Things I Find Creepy

Getting ready to graduate college and dating someone who’s getting ready to graduate high school regardless of gender.

That’s it for now.

An assortment of things happened today.

I took my car to the shop where they wanted to charge me $400+ (basically all the money to my name) to fix it, so I brought it home.  It is still broken.

I did an extensive apartment hunt to find that we’re on the verge of screwed at finding an affordable one bedroom that allows pets by the time the lease is up here.  We might be homeless for a week-ish.

I reviewed a paper that was all about how bad health care reform is going to be for America that was full of “facts” and used Anne BatShitCrazy Coulter as a source.  To me, that's like citing Stephen Colbert.  Kind of.

I was officially rejected by AGNI who I submitted a short story to back in May.

But today is still awesome!  Know why?  Because I got an email from Allie Brosh, funniest lady on the internets.  Since she might see this, I thought I’d say that I’m funnier in older posts.  My blog also used to exist a billion years ago on Wordpress at ashleycaggiano.wordpress.com, but after I had a slight mental breakdown I killed it and turned it into a useless site that is pretty much a picture of me with my diploma where I look like a blowup doll, so everything here only goes back two months.

I thought I’d share with you all the picture I originally sent her that she LOVED.

She said, “This is by far the most badass drawing anyone has EVER drawn for me.”  I quoted that out of my email, people, ver-muthalickin-batim.  I know a lot of people have sent her drawings, I’ve seen some, and they’re effing amazing.  But mine is the “most badass.”  Suck that, internets!  I of course am taking this literally and going to make myself a certificate/award/trophy of some sort in the near future.

This is a very good day.

My Favorite Place on the Planet

NOTE: This is another shared post with Mrs. Brown and Lady Margaret (though I don't know is Mags has done it yet, so that's just a link to her general site.)

Hands down, my favorite place on the planet has got to be the bathroom.

Let me make this a little clearer: my bathroom.  I find public bathrooms to be helpful and I am grateful for even the grossest of them due to what I expect is overactive bladder, but my personal bathroom is my absolute favorite place.

First of all, it’s where the “get clean thing” are. If I could, I would take three showers a day—that is how hygienic I am, or, rather, a testament to how much sweat and oil I secrete. Starting a day without a shower turns me into, well, a slimy bitch.  That’s the most poetic way I can put it. I will slowly sink further and further into myself as the day passes, replaying the morning in my head to figure out how I could have gotten a shower. Then I continue by berating myself for not following the now seemingly simplistic path that would have led to a cleaner day. I start to be able to feel every part of my body, every inch of skin and the layer of oil that has formed on top of it, every hair follicle on my legs and under my arms working tirelessly to poke out as much extra thick bristles to go along with the overnight unshavenness as possible, every bodily crevasse I own pooling with sweat. Yes, that crevasse too. Especially that one. Once I feel how terrible it all is I realize that there is absolutely nothing I could have done, including shooting kittens in their furry little faces with bear mace, that would merit me coping with such an existence, so I quickly blame whoever is closest to me. To punish them I repeat how badly I desire washing in various ways:

“I need a shower…Oh my golly do I need a shower…Dear, God, please, I need to bathe…OMG I feel disgrossting…Do you smell that? It’s me. What, you don’t? *pitt shoved directly into face* Yes, THAT!...Don’t touch me; I feel gross…Seriously, I’m so nasty…DON’T FUCKING LAY YOUR FILTHY GODDAMNED HANDS ON MY ALREADY REVOLTING SKIN, YOU’RE JUST ADDING MORE OIL TO IT! DO IT AGAIN AND I’LL BITE IT OFF AND BATHE IN YOUR BLOOD! FUCK!!!”

Aside from containing a shower, though, the bathroom is also the greatest sanctuary known to man for the simple fact that it is largely socially unacceptable to enter into whilst someone else is occupying it. This means you can be totally alone in there for as long as you want. And…you can poop.

Heaven knows I love a good poop.

But my body largely fails at allowing me to do this anywhere that is not the safety of my own bathroom. The question to “Does Ashley shit in the woods?” is “NO.” I have incredibly shy bowels. It doesn’t matter how badly anything is rolling around in my colon, it is just NOT coming out unless I’m safely at home or somewhere I’m incredibly comfortable or am absolutely sure that I will be alone. It’s actually kind of tragic.

So this is why my own bathroom is so dear to me. It is apparently the only place that my sphincter feels safe.

And it is also the place where I get my best ideas. Showering allows for some extra think time for a lot of people, but I’m pretty interested in actually cleaning my body which we’ve already established is naturally more soiled than most. But while pooping I write some of my greatest masterpieces, albeit in my head. I’m sure that this has something to do with pushing out crap in order to make room for new stuff. Yes, that must be it.

See? Poetic.

What Scares the Shit Out of Me

First if all, this topic is being done, as I type, by my bloggette partners as well.  You can read them here and here.

Aaaaaaaaaand GO:

Alligators.

Holy goddamn fuck!

These prehistoric bitches are re-goddamn-diculous. The fact that they exist at all is nightmarish. They are 800 pounds of evil. It doesn't matter that I live in Ohio and the only ones here at locked away at the zoo--I'm still convinced that they could organize, climb on one another's heads to escape their glass tanks, saunter into a web cafe, google "What Scares the Shit Out of Me: Alligators," find me, and death roll me. Please note here, though, that I used to live in Florida and you can randomly come across these reptilian creeps in the middle of the road there, so my fear was at least partially legitimate at one time.

I have this reoccurring dream. There are different versions of it, but I often start out in a Jeep with no kind of top and I'm always the front seat passenger with two other passengers and a driver. The four of us go speeding off into the swamp, always end up ramping something, and then flip headlong into a canal. The Jeep's overturned and I'm buckled in, so I can't go anywhere, submerged, though it doesn't really matter that I'm underwater because somehow I can still breathe.  Everything is that greenish color with bits of algae and dirt floating in the water and then, in the distance, there's this shadow.  I start to struggle with the seatbelt, but it doesn't matter.  The gator's used its prehistoric telepathy to keep me locked in. I don't look away--I can't.  The shadow takes on a familiar form--rounded snout, piercing eyes, open jaw full of teeth--and it's speeding at me.

And that's it.

Sometimes I have dreams that I'm near a swamp on really thin docks that are incredibly close to the water and there are alligators swimming around me, snapping at my ankles. It's all pretty horrible and now, because I'm writing this, I'm going to have another. I'll keep you updated.

But being afraid of crocodilians is totally justified and the reasons are manifest:

• Alligators are over 200 millions years old.  They're practically right out of the primordial ooze.  They pretty much are the embodiment of demons, created before man and everything. And they are not good.
• These assholes used to be bipedal.  That's right--walking around on two legs with their massive flapping jaws.
• They're only native to the US and China.  Know what else is only native to the US and China?  Me neither, but it's probably something evil.
• They don't kill you, no. They drag you underwater and stuff you under a rock until you tenderize. That is intent, my friends, and that is terrifying.
• There are also crocodiles which are kinda dragon-like but God knows they're not full of magic and rides through the air:

• And caimans:

I once dated a guy whose family thought it would be fun to take me to an alligator farm. Needless to say, he is not The Boyfriend.

So, in summation, alligators make me want to poop myself.  The end.

I Hate People On Bikes* **

*Don’t take this seriously, Browns.  I love you guys.

**Do take this seriously, Everyone Else.

Bicycling is great in theory: it’s better for the environment, healthy, cheaper than driving, makes parking easier and umm…that’s about it.  Barring the whole hippie planet saving thing, which mostly manifests itself in a superiority complex to people who live too far from their jobs to consider using manpower to get there, bicycling suddenly seems incredibly selfish, which is probably why most bicyclists are such assholes and I hate them.

Actually, I’m pretty sure why I “hate” bicyclists is because I have this overwhelming fear that someday I’m going to hit one and have their death on my hands for the rest of my life, and it will actually be all their fault, but I’ll never be able to fully accept that and will just blame myself forever, not to mention the fact that the court will also blame me and I’ll go to jail for manslaughter even though it’s the stupid biker’s fault they’re dead because they don’t apparently believe in stoplights.

Whether they are new or not, I just noticed what I’m going to refer to as the “new” and unnecessarily over-reflective “SHARE THE ROAD” signs in the gentrified parts of the city.  Below each one is a separate sign (not the same sign, mind you, but a whole new sign in a different shape and everything) that has a bicycle on it.  They’re both bright orange, road cone orange, New Lexington women’s graduation cap and gown orange, and they force you to look at them because, at first glance, they look like road construction signs.  They’re kind of evil in that way.  But, I guess they can’t be yellow like the pedestrian signs because bicycles aren’t to be treated as pedestrians.  Also they’re not supposed to act like pedestrians. However, I’ve learned that they’re also not supposed to act like vehicles, despite Title 45, the traffic laws in Ohio’s Revised Code.

They follow their own rules that aren’t marked down anywhere, but telepathically communicated between bicyclists.  I’ve deciphered some of them though and thought I’d set them down here for you.  Be warned, though, I can’t promise these will hold fast for any amount of time.  I’m sure as soon as one of them gets wind of them being communicated amongst even the most cautious and caring of drivers, they’ll change everything up right away.

They are as follows:

A red light does not mean stop.  A red light means slow down slightly as you pass all the cars in front of you on their right, sneak up to the front of the red light, and then speed through between cars who clearly have the right of way and can see only the stopped cars because you’re hiding behind them so they’re driving at a normal speed through the green light they’ve mistaken for telling them they have the right of way.  You’ll surprise cross traffic, but that’s okay—they need to learn to share the road!

The turning lane in the center of the road is not actually for turning—that’s just a joke some silly car driver made up!  The turning lane in the center of the road is actually for you to personally ride in in order to pass everyone else while they’re stopped for impractical reasons like waiting for others to turn right or stop signs or even red lights.  You should especially put to use the “turning” (hehe) lane when a car is in said lane, patiently waiting for traffic to pass.  Remember though, they cannot swerve out of your way seeing as they’re much wider than you, so it will be helpful if you get pissed off when a car is stopped there with its blinker on and you can’t continue down the center in either direction.  It will be even more helpful to creep up behind them on their left when they’re about to turn in the only break in traffic, putting yourself between them and the suddenly open road.  They won’t be expecting anything coming from their left, but, by golly, they need to learn to share the road!

The left lane is as good as the right lane when there are four of them.  By the way, you should get into the left lane as soon as possible, miles before your left turn comes up.  Also, be sure not to make the proper signals or really any kind of signal to alert the people behind you that you’re about to slice in front of them at half their speed.  And, while we’re on the subject of the right lane, be sure to stay as far from the curb as possible so that cars can’t pass you when it’s safe to do it.  It’s pretty awesome of you to drive down the middle of any road, really.  The road—they’ve gotta learn to share it!

Drive on the left side or the right side of the road.  When you are on the right, the cars behind you can slow down or even stop without having to veer off anywhere.  This is expected and makes for lax drivers, and we wouldn’t want that!  When you ride on the left, toward traffic, cars can slow down, they can stop, but it will do little good when you’re a yard away from the sidewalk with no intention of shifting your direction.  DO NOT SHIFT DIRECTION.  You should know that cars instinctually don’t want to hit you because they know how fragile you are seeing as you’re not wearing a helmet, so they will veer off into oncoming traffic that doesn’t know you’re there so hasn’t considered the possibility that the car opposite them may suddenly be coming at them in a moment nor does the oncoming traffic really have room to do its own veering due to lack of road, parked cars or, yes, another of your biking brethren.  This is a glorious moment to really teach drivers how to share the road.

Above all, remember: YOU ARE SUPERIOR TO CARS AND PEDESTRIANS.  Since you are neither, you can follow whichever rules you like or none at all!

I'll Follow You Until You Love Me

I hear The Boyfriend go, "Paparazzi!"

I think, "The Boyfriend doesn't even know who Lady GaGa is."

I find the following on my camera a day later: