trance 2 hours later having to pee like a motherfucker, in some strange, horribly uncomfortable position that I wasn't in before. Because I get so intensely involved in the story, I sometimes forget that the story isn't real.
That only really happens when I'm super tired and on the edge of delirium, so please don't call in the authorities to haul me off in a white coat because I think fictional stories are real. I know they're not real. But when I'm tired, the logical side of my brain falls asleep first, so even though I KNOW certain things aren't real and can't happen, I can't seem to fully convince myself of this.
Once those lines of reality get blurred, I usually have a hard time falling asleep, because I'll convince myself that the terrifying thing in the book is actually real and is somehow in my room, waiting for me to fall asleep so it can cart me off into one of the various alternate dimensions that exist in Stephen King's books.

Note: this phenomenon isn't confined to books. If I see a movie that has any sort of scary thing in it, even if it isn't really a scary movie, I tend to fixate on that thing and am able to vivedly picture it in my room.

My brain takes shadows and the dark shapes of things in my room and transforms them into terrible, horrible monsters.
And because the rational side of my brain already pooped out, I'm left alone with these vague hallucinations, unable to convince myself that it's all in my head and thus unable to fall asleep, despite how devastatingly tired I am.

What does this have to do with Nazis?
Wait and see.
I just wanted to explain exactly how my brain works whenever I'm really tired and reading a book/thinking about a movie I saw earlier, so you will understand exactly how the following events could take place, even though I'm technically sane.

During my Freshman year of high school, we were asked to read the book Night by Elie Wiesel, which is based on Wiesel's experiences being a Jewish boy living in Germany during World War 2.
I have a really large problem with being forced to read books for school, because I enjoy reading at my own pace, and usually that's faster than everyone else, because I skim through books instead of focusing on every word (at least when its a book I'm enjoying I skim through it...if I don't like it, it takes me FOREVER to read a book). I always pick up on the main points that I'm supposed to pay attention to, or at least most of the time I do, I just read a lot faster than most of the other people in the class. So instead of reading everything when it's first assigned, I tend to put it off, convincing myself that since I read so fast, whatever amount of pages I read will take no time at all to read.
This is not always the case.
In fact, with required reading, it is more often NOT the case. But I also procrastinate like you would not believe, so I put stuff off even when I know it will take me longer to read than I think it will.

It was a weeknight. I had school the next day, and I had a quiz in English second period, meaning I had no time to read during the day, such as during lunch or anything.
The quiz wasn't on a huge amount of pages, but it was enough where I would be up late doing it.
Not only did I have a quiz, I had an assignment due 1st period for my Global Connections class, which also happened to be reading. I had to read the better part of a chapter and fill out a worksheet on it.
This chapter also happened to be about World War 2, with an emphasis on the treatment of Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals, etc.
I was enrolled in an interdisceplinary class, which combined English and Global Connections, so as I was reading certain books from certain time periods, I would also be learning about that time period in Global Connections.

At this time I also had a habit of being a rebel and wanting to do my homework at retarded hours of the night, hours when I should be sleeping.
I had to technically be in bed by 11 at the latest, or else my parents would be disapproving and not be happy with me and lecture me on how I should have had my homework done hours ago.
So I would "go to bed" around 10:30, get in bed, turn my lights off, and pretend to sleep until my Mom came in to kiss me goodnight before going to bed herself. I'm pretty sure she always went to bed after my Dad did, cause I knew that her coming and kissing me was my clue that they were going to bed. Meaning it was safe for me to get out of bed, turn my lights on, and finish my homework.

Now, I had had other homework to do that night too, and I left my English/Global Connections homework until last, because it was the easiest and I figured I could get it done the fastest.
It was about 1 AM at this point, and I was pretty damn tired. But I knew I had to get my homework done, so I got to work.
First I read the pages I had to read of Night. I skimmed quickly through it, not paying too much attention, because as long as I had a pretty good idea of what had happened in the reading I could make pretty good guesses on the quizzes, and I generally did pretty damn well.

It was at this point that I should have stopped. I really should have.
But I didn't, because I really liked my global connections teacher, and I really didn't want her to be disappointed with me because I hadn't finished my homework. So despite my body's numerous protests, I kept on trucking.

Somewhere in the middle of reading about the concentration camps, I passed the fuck out. But because I was in a terribly uncomfortable position, and because I knew I still had shit to do, I woke up a few minutes later horribly disoriented.
When I say disoriented, I don't mean that I was just mildly confused as to what I was doing on the floor with a book open in front of me.
I mean that I had no idea where the hell I was, what time it was, or who I was.

My brain instantly picked the worst situation it could possible come up with, and because my rationality had long been on vacation, I believed it almost instantly.

Clearly I was jewish and hiding from the nazis, and I had woken up because they were about to search the place where I was hiding. That was the only logical explanation for everything.

I quickly got up, turned off all my lights and began peering out through my blinds, watching for Nazis.
I saw an airplane pass over my house, and instead of realizing that since I live somewhat near O'Hare airport, airplanes should be common, I immediately assumed that it was a German airplane, and that the pilots could somehow see into my window and would thus tell their counterparts on the ground that I was in the house and then the Nazis would come and take me away.
I bolted away from the window and looked wildly around my room, trying to decide if I should hide under the bed or in my closet.
I think it was at this point that I grabbed my cell phone to turn the ringer off, and subsequently realized that I am fucking retarded.

I had believed that Nazis were coming to take me for a good 15 to 20 minutes.

Moral of the story: Don't read about World War 2 when you're extremely tired. You will wake up Jewish and on the run.

Tadpole Genocide: A Tale of my Brutal Past

This post is dedicated to Bree, who has commented twice on my posts and is therefore a big fucking deal, and since she wanted to hear about tadpole genocide, you ALL get to hear about tadpole genocide!
Hurray!

Also, I realized I skipped out on Mythology Monday because I posted my ridiculous cops story instead, so I'll either write a mythology post on Friday, or maybe just wait until Monday.
Whoops.

ALRIGHT. SO.

When I was about 8 or 9 years old, my best friend at the time, Maddie, got me this tadpole habitat for my birthday. It was this little plastic contraption about a foot long and half a foot wide, with plastic hills and plastic shrubberies and a little plastic pond that you were supposed to fill with water and mud and things.
All in all, it was awesome.
What you had to do was call this number or send these people a letter, and they would send you a few tadpoles in the mail, along with detailed instructions on how to raise them, how to feed them and everything, and then eventually these tadpoles would grow into frogs, which you then had to take care of and buy live crickets for them to eat and everything.
Admittedly, I was a little pissed that I had to go out of my way to get tadpoles. I wanted them right there and then, because waiting was not something I was good at (it still isn't, actually).
Because I was too lazy to call this number or send the company who made the thing a letter, I never got tadpoles from them. The cool plastic habitat was shoved in the back of a closet and forgotten about in favor of stupid things like furbies and other such monstrosities.

About a year later, Maddie and I were down at the park, playing in the nasty, mucky swamp water creek-thing that runs through the park behind my house.
Hurray for Diagrams.

Anyway, we're playing in the creek, and we see all these little black goops wriggling around.
I say goops because they were too big to be called dots and too little to be called fish, and they kind of looked like the fish shadows in animal crossing.
Also I just really wanted to say goops several times in a post. Seriously, say it out loud right now. Best. Word. EVER.

Those little black goops were, of course, tadpoles. Not frog tadpoles, at least I don't think they were. I assume they're toad tadpoles, because we have toads coming out of our asses around here. They're actually pretty cute, to be honest. We have one that lives on our front porch who is called either Fred or Jeff, depending on who you ask.

Me and Maddie got all excited, in that way that only 8 or 9 year olds really can. We found a waterbottle that someone had thrown into the creek, as well as some plastic cup or jar or something of that sort, and got to work catching as many of those tadpoles as we could.
After about 20 minutes, we each had at least 50 tadpoles in our containers, and we were feeling really damn proud of ourselves for being such expert fisherman.
It was then that we realized the fatal flaw in our plan.

"So...where do we put them?" Maddie asked.

We certainly couldn't put them back, because then they wouldn't be our tadpoles anymore, they'd be the park's tadpoles, and that was clearly unacceptable.
I briefly toyed with the idea of putting all of them in my pool, but quickly decided there wasn't enough food in there for them, and they would get scared because it was so big.
We were almost about to put them back in before I realized that I still had that crappy plastic habitat still sitting unopened in the back of a closet.

We raced back up the hill to my house, being careful not to spill the tadpoles. We left them outside and got out the habitat (Maddie didn't really care that I hadn't used it yet, which is good, because looking back on it I probably shouldn't have told her that it had been sitting in my closet, unopened, for the past year) and dumped them in.
Then, because there wasn't enough water, I went over to my pool and got a cupful of water and dumped it in with the tadpoles.

I secured the lid, making sure the plastic habitat was shut up good and tight so the tadpoles couldn't get out in case they spontaneously turned into toads overnight.
I then left the habitat in the direct sunlight so the tadpoles would be nice and warm and feel at home.

Maddie and I then went inside, washed our hands, had lunch, and went about our day, playing in my pool and playing My Little Ponies and whatnot.
The tadpoles were soon forgotten.

The next afternoon, my Dad was going to mow the lawn. He saw something sitting in the middle of the yard and went to go pick it up.
Oh, by the way, my parents didn't know anything about the tadpoles. Something told my that my mother wouldn't be too thrilled about my toad farm, especially because there would have been at least a hundred toads popping out of that thing before too long.

Suddenly my parents call for me, furious.

"What is this?!" they ask, pointing at the plastic box.
"Oh, me and Maddie caught tadpoles yesterday down at the park! They're gonna grow up to be toads!"
"Honey...you filled the box with highly chlorinated pool water, and then left it in the sun without poking any airholes in the lid. All of the tadpoles are dead."

I had essentially fried them alive while they suffocated and died in the chlorine water.

Not only had I massacred all of them...dead tadpoles smell like absolute shit. And that smell was wafting EVERYWHERE. You could smell it from inside the house once we took the lid off.

So then my Dad and I carried the box down to the creek and gave the tadpoles a funeral by dumping them into the creek.
I think the chlorine had dissapated enough so it wouldn't hurt any more tadpoles...or at least I hope so. I really hope I didn't kill even more of them. I don't know that much about how chlorine works.
Then I had to go home and hose out that habitat before recycling it, because there was no way to really salvage it. It smelled like death and horror in there.

For the record, I haven't killed any animals since then.
Though my hamster did almost suffocate to death once because I let her play with this desk toy I had and she got stuck in it and her tongue turned blue.
She was fine though.

Long story short, if toads had history books, I would be in them as a terrible baby-killer. I am to tadpoles what Godzilla is to Asian people.

No offense, Asia.

For The Record, I Have Nothing Against Police Officers...(also for the record, I don't like doing ranting posts, but this one is rather necessary)

I just want to make a disclaimer before anyone reads this post.
I think Police Officers are generally wonderful, brave people who have a lot of crap to deal with on their job, and many of them deal with said crap with unbelievable grace and dignity.
I respect them and think they're doing the best they can.

And then there are those cops that you wish you could yell at because they are abusing their power so much, but you can't because they're cops, and they'll always win.
This is not all cops. Not even most cops. This is an elite few.
Please don't think of me as a cop-hater. Because I'm not.

Alright.
Now, about Saturday morning.

So, Me, Ben, and our friend Joe all went to Warped Tour in Illinois on Saturday.
We left at around 8 in the morning because we wanted to be there early so we could get in early.
The only real flaw in our plan was the fact that the venue, for some godforsaken reason decided that it was necessary to keep the gates to the parking lot closed until 10 AM, thus causing a horrendous traffic fiasco.
Not traffic jam. Traffic fiasco.
A traffic jam implies that it's slow, maybe even stopped traffic on some road somewhere, and it seems like it takes forever because its rush hour and everyone wants to get home and drink beer...or whatever else angry workers drink when they get home.
A traffic fiasco is when nothing makes any sense, people are driving on the wrong side of the road, no one knows where exactly the entrance to the parking lot is because there's like 3 of them and one of them is for staff only, except they don't tell you what one is for staff only, so you just kind of guess, and then you guess wrong and have to turn around and pull out into the cluster-fuck that has become the road, thus causing MORE issues for the massive line of 500+ cars that has lined up and has no where to go.

Traffic fiascos are no fun.

ANYWAY, we get to the venue, the gates are closed, so we pull off to the side of the road where everyone else is waiting.
Half an hour later, some guy walks up and says "Hey, you guys need to move, cause this line of cars is blocking this road, and the village is going to get upset, so we just really need you guys to move, alright?"
Totally polite, explained the situation clearly and calmly, and then he moved on to the next car.

So we left.

At this point, we either had to:
A) Drive around and waste gas for an hour, which we didn't have the money to do.
B) Find somewhere else to park.

So, We drove down street Number One (where we had been parked originally) and turned onto Street Number Two, where we parked somewhere in the circled region.

The road was not busy. There were no No parking signs visible to us. We were a very respectable distance from the stop sign.
We also had our hazards on, just in case.

This is where the trouble began.

Two cops pull into the intersection of streets one and two and stop, presumably to get ready to direct traffic into the entrance that was right at that intersection.
Cop number 1 gets out, and starts waving us forward, telling us to move.

So we immediately put the car in drive and pull up. We stop by the cops and Ben leans out his window and says, very politely, "Excuse me, Sir, why are we not allowed to park there?"
"There's no parking there." Cop #1 says, in a way that already shows he's expecting a fight.
"Sir, we didn't see any no parking signs over there."
"Oh, well, you were obstructing traffic, just...just move. You gotta move. You can't park there."

So, even though that is bullshit, we drive off.
You see, my friends, there was no real traffic to obstruct, only the occasional car or two.
Also, Cop #1 said that all in a very rude manner, like in his head he was thinking "fucking teenagers and their fucking concerts. assholes." even though we weren't assholes to him.

So we drive around looking for another place to park and wait. Nothing.
We drive back by where the cops are and ask (again, very politely) "Excuse me, Sir, do you know of a place we can park?"
"No, I don't care, Drive around, Do whatever, just get out of here."
Again, very rude, for no reason what-so-ever.

So, as we were driving off we kind of...sort of...flipped them the bird.
Admittedly, that was probably a bad decision.
But it in no way warranted the ridiculousness that was about to occur.

Finally, the gates open, and we get in line to enter.
We get to the entrance after waiting FOREVER.
Cop #1 walks up, laughs and says "Oh ho ho, I've been waiting for YOU. Pull over."

So we did. Even though he had really no reason to try and pull us over. Giving someone the finger isn't against the law, last time I checked.
Also, this cop should have been busy directing traffic, NOT harassing teenagers, but who am I to say what his job was?

So Cop #1 walks up to the window and says "So you like flipping off cops, do you?" and then asks for Ben's license, takes it, and says "Alright, I'm gonna go see what violations I can find to give you a ticket for."
He was literally just looking for things to give us a ticket for. Even though there was nothing.
It was at this point I started to get pissed off.

SIDE NOTE:
I am terrified of authority.
I've never done anything wrong in my life. I've never gotten a detention, and the last warning I got was in 5th grade for blowing straw wrappers at my friends. The one and only time I was called down to the Dean's Office in my high school was to claim my lost flash drive that I had left in the library.
I'm a good kid. I do whatever possible to stay out of trouble, because at the first sign of anyone in authority, I freak the fuck out.
Also, I was PMSing that day. And while that is probably too much information, it is important to the story because when I am PMSing, I am overly emotional over anything ever.

So Cop #1 leaves with Ben's license.
His partner, Cop #2, also decides that it is really, really important to neglect his traffic duties to go harass teenagers, and comes over to the passenger side of the car, my side.
"Do you two have your ID's on you? I need to see them." Cop #2 says to Joe and I.
I, being furious already, say "Why?"
"Because I'm a cop and I can ask you who you are." He says, raising his voice to me.

So we give him the licenses. He then asks Ben, "So, what happened?"
"Well, We were..."
"What happened??"
"....I'm trying to tell you."
The cop blatantly interrupted Ben in the middle of Ben trying to answer his question.

Now, while this happened, I began smirking, because when I am on the verge of tears I do whatever I can to not cry, because crying in public is bad, because I look like 4 train wrecks and a house fire when I cry, and I didn't want to look like that at warped tour.
So when I'm about to cry, I get really, really sarcastic. Which was bad.
I started "smirking", according to Cop #2, which he promptly yelled at me for.

"What is so funny!" He said, once again raising his voice to me, because clearly I am the one who is going to give him the most problems because I'm the most threatening, being about 5'2" and weighing less than 100 lbs. I'm often mistaken for a 12 year old.
In a car of 2 guys and 1 girl, WHY WOULD YOU START HARASSING THE GIRL. ESPECIALLY SINCE SHE'S TINY AND HAS NEVER HAD ANY RUN INS WITH THE POLICE BEFORE, WHICH HE SHOULD HAVE SEEN ON MY RECORD WHEN HE SEARCHED IT.

Because I grew up believing that when someone is being rude and unimaginably unfair to you you are supposed to protest and say something about it, because that is your right as a human being, instead of looking down and saying "nothing, sir," I instead replied like this:
"Well, sir, I honestly find this a little ridiculous."
"Oh yeah?? Why!"
"Because just because we're teenagers doesn't mean you need to treat us like crap!"

Well...I said something like that.
Or at least that's what I meant.
When I'm angry/about to cry I don't make very much sense.

So then he goes off on this big tangent about how he "has to deal with us goddamned teenagers all goddamned day" and so on and so forth.
then, my favorite part:
"You just don't flip of a cop, okay?"
"Why? It's just a finger." said Ben.
"Well, its disrespectful and...yeah, its disrespectful...i mean...How would you feel if I flipped off your mother?"
"Honestly, sir, she'd probably flip you off right back." (Best line ever. Said by Ben. Because he has balls)
"Well, no, how would you feel? See, it's just disrespectful and rude, and...I DON'T GET WHAT'S SO FUNNY."

That last part was directed at me again.
And then, as tears started finally leaking out of my face, I yell back "I'M NOT LAUGHING, I'M TRYING NOT TO CRY."

AND THEN.
HE CONTINUES TO HARASS ME.
ME!! NOW, NOT ONLY DO I LOOK LIKE I'M 12, BUT I'M A CRYING GIRL WHO LOOKS LIKE SHE'S 12. WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU CONTINUE YELLING AT SOMEONE AT THAT POINT?!

He is all "Why are you still laughing!"
and Ben finally said "She's not, sir, She's fine."
You'd think he'd leave me alone at that point, but no.
As Cop #2 is walking away, he's all "I don't know what's still so freaking funny, you're gonna get him in more trouble!" Pointing at Ben. Making me feel like I did something wrong, when I didn't do one single thing wrong, other than try and stand up to a bully.
But apparently standing up to a bully only works in 5th grade...it also only works if the bully doesn't have a badge.

So then Cop #1 finally comes back over, gives our IDs back, and is all "There are some interesting notes on your record..." To Ben.
Ben asks "...What does that even mean?"
"There are just some interesting notes on file. Don't flip of cops."

and then they let us go.
No ticket, no warning, no NOTHING.
They gave us all that shit for no reason.

because we flipped. them. off.

Now I want to reiterate, I have nothing against Police Officers. I think they are doing the best they can even though they get a lot of shit from a lot of people.

What I have a problem with is assholes who go on power trips and like to be jerks for no real reason other than because they get their rocks off by asserting their dominance over people just to prove they can.

Cop #2, I hope you felt really good about yourself for making me cry. Because you know, you could have stopped yelling at me at any point, but you didn't, because we were disrespectful.

I think its disrespectful to make tiny girls cry, but I guess that's just me.

Also, Cops # 1 and 2, PLEASE go flip off Ben's mom.
I promise, she will kick both of your asses at once. with one hand. blindfolded.

And that, my friends, is the story of how some people are jerks for no reason.

I promise, Wednesday I will post something a lot less pissy and more childish and humorous.
I can't decide if I want to talk about my first trip to disney world (which would involve me posting a hilarious picture of me on Test Trek), or about the time I massacred a hundred tadpoles and burned them alive.

You'll find out on Wednesday!

oooo the suspense. haha.

I live around some of the weirdest people (part three)

Neighbors family 3: The White House Across the Street (I made it gray in the picture for some reason...)
(Otherwise known as How to Run a Meth-Lab While Still Having a Thousand Children.)

If you haven't read part one
If you haven't read part two
Or just scroll down, if you're on the main page.

Anyway, after the people in the green house next door to us moved out (Scott and Matt and their father), we had about a year of relative quiet and tranquility (aside from the sounds of building and shit that was going on next door, where they were tearing down the green house and building a monstrosity, aka a really fucking big house).

Then, new tenants moved into the white house across the street, which had been up for rent for awhile.

To this day, I have no idea who lived there. There was someone new almost literally every day. Not to mention the billions of children those people seemed to produce, even though none of them should have had any right to contribute to the gene pool.

These people were constantly screaming at each other for really no reason.

And then the one skinny dude got home from prison.
We assume he was in prison because he wasn't there for the first few months, then he shows up, and not long after he shows up, there are cops there ALL THE TIME.
Also I think one of the others screamed something about him being in prison.

Anyway, so Skinny comes home, and later that night, one of the women in the house (the batshit crazy one) starts FREAKING THE FUCK OUT.
She's screaming at him "YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE HERE! I'M PAYING THE RENT HERE AND YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED TO BE HERE" and all of this other crap.
So, inevitably, the police are called.
I don't know exactly what was said but there was more yelling and screaming and they wouldn't let Skinny in the house.
Eventually we heard them say something about how the crazy lady actually WASN'T paying the rent, it was Skinny's house, so she had to be off the property or something.
And eventually she was indeed kicking out of the house.
But not before this second incident happened, which is personally my favorite incident involving the people in the white house.

Me, my sister, and her friend Krista were on our way to see Death Cab for Cutie in Chicago.
We go out the front door, and as we're walking to the car in the driveway, we see crazy-lady outside with 6 kids, all of them playing in the street.
A car comes, stops so it doesn't hit the kids, and then the guy driving rolls down the window and yells something to the crazy lady about getting her damn kids out of the damn street.
It is as this point in which the crazy lady earns her name.

She runs over to the driver-guy and starts hitting his car, SCREAMING at him. She's yelling, "You shouldn't be driving on the street when there are kids present! you could have run them over! fucking asshole! watch where you're fucking driving! there are kids in the road! fuck! fuck you! Watch the fucking road, you prick!"

The driver-guy is completely bewildered at this point, and just rolls up his window and tries to drive away.
Crazy-lady, of course, continues screaming at this guy.
Her closing line is the best.
Before the guy drives completely away, she yells, "I HOPE YOU HAVE FUCKING LIFE INSURANCE!"

That doesn't even make any sense!
Is she going to go after him and kill him, and she just wanted to remind him to get life insurance so his loved ones have money?
Most bizarre advertisement for life insurance ever.
It was seriously the weirdest thing she could have possibly yelled at him. I have no idea what she hoped to accomplish by screaming that.

Anyway, a few more months go by, more kids continue appearing (we don't know where they came from or who they belong to, but there are about 20 of them), the cops are called a few more times but not for anything too serious, just things like potential domestic violence, screaming, and so on and so forth.

Then one day...well, night, the police get called again, and at first we were just kind of like "ugh, whatever, we are so over this."
And then we glanced outside and saw a big van that says DEA on the side of it.
If you aren't already aware, DEA stands for Drug Enforcement Agency (or maybe its Administration...fuck, I really don't know). They search for drugs. Make drug busts. All that stuff.
Suddenly this is beyond regular drugs and domestic violence and into dangerous shit.

Of course, it wasn't that exciting to watch, we don't think they found a meth lab or anything (though I'm still convinced there was a meth lab at one time in that house), the guys from DEA just kind of walked around menacingly, exploring the backyard and front yard and investigating the one van the people owned.
And then they left.
I was sort of disappointed. I was fully expecting some wicked shenanigans to start happening, like arrests and such.
But no. They just had explore-a-yard time at 11 pm, and then just left. Like they were on some scavenger hunt, and one of the things they had to do was find the most white trash people in the area and take a picture of their van.

Anyway, after that happened, the people in the white house were pretty quiet for awhile.
And then they just sort of...left.
It was weird. We all sort of expected them to reappear at any moment, except with 20 more kids with them. Like china had a buy-one-get-one sale on babies.
But no, they just sort of vanished, at least as far as I'm aware.
We think they got kicked out by whoever actually owns the house, because they were just renting it.

Last year my Dad went over there to ask to borrow a generator from some guys who were trying to clean up over there (we had lost power, and we had a big party planned. it was a fiasco), and the guys that were over there just said that it was a complete wreck inside.
Apparently druggies enjoy leaving things completely demolished...either that or that's the best way to hide the secret passage to your underground meth lab.

And that, my friends, is the conclusion of my crazy neighbors stories.
If I think of any other wonderful ones, I'll post them.
But for now...that is all.

Mythology Monday!

Alright, kids, I've decided to talk about Mythology and/or Greek History every Monday because:

1. I love mythology/Greek history/awesome things
2. I am a nerd and a half
3. Greek myths are awesome, and most people don't know that much about them.
   

If I happen to get a detail or two wrong, I'm sorry, and please feel free to correct me immediately.

Our subject for today: The Life and Times of Medusa, and the Birth of Pegasus (They are related, I promise)

See, Medusa is pretty misunderstood. She wasn't always a crazy snake-haired bitch. And most people also don't know that she sort of had a child....kind of.

Originally, Medusa was a beautiful woman. And all the dudes were all "Oo!" and wanted to make lots of Greek babies with her. Including the Gods.

Poseidon, the God of the sea, was all "Hurh hurh, I'd thrust my trident in HER waters, if you get my drift."
Clearly Poseidon had a 3-pronged cock.
So, since the Gods always get what they want, Poseidon set out to seduce Medusa.

Which he did.
As a stallion.

Apparently the Gods thought all of us mortals were all about beastiality (except for Perseus' mother, who apparently enjoyed golden showers. More about that later), so Poseidon rides up as this big, fancy horse, and Medusa is all "I HEART HORSE DICK!" and is successfully seduced.

Problem: There's really nowhere to go to have wild horse/human sex where no one will see them, so they have the brilliant idea to go at it in Athena's temple, where I think Medusa was a priestess.

Athena catches them (Duh.) and is PISSED. AS. HELL.
Except she can't really punish Poseidon, because he's a God and is also technically her Uncle, so she takes her wrath out on Medusa, turning her beautiful hair into snakes and making her face so hideous that it turns men to stone if they so much as look at it.

So Medusa runs away and lives in a cave or something to that effect, all depressed because she can't have a boyfriend (well...a warm, living, breathing one anyway).

Then, all of a sudden, Perseus appears! Hurray, a dude!
Too bad he wants to kill her and steal her head!
Which he does, because he's got Athena and Hermes on his side, and its hard to lose when the odds are stacked that heavily in your favor.
Plus he had flying sandals. You can't lose with flying sandals.

Perseus succeeds in cutting off Medusa's head, and as soon as it's severed, a giant winged horse pops out of her neck. Because that makes complete and total sense and is clearly the way winged horses are supposed to come into being, you know, by completely defying the physics and anatomy of the human body.
...though I guess having snakes for hair also sort of defies the anatomy of the human body.
Maybe the real Medusa just had dreadlocks and didn't shower ever, so the stench of her body killed anyone who came too close.
Who knew hippies existed back then?

I guess Pegasus is the child of Medusa and Poseidon, though that doesn't make sense, because Stallion/God + Pretty girl does not equal = Giant horse of wonder and joy with wings.

FUN FACT: Perseus never actually rides Pegasus. The only person who ever rode Pegasus was Bellerophon, who was retarded and decided to try and be a badass and break into Mount Olympos to hang out with the Gods. Needless to say, that didn't work. Zeus sent a fly down to sting Pegasus, who then threw Bellerophon off. Bellerophon then fell to his death.

Moral of the story: If you're going to have wild, crazy horse sex, stay away from greek temples. You will get pregnant and you will get turned into a horrible monster. AKA get herpes and/or syphilis. This story was actually an abstinince advertisement back in the day.

Haha just kidding. The greeks had sex all the time.
In fact, I heard once that there used to be a plant that was a natural birth control, and the Greeks ate it out of existance.

Not that I blame them, to be honest.

I live around some of the weirdest people (part two)

If you haven't read part one yet, either scroll down, or click here.

Neighbors family 2: The Mint-Green House
(Otherwise known as Where's Joe?: A Tale of Screaming Babies, Burning Plastic, and Other Foul Mouthed Charades.)

When I was young, and older couple lived next door to us. Their names were Bill and Elsie.
Bill and Elsie were the sweetest people in the world. I don't know how they ended up spawning such filth and destruction, but they did.

Around the time I was 12, Bill got sick, and had to be moved into a nursing home in Arizona for some reason, and Elsie went with him. They gave/sold (not sure which) their house to their son, who we'll call Mike. I can't remember if that was his actual name or not, but for now, it will be.

Mike had 3 kids, Scott, Matt, and a daughter who we'll call Sarah, because I can't remember her name either.

They were all closer to my sister's age, so they all played with her whenever they were visiting their grandparents. Sarah was the youngest, and sometimes I would play with her and my sister.
Except one day, they told me I couldn't play with them.
I was roughly 4 at this time.
I was under the impression that I couldn't play with them because Shannon, my sister, didn't want me to.
I held this grudge against my sister for years, until I was older and she told me that it was Sarah who didn't want to play with me, not Shannon. Sarah thought I was annoying and lame, apparently.

Bitch.

Anyway, so I'm like 12, Bill and Elsie have sold their house to Mike, and all of a sudden, we're living next to an episode of cops almost 24/7.

At first it started off with just a lot of drinking and swearing. They were fairly private people to begin with, it was mostly just Scott and Matt yelling at each other and their friends, and while we could hear it, it was nothing too bad.

This was around the time of the Joe incident.

It wasn't really an incident, and it probably won't be funny at all when you read this, but just bear with me.

One day, my sister and I are home alone...actually, maybe my mom was home. Actually maybe both of my parents were home.
I have a terrible memory.
So we're all home, and all of a sudden, we hear someone calling something out. It was summer, and we had all the windows open, so we listened out the window to see what was happening.
This is what was happening:

"Jooeee! Joooooeeeeeee! Where are you, Joooeeeee!"
"Fuck man, where's joe?"
"I don't know, man, I can't find him. JOEEEEEEE!"
"JOOOOOOEEEEEEE"
"JOOOOEEEEE! C'mon man! JOOOOOOEEEEEEE!"

They called Joe's name about 60 times.
I'm not exaggerating.
I don't even need to exaggerate with this part. They literally called this guy's name about 60 times.

The best part? They were calling his name over and over while just walking up and down their driveway.

Seriously?

Like Joe was just going to pop out of the bushes and say "Here I am! I won Sardines, no one could find me!"
[Sardines is reverse hide and go seek, if you weren't already aware. everyone looks for 1 person, and when they find that person they hide with them, until only one person is left.]

There were two 25-30 year olds walking up and down their driveway calling for Joe, because they were too lazy (and probably too drunk and/or stoned off their asses) to go actually look for this guy.

And no, I have no idea if they ever found him. They probably forgot what they were doing, went to go drop more acid, and then found his body in the cellar next to the meth-lab.

Then, Scott and Matt decided that they were going to be really, really smart and, instead of recycling plastic bottles like you're supposed to, they built a bonfire and threw all of the plastic bottles in there.

If you aren't already aware, burning plastic is toxic. Also, it smells like shit. Not just "ew, that's mildly gross, maybe I'll move a little further away from the source of that smell." More like "FOR THE LOVE OF GOD AND ALL THAT IS HOLY, I'M GETTING A GAS MASK AND A HAZ-MAT SUIT AND I'M COMING BACK WITH A CONTAINMENT CHAMBER TO BOX THAT SHIT UP. THAT SMELLS LIKE DEATH'S GRANDFATHER SHITTING HIMSELF AFTER EATING AN ENTIRE CRAVE CASE FROM WHITE CASTLE MIXED WITH CURRY AND RANCID MILK AND THEN GETTING SPRAYED BY A SKUNK."

Okay, maybe not that drastic.
But close.

Either way, it smelled absolutely TERRIBLE.
And the smell was all over our backyard, it got into our house, no matter where you went, you smelled it.

There was also the time that the Sox won the world series.

For those of you who don't live in the Chicago area, the whole White Sox vs. Cubs thing is pretty intense.
My family and I are die-hard Sox fans. So, obviously, when the White Sox got into the World Series several years ago, we were really fucking excited.
Every Halloween we put lights up on our three evergreen trees out in front, and this year, instead of just covering the trees, we used the lights to spell out S-O-X on the trees, and we would flash them every time the Sox got a run, and especially when they won the game.

Scott and Matt were Cubs fans. Which is fine, I accept their right to choose, but they were dumb cubs fans.

One night, we hear rustling outside, and we go outside and find Scott and Matt standing by the tree closest to their house (the trees are in a row), and the lights are all messed up on that tree.

They quickly tried to explain what had "happened"
"Well, uh, we heard something out here, so, uh, we came out to see what happened and, uh, some kids were fu...i mean messin' with yer lights, so we tried to chase 'em off. Sorry 'bout yer lights."

and then they walked back inside.

Seriously?
Seriously.
Like I said. Dumb. As if their little story covered up the fact that they were trying to take down our lights. Real smart, guys.

Now, these three incidents alone aren't what qualify these people as ridiculous neighbors.
No, what makes them ridiculous is the record number of times they managed to have the cops called on them.

It started out as maybe once every few weeks, and then it gradually grew, until it was once every other week, once every week, and finally they got the cops called on them twice in one week.

Why?

Oh, various reasons.

There were screaming babies, screaming people, accusations of drugs, public drunkeness, smashing bottles, fights, something about a divorce and a restraining order or something to that effect.

When I say screaming babies, I don't just mean a kid was crying for a few seconds and the parents couldn't figure out what it wanted.
I mean this baby was SCREAMING. It wouldn't stop. It didn't even sound like anyone was trying to make it stop.
The only thing anyone said about it was "Oh look, now the kid's crying. Are you happy?" which probably inspired some more yelling and cursing and fighting.

Oh, and they started smashing bottles and fighting right outside of my sister's window, which was SUPER fun. This was at 3 in the morning, mind you, and she was trying to sleep, but was terrified that someone would come crashing through her window at any second and then start threatening her with bottle shards.

I think we only called the cops on them once or twice. If even that.
It was everyone else living around us who called the cops time and time again.
We generally tried to ignore it, being the passive people that we are. We didn't want to get ourselves involved in other people's business.

To be honest, I don't recall exactly what led to these people moving out. I think they got kicked out, or maybe they sold it to a builder/the people who then bought the property.

My parents talked to the guys who went through it before ripping it down, and my Dad actually walked through. He said that the place was completely gutted and destroyed before the wreckers even got there. The interior had been completely demolished. And it smelled like double-ass cheese in there. I don't even know what it is, but it sounds like it would smell terrible.

Anyway, then this kid who I've known since 3rd grade moved in next door to me, and his family built a giant mansion next to our little house, which is kind of lame, but you know what, I'd rather have that instead of screaming babies at 3 AM, to be quite honest.

And so ends the second part to my Crazy Neighbors saga.
Tune in next time for Part 3: The White House, or How to Run a Meth-Lab While Still Having a Thousand Children.

I live around some of the weirdest people (part one)

Apparently my house gives off a magnetic field which attracts ridiculous people.
You may think you have crazy neighbors, and while you probably do, you make consider yourself fortunate after reading this.
I may end up breaking this up into 3 parts, in order to satisfactorily explain each group of neighbors without raping your eyes with 40 pages of text, because if you haven't noticed, I am quite wordy.

ALRIGHT. LET US BEGIN.

Neighbors family 1: The Maroon House.

Oh...okay...so that may or may not look a little blurry to you. I apologize. Also, I would appreciate if none of you try and use this picture and/or the one of my yard/park to try and stalk me. I don't take kindly to stalkers.

ANYWAY.

So, the Maroon-house family lived across the street from us in a maroon-esque house (see diagram) when I was about...I don't know, perhaps 6 years old? I was young. That's really all you need to know about that.

The maroon family had a few kids, though the only ones I really remember were a girl who was about my age, and a boy who was maybe 4. They might have had another baby too. And at least one dog.

The first weird incident didn't even involve me. I had a friend who lived down the street from me who was my age, and her mom had invited the maroon family kids over to play in the morning. It was getting close to lunchtime, so my friend's mom decided that she would make lunch for the kids, and called their mother to let her know that the kids wouldn't be home for lunch.

my friend's mom: Hi! I just wanted to tell you that since it's almost lunchtime I was going to make lunch for the kids before they went home.
maroon-fam mom: Oh, okay! We'll be down for lunch in a little bit!

Um. No.
Those aren't exact words, mind you, but my friend's mom in no way invited this woman and her baby over for lunch.
And while that incident is merely a little weird, it gave a small taste of the weirdness to come.

My parents were at some sort of gathering, probably at my neighbor's house, the people directly to my house's right. Tim and Melissa had 2 kids, a boy and a girl, both several years younger than myself. They were also social people, and enjoyed having get-togethers with the other people living on our street.

So my parents are there, and so are the maroon-fam parents. They were all talking about something or another, my mom isn't entirely sure what led to this particular statement, but somehow sleeping arrangements were brought up.

The maroon family mom said something like this:
"Well, we all sleep in the same room, in the family bed. We have the kids' two twin beds pushed up next to ours and we all sleep together."

UM. WHAT.

That, my friends, is what we call CREEPY AS FUCK.
Who sleeps in the same bed with the entire family?! 5 people plus dog all in one bed?! I mean sure, there were times when I was little and I would be scared of a storm, so I would get out of bed and get in my parents' bed and sleep with them. But that was because I was terrified of storms! Not because my parents' are psycho!

Not only that, but how did these people have kids?!
"Honey, Mommy and Daddy need some alone time tonight, go sleep in the living room."
Or worse, did they just do it while the kids pretended to be asleep?!?

WEIRD.

Of course, me being 6 years old, I wasn't aware of these things yet. I didn't even hear about the family bed until I was much older and able to sufficiently judge these people and realize just how weird they were.
My mom, at this point, was already completely weirded out by these people, or at least by the mom, and didn't really want me playing with the kids. My dad, however, persisted in his belief that it was fine because I wanted to play with the kids (mostly because the girl had a really badass dollhouse), and he wasn't going to tell me that I couldn't go play with them just because their family was a little odd.

This led to the 3rd incident.

After playing and hanging out with the little girl at her house several times, I asked the girl to come over to my house and play, mostly because I wanted to show off my bed, because it was like a bunk bed, only instead of a second bed underneath, there was a little play area with a doorway and a window and it was awesome. I had my own little fort under there (I've asked my dad to rebuild it for me, only not walled-in, so I could put all my books down there and have a reading corner) and it was REALLY EPICALLY AWESOME, especially for a 6 year old.

But, strangely, the little girl never seemed to want to play at my house.

After enough pestering, she finally agreed to come over.
She seemed fine, and she thought my bed was super wicked sweet (if she didn't think so she was a robot with no emotions. because only robots could think that bed was not cool). And we were hanging out and playing under there when I suggested that she could sleep over, that way we could have enough time to create our club and draft a list of official club rules to post on the wall of the clubhouse under my bed.

It was at this point that she started bawling.

I had no fucking idea what was going on. I hadn't been mean or anything, all I had done was ask if she wanted to sleep over. She wouldn't stop crying. I even said that she didn't have to sleep over if she didn't want to (though why anyone wouldn't want to sleep in the super awesome-rad clubhouse is beyond me), but she wouldn't stop. Finally I went and got my dad, who called her mom, who immediately came over to pick up her sobbing, sniveling daughter.

The mom said "Oh, she doesn't like being away from her mother for too long."

And then they left.

I think that was the last time I hung out with her, because I was confused by her and her family and I was busy doing other things, like throwing sand at snakes.

The last major incident that I remember again had nothing to do with me or my family, but instead it had to do with Tim and Melissa, our neighbors to our right.

Tim and Melissa have two large windows on the front of their house which look into the living room. They had blinds on these windows of course, and the blinds were slanted so you couldn't see through them unless you're looking from a high angle.

One day, Melissa gets a call from Mrs. Maroon-fam. Mrs. Maroon-fam says "Oh! I see you've been exercising!"

There is no possible way she could have known that unless she made a point of getting binoculars, going upstairs in her house, and watching Melissa exercise through the blinds.

THEN, one night, Tim gets home late from a business trip, and gets dropped off in a taxi at around 3 AM.

The next day...or really the same day, because...yeah.
Later that same day, Melissa gets another call from Mrs. Maroon-family.

"Oh, Tim got in pretty late last night. Why did he take a taxi home?"

o_O

CREEP. TOWN. CENTRAL.
SERIOUSLY.
WHAT THE HELL.

In order to know that, the woman would have had to been up at 3 AM WATCHING TIM AND MELISSA'S HOUSE. AT THREE IN THE MORNING.
WHO. DOES. THAT.

See, if someone was up that late and happened to see Tim come home, that's fine. It happens. I know I've stayed up until 3 AM and seen people getting home or whatever. That's not the point.

The point is that she felt the need to CALL AND ASK ABOUT IT.

She was so beyond ridiculous. I almost want to go and find her just so I can see how messed up she is now, if she's changed at all or if she's still just as ridiculous as ever, corrupting her children one step at a time, even though they're like 20 now.

Those poor kids.

Tune in next time for Part Two: The neighbors to the Left. Otherwise known as Where's Joe?: A Tale of Screaming Babies, Burning Plastic, and Other Foul Mouthed Charades.

When I am Rich and Famous...Part 1

My destiny is to be rich and famous.
Me and Ben are going to be married and living in a giant mansion with a private lake and 4 boats and 6 cars, and magical rooms around every corner.
How do I know this?
I know this because I am fucking awesome. Don't you forget it.

Anyway, because I am obviously, without a doubt going to be rich and famous, I have begun planning my mansion ahead of time, so we know what to tell the builders who are building it.
Ben and I have planned several necessary rooms/aspects that will be a part of our castle, and are adding more and more every day.
I am going to unveil some of these magical rooms and things to you here, one or two at a time, so you can prepare to feel sufficiently jealous by the time all of these things come to be.

ROOM ONE: The Pillow Room!

I find pillows all the time that are some of the coolest pillows EVAR, except I have nowhere to put them in my house. They never match anything in my house, or if they DO match something, it's something that's in the bathroom or kitchen, or other places where pillows are not allowed to be.

Solution?

PILLOW ROOM!

Just a small room filled with all the reject pillows that can't go anywhere else, but are still awesome enough to warrent buying.

I'm not talking about some pillow museum though, mind you.
The pillow room will also have a bookshelf, so you can make a pillow nest, pick out a good book, and read in the most comfortable environment ever.
The room will also come equipped with blankets, and perhaps a few sawhorses or folding chairs in a closet in the corner, so if you're ever bored you can make the coolest fort EVER. It could be as big as you want, and better yet, you wouldn't have to take it down a few days later just because company is coming over and your mom doesn't want a giant fort in the middle of the living room while she's trying to serve tea to Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so.

The carpet would also have to be nice and squishy and comfortable.
And there would probably be shelves or bags or bins or something where the pillows could all be stored for when the carpet needs to be vacuumed.

When I'm rich and famous, I am going to have an AWESOME house. Just so you know.

I am terrible at ending things.

Alright, so I just tried to leave a comment on a post that Allie posted on Hyperbole and a Half, her blog.
(I say "Allie" like I know her, when in reality I don't know her, I just wish I did because she is awesome.)
(...that sounds creepy, doesn't it.)
(I'm a bad judge of creepiness. anyway...)

The problem is that whenever I try to leave a comment on something or I try to email someone or ESPECIALLY if I try to leave someone a voice mail, I can never end it.

I don't know why this happens. It's like, once I get the courage to actually call the person back, I deflate. I get all agitated over making the phone call and try and pump myself up so I can successfully deal with the social interaction that is about to take place, and then when it doesn't happen, I get flustered and lose steam rapidly. Then, by the time I realize I have to leave a message, I have forgotten what I initially called them about, so all of my messages start out with "Hi! Um...this is Caitlin, uh...you called me earlier, and...um, I just wanted to know what that was about...so if you could, uh...give me, um, a call back? That would be great! So, um...OH My number is 000-0000, and yeah, just call me back when you get the chance...or you could, um...text me, if I don't answer, even though I should answer because I'm usually never busy, except for today, when you called me, I was busy then, which is why I didn't answer my phone when you called, so...yeah, just call me back and let me know what's up. Um...thank you! Sorry I didn't answer your call...umm...I'll talk to you later! Bye!"

My messages are always a million minutes long.
okay, so they're more like 3 minutes long.
but it feels like a million when you're the person on the receiving end of that rubbish.

As for comments/emails, most of those that I send are okay, it's only when I get to the hero-worship comments/emails that I run into difficulties.

My brain has created a paradox when it comes to those sorts of things.
See, I really really want to email someone and let them know how much I loved whatever they created (blog/webcomic/book, etc). So then I do.
But as much as I want to tell them how wonderful their product was, I don't want to completely fangirl out of control and seem like I'm a crazy person, because while I am crazy, it isn't polite to show your craziness in public. Sort of like genitals.

In an effort to balance out the crazy while still accurately portraying my love for whatever thing the person created, I end up writing bipolar things that switch off between completely bat-shit insane and semi-normal.
I'll be like "OMG I FUCKING LOVE YOUR BLOG, and I really appreciate it because I can relate to a lot of your posts, like that one about your dog that was FUCKING AMAZING AND I LAUGHED HYSTERICALLY AT EVERY WORD YOU WROTE, while still appreciating the predicament you were in..."

and so on and so forth.

Because I want the person to know that they're appreciated, but I don't want to seem crazy/creepy/insane, or even worse, stupid.
I don't want these people to think I'm just some stupid girl who doesn't think ever and just likes things on the internet because everyone else does. I want to prove that I've thought about my decision to be obsessed with their webcomic/blog/book and that I don't just throw my affection around. I don't know if that matters to the people I'm writing to, but its really important to me that people know that I'm careful with the things I fall in love with, because to me that gives the love I do feel more credibility.
Does that make sense?
I'll assume it does and move on.

Anyway, because part of me wants to go fangirl crazyx10 and part of me wants to have an intelligent conversation, I bounce back and forth, trying to keep a balance.
So when I try to end the comment, I'm never sure which part of me got more air-time, because if it isn't even, I'll either seem like a snob or a crackwhore, and I don't like either of those ideas.

Irony of the Day: I fell asleep while typing this post...therefore not ending it until a day later.

Also...I don't know how to end this post.

You should hear my phone messages. I leave messages on Ben's phone sometimes and I ramble for like 5 minutes. It's ridiculous.

And...so...yeah.
Umm...I'm going to go post something else now.
Yes? Yes. Yes I am.

PS: If I misspelled anything, I apologize. I was literally half asleep when I wrote the first part of this, and while I did read over it and tried to remedy any spelling mishaps, I'm sure I missed at least one.

I would never survive a horror movie.

My friend Max just had a birthday party.
He's a rather odd (read: awesome) person, and he and his parents own the most disgusting/ridiculous/insane horror movies ever. It's basically their family passion.
So, for his birthday, Max had some friends over and we all watched some of Max's favorite horror movies. Well...the first one was one of his favorites, because it is literally the goriest movie ever AND it's set in New Zealand AND it was directed by Peter Jackson, who is the same bad ass mother fucker who directed the Lord of the Rings movies. So its basically a big fucking deal. Its called Dead Alive, if you're interested. Which you shouldn't be, because it was disgusting. In an awesome sort of way.
The second movie was called Poultrygeist, which was literally the most terrible musical ever made ever in the world. It was made with like, zero budget. Not kidding. Max said that no one was paid for doing it except for the camera-man and the sound guy I think...oh and the two main actors got like $50 or something ridiculous. yeah. It was bad.
We also watched Cabin Fever 2, which I really wanted to keep watching, but me and Ben had to go because we're waking up early in the morning to go deliver papers. So I only got to see part of that, and I want to know if the main guy and girl end up dying or not. Probably yes, but you never know.

ANYWAY.

I came to the conclusion that I could never last in a horror movie.
I wouldn't be the first to die, because I'm not a slut/bitch, nor am I fat or black.
Even if I was one half of the romantic sub-plot, the two people who almost never die in horror movies, I would probably die. Even when the rest of the entire world is dying and suddenly bursts into flames, the romantic sub-plot participants always accidentally do whatever it takes to not die, unless it's Cabin Fever 2, in which case I'm pretty sure everyone ever dies in the grossest way possible (jk, the people in Dead Alive die the grossest deaths possible. Cabin Fever 2 is indeed disgusting, but I think Dead Alive wins for creativity and for the sheer amount of gore).

But seriously. I wouldn't be able to do any of the necessary things to save myself/others. You're arm is filled with a terrible flesh-eating virus and you need me to cut it off with a saw and then cauterize the wound with a blowtorch and then wrap it in duct tape? Sorry, I would probably pass out. And if I'm in a house full of zombies, I wouldn't have the balls to stuff a zombie-baby in the blender, or a zombie head, nor would I have the balls to not kill myself when my boyfriend's super-zombie giant raptor mother tries to shove me off the roof after sucking my boyfriend back into her womb. I'd just jump at that point. I'm not dealing with that shit.

I would probably just end up hindering whatever group I was with, because while everyone else in the group would transform into badass zombie-killers of the century, I would just carry a bat for show and I would probably end up looking like Wendy from The Shining (the one with Jack Nicholson who is a creep and a half in that movie) whenever I had to swing it.



Skip to about 3:41, that's right before the bat swinging starts.
Though honestly, you sort of want him to win, because she is fucking annoying. She swings the bat 41 times. I counted. Not only does she swing it 41 times, she only ever hits him twice. TWO TIMES OUT OF FOURTY-ONE. That is a terrible batting average!

Anyway, my point is that I wouldn't have the balls to actually hit anyone. I'd probably just cry and hold the bat, maybe give a few warning swings, or at least hold it menacingly (and hopefully I'll hold it properly, I'm not THAT retarded where I would hold it in the middle. Idiot).

I just don't think I have the balls to handle all the blood and guts and stuff.
Though, you know, maybe I would. Maybe if the zombie apocalypse ever comes, I would turn into this badass zombie killing machine, and no one would expect it because I'm the size of a 10 year old.

Just don't ask me to saw off your arm. Because then I would go from badass zombie killing machine (or BAZKM, or bazkam, if you will) to blubbering idiot, and I wouldn't be able to do it. If I DID do it, I would inevitably fuck it up and fail wildly and somehow end up killing myself with the table saw instead (did I mention it was a table saw? Yeah. gross as hell).

At least that way I wouldn't have to trip over nothing while the killer is chasing me. Girls in horror movies ALWAYS seem to trip. How did humans ever survive if it's a woman's natural instinct to fall down when a predator is after her?

Knowing my luck, that is exactly what would happen to me.
Lets hope I don't have to run from any killers in my life.

Creature Shenanigans, Part One

My yard is full of creatures. It always has been, and probably always will be.
It's almost like a zoo, except there are no cages, and you generally aren't sleeping inside of the zoo when the animals start screeching in outrageous ways and terrifying you to death.

I have quite a few of stories involving backyard creatures and their crazy shenanigans, so every once in awhile you'll see one of them. Be prepared.

You see, my backyard backs up to a park. Which is awesome, to say the least.
Here, let me show you:
Yeah. Its pretty rad. I mean, to get to the park you need to hack through about 10 to 20 feet of thorny and terrible bushes and trees and skunk/hobo nests, but the park is literally RIGHT THERE.

This is actually a google maps satellite image. We planted big white flowers that spell out YARD, and bushes, and PARK IS THIS WAY, along with assorted arrows. Oh, and our roofs are flat and white and label our house/garage. I'm surprised I had to explain that, as it seems so obviously real and satellite-y.

Anyway, because our yard backs up to the park, with all kinds of bushes and trees right there and such (there are also several trees in our yard, a storage shed, a swingset that my dad built himself because he's amazing and a half, and about a million other things that i forgot to draw in...i mean that google forgot to draw in...with their satellite imagery), and that combination leads to a LOT of wildlife.

It doesn't help that in said park there is a big, grassy hill and a little creek that leads to a swamp-like contraption that's nestled among the trees.
another picture?
yes.
another picture indeed:
All of the green dots and things are bushes and trees and hobo-living quarters. or at least they used to be.
There used to be a LOT of trees along to the left there, it was a fairly decent little forested area. Except the village decided to cut half of it down for no reason.

Well...the reason was probably the homeless people and the pot and the alcohol that was consumed back there...the pot and the alcohol were consumed. not the homeless people....unless they were consumed with rage at being homeless. or consumed with hope because they lived by such pretty trees.
I'll write a post about the homeless people later. because they were interesting. All two of them that I saw were interesting ones, anyway.

So because of that little creek (those dots in the creek are cattails by the way, which are REALLY fun to light on fire if you let them dry out enough. They smelled cool and kept the insects away at night) and all of those trees, wildlife flocks to our little corner of the world. seriously. animals are fucking EVERYWHERE.

I guess first I should tell you about the snakes, because the snakes are first chronologically in the list of fun animal stories to tell, so it makes sense to start there....though I suppose the bee incident was first, since I was about 4 when that happened, and I was about 7 or 8 when the snakes happened. The bee incident is a story for another time though. You'll get it, don't worry.

ANYWAY. so the snakes.

There was a period of time, about 3 or 4 years I think, when every summer snakes would come and nest in our backyard. Things always nest in my backyard because I think they can sense that we like animals and generally will leave them alone as much as we can, as long as they don't actively bother us.

Around June or July, I would be running around outside with my imaginary friends making "chocolate soup" (now with more poison berries and woodchips! made with fresh mud and water daily!) and all of a sudden I would see something in the grass. I would approach it and pick it up and run to my dad yelling "THE SNAKES ARE BACK!!!"

I loved the snakes.

My mom was terrified of them. So was my sister, who I think was in middle school at this time. Maybe freshman year of high school. something like that.

So, every year, the snakes would come and make nests under our screen house (this little gazebo type thing that sits in the middle of our yard and is actually pretty sweet. it keeps the bugs out, so I'm happy) and leave their skin everywhere. I think my dad would have preferred to just leave them alone to eat whatever mice and bugs they could find (because clearly these are things we REALLY do not want. things worse than snakes. things we have quite a few of, actually). But after awhile they would continue to terrify my mom and my sister (and sometimes me, if I was too close to it when it slithered out) and so my dad would go about catching them.

I honestly have no recollection of him catching them. I think he used some sort of tongs or something to pick them up, then he would quickly put them in this old, huge bucket we had. After he caught them all (there were normally about 2 or 3), he would cover the bucket with old pieces of screen. I don't really know what this accomplished, seeing as how these were garter snakes, and garter snakes are barely poisonous at all, at least for humans. They're about as venomous as a mosquito, pretty much. They don't have fangs or anything to really deliver venom with so they're pretty safe for humans.

(note: this is not a picture of any of the snakes we found. this is a picture of a garter snake that I found online. © Dave Ingram)

I sort of wish we had kept them, or at least one. Though then I would feel bad because I was seperating friends or lovers or family, so I probably wouldn't have been able to keep just one. But I do think it would be AWESOME having a snake as a pet. My friend Nella has one, or she did before she went to college and then she had to have a family friend take care of him for her. Basically snakes are really, really cool when they're not going to try and crush you to death and/or inject you with poison.

So these snakes would be in a bucket with screen over it, and they'd be really, really upset. Some dude just grabs you off the sidewalk with big metal tongs, dumps you in a bucket with two friends and then prevents your escape/revenge? what an asshole!

Now enter little 7-year-old me, with a head full of curiosity and a heart full of daring (hah. that's a lie. I've always been scared of everything. This was really no exception, I was just too fascinated to freak out). I couldn't stop staring at the snakes in the bucket. I didn't want to look away because my dad was going to take them away soon to set them free in some nice snake-friendly habitat and I might never be that close to snakes ever again.

As I'm standing there, staring in open-mouthed awe, my sister comes over and throws sand on them through the screen.

I don't know if it was to get back at them for being scary jerks, or if it was because she was bored and curious and wanted to see them do something other than sit there in agony. But she took a handful of sand from my sandbox nearby, brought it to the bucket and threw it through the screen at the poor, unsuspecting snakes below.

I should have stood up for those little guys.

But I didn't.

They FREAKED OUT when the sand fell on them. It went from a fun little tea-time with snakey to a full-on cage match. They threw themselves at the walls, at each other, spun around, opened their mouths, hissed, the works.
And while this seems cruel now in hindsight, I was completely and utterly batshit over watching these snakes move, and I had found an easy way to make them move.

I imagined I was making them dance for me, or that they just moved like that sometimes. In reality they were probably just really fucking pissed off that someone had covered them in sand, which they now had to roll around in and sit in and be in pain because of, and I probably should have stopped.

Buuuuut I didn't. Go ahead, call me terrible and evil. I am...but I won't lie and say that throwing sand on those snakes wasn't a blast.

Anyway, pretty soon my dad saw me do it and my parents got really upset and asked me how I would feel if someone threw sand at me while I was imprisoned and I probably apologized because I didn't want to be in trouble, even though in my head I was thinking, "Well, I probably would have danced like that, except with legs and arms and stuff. I'd probably be a pretty good sand-dancer."

note: I would not be a good sand dancer.

So, then my dad would take the bucket away, walk down to the park behind my house, and let the snakes go.
Normally they would wait a year and then come nest in our backyard all over again. Apparently they had such a nice vacation the year before they felt the need to come back and relive it.

Into the bucket they went. Then to the park, and then set free.

And then they'd come back.

Snakes are retarded, just in case you weren't previously aware. They did this for several years, even though every time they came back, nothing changed. They would show up for two years in a row, get put in a bucket, released into the park, come back, repeat. Then sometimes they'd go away for a year or two before coming back for two more years in a row. So just when we think they're gone, WHOOPS there they are again.

Finally we figured out that it was partially our fault, because we kept releasing them in the same park which was right behind our house, leaving them an easy avenue to come back the next year.

So the last time the snakes came, we put them in the bucket, covered it with screen (I wasn't mean to them this time, I had matured to the age of 8, when clearly I knew everything there was to ever know about anything, and I was above throwing sand on the snakes...also I knew I would get in trouble if I did it again), and drove the bucket-o-snakes over to a park that was pretty far away and set them free again.

The snakes haven't been back since.

Part of me misses them, because when they were around it was like an adventure going into my backyard.

But even if they did come back, I probably wouldn't go in my backyard to begin with because I would be too busy cowering in fear in my room, peeking out at the world through my window.

One of these days I'll have to explain why I'm terrified of practically everything.

OH. ONE MORE THING.
I got the coolest daily planner EVER. Except the dates don't start until the last week of July, so I have to wait until the 26th to start using it. Which is 10 whole days. Which is unacceptable.
Its got a map and a periodic table and how to convert measurements and temperature and common formulas and a multiplication table!
Basically the best thing ever.

SEE. PERIODIC TABLE.

Also, I love the camera program on my lappy. I gave myself a mustache, and surrounded myself with stars and hearts and rainbows (almost typed drainbows. those sound terrible) and the cutest grim reaper ever.

Seriously. if that little guy came to signal my death, I wouldn't be that upset. He's adorable. I would be too busy cooing to realize that I'm not living anymore. Plus he's under a rainbow. That makes him cuter.

Like I said, BEST. PLANNER. EVAR.

Anyway, time to go. I just took a shower and I need to dry my hair (this is why its up in a towel-turban right now. just FYI). Bye!

Costume Parties: the Do's and Don't's of looking like an asshole

No matter how often I proclaim my love of costume parties, this love is almost always a lie.
I hate costume parties.
They were invented by some guy who didn't have a job and therefore had a lot of time on his hands and very little money to spend on entertainment items. So instead he would throw parties and force his friends to wear ridiculous outfits to amuse himself, because lets face it, you cannot salvage your dignity after a costume party, and if you can, you did it wrong.

The key is to go with friends. Plan your costume with other people and carpool with them, so then you know for sure that other people are wearing costumes, AND when you're walking up to the person's house/apartment/dorm/cardboard box, you don't have to feel like a complete idiot in a costume by yourself because when cars drive past, they will know you're going to a costume party and that you aren't just some weirdo who thinks its halloween 24/7.

Side Note: why is it that whenever you're in a car, the people who are walking always give you weird looks, and when you're walking, people in cars always give you weird looks?

Anyway.

See, if you don't plan ahead with friends, you run the risk of showing up and having one of the following problems:

1. You're the only one wearing a costume.
2. You're wearing the wrong kind of costume.
3. You're the only one NOT wearing a costume.

If you're the only one wearing a costume, you can just play it off like you're quirky and hilarious and you do this all the time (unless you know everyone at the party really well, in which case it either shouldn't matter that you're wearing a costume or it does matter and these people are sucky friends for making you think its a costume party. In the event of the latter, you should promptly whip out a flamethrower and set everyone on fire. Then just tell the cops that your friends all wanted to dress up as flames, and clearly it wasn't your fault for helping them.)

You could also play a fun game if you're the only one in a costume. When you show up and notice no one else is wearing a costume, don't say anything regarding the fact that you're dressed up like John Wayne Gacy meets Lady Gaga. Wait for other people to notice. When they do notice and try and say something to you about it, don't acknowledge your costume. When they say something sarcastic such as "Hey, nice outfit, retard," look at them strangely, and say "...What are you talking about? I wear this all the time. Don't you remember?"
You've instantly put the blame on them and either convinced them that you're retarded or that they're retarded. Clearly a win-win situation.

If you're wearing the wrong costume, you can somehow connect it to the theme in a ridiculously obscure way.
Is the theme pirates and you're wearing a space-suit? You're a space pirate!
Is the theme christmas and you're dressed like a zombie? you're Jesus!
Is the theme Anne Frank's attic, and you're wearing a hitler-stache and full nazi regalia?
...yeah you should probably just leave.

And if you're the only person there not wearing a costume...there's no saving yourself. You just look like an asshole who doesn't like fun. And no one likes fun-less assholes.

Oh, and please don't be the person who doesn't dress up and says "oh heh heh heh I'm dressed as myself." Or anything of that sort. You will get punched in the face. Maybe not immediately, and maybe not by anyone at that party. But I will find you and punch you in the face for saying that. Mark my words.

Bladders suck.

When some bodily function needs to be taken care of, your body tends to give you warning that this thing is about to become a problem if you don't do something about it.

Example: "Gee, I'm starting to feel a wee bit hungry! I'll make my way to some sort of food source in the next few minutes or so, that way I can take care of it and my stomach won't try and eat itself!"

This happens with hunger, sleepiness, having to poop, thirstiness, and so on.

This does not happen when it comes to peeing.

For some reason, our bladders have evolved into mini hate machines that want us to fail.
They lay in wait, nestled in their bunker between the kidneys, just waiting for the most inopportune moment to strike.

I'm never just sitting there thinking, "hmm...my bladder feels like its about to become really uncomfortable, I'm going to go pee now, thus saving myself from the agony and discomfort that comes with a full bladder."
No, you only notice that your bladder is full when you're about to pee your pants. Generally this seems to occur in public places, or when you're with your friends and someone sits on your bladder and you're like "SHIT."

You know, bladder, you could give us some hints once in awhile. A little heads up that we're about to explode with pee.

And having to pee isn't one of those things you can deal with until you find a convenient way to take care of it. If you're hungry or thirsty or sleepy, you can generally deal with those things for awhile before you reach the critical level where its eat/drink/sleep or die.
Doing anything while having to pee is terrible, because all you can think of is how badly you need to pee. You can't focus on anything other than your painfully full bladder.

And these sudden bouts of "OHMYGOD I HAVE TO PEE" tend to happen when you least expect them, so not only do you have to pee almost immediately, there's no where to do so.
Like, perhaps you're out on a boat with some friends and you have to pee. Oh, and you're a girl, so you can't just whip it out and piss off the side (stupid boys and their peeing appendages), you have to find some way to maneuver yourself somewhere where it will be discreet and won't get on your clothes or hands or anything.

Even worse is when you're on a boat and you have to pee and there IS a bathroom available at the place where you're currently docked, and even though you know the bathroom is probably one of the worst bathrooms ever built, you go in anyway just to relieve yourself, only to find a dead mouse covered in ants lying next to the toilet while the flies inside the toilet-hole land on your ass and then you have to worry about them crawling into one of the many orifices us women-folk have down there, even though the chances of a fly being smart enough to climb into your vagina are pretty damn slim.
At this point you've stopped peeing out of sheer terror and disgust, and even though you're not done peeing you pull up your pants as fast as you can and get out of this bathroom because it is clearly the entryway to hell. Your bladder feels a teensy bit better, but you know in about 2 minutes you're going to have to pee again and you won't even have hell's bathroom to use, and you'll be screwed.

That is only semi-autobiographical. ish.

Note: I wrote this entire post while having to pee like a mother-fucker. In an effort to show my bladder who's boss, I refused to get up and take care of the situation because I am in control. I won't let my bladder tell me what to do.
Except now I'm about to pee my pants.
You win this round, bladder. But I'm comin' for yeh.