Some Things A Lot of People Don't Know About Me

Check out Mags and Mrs. Brown for the same topic.

I'm going to do a little list because I can't think of one, overall, THING except maybe weird sexual practices and I feel like I'm not allowed to talk about those.

1. I am hot.  Like, really hot.  Seriously, you don't even know.  You should see me in knee socks and nothing else.  Actually, you shouldn't if you want to live past that moment because you'd melt and die from the sheer hotness.  I mean, Mr. Brown just took a picture of me and I wasn't ready, but I'm not concerned because it's going to come out fantastic because I am so hot.

2. I don't really like mac n cheese.  Just kidding!  I fucking LOVE mac n cheese.  The real number 2 is I am a goddamn laugh a minute.

3. I am terrified of everything.  I don't keep my fears a secret, but they're way more intense than even I make them out to be.  Sometimes I jump up when I'm in bed alone and go turn on the light because, in the light, the scary things can't get me.

4. I believe I am wholly responsible for Princess Diana's death.  This is the first time I've ever said this outside of my head.  Never even written it to myself.  I know, I'm a freak, but I totally believe this. So, here's the story:

I've had phases of being extremely superstitious.  When I was ten I was going through one of those phases.  When I was that age I was also dabbling in other kinds of beliefs and was really interested in witchcraft and sombre poetry and the like.  You know, regular kid stuff.  Anyway, I distinctly remember being in the living room, sitting on the couch, it being very quiet, and I was thinking.  Really hard.

And I wished myself dead.

I wasn't unhappy in the least, and immediately afterward I took it back.  I think I did it because I was interested in what happened after living and that junk.  So I quickly took it back because, obviously, it was going to come true because I'm just that powerful and there was some all-powerful entity just waiting to bow to the every whim of ten-year-old me.  And then, what feels like seconds later in my mind, but could have been days, I learned about Princess Diana dying.  So many people were so upset.  And then I realized that my wish was too powerful to just disintegrate, but it couldn't be used on me because of course, I had overruled it, so whatever force was going to grant my wish HAD to use it on someone, and that someone was her.

I killed the Princess of Wales.  Killed her dead.

And, to this day, I still believe that.  I still wish now that I had been quick and thoughtful enough to take back my wish-o-death and protect everyone, but I wasn't.  I was a dumb kid, playing with a power I couldn't fathom.  And for that, all of England had to suffer. And I've never told anybody except for you, internet.

So, number 4 is really I am totally, bat shit crazy.

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!

This Is How It Is

I think The Boyfriend’s car may be officially dead.  But, on the plus side, ONLY ONE MONTH TIL MY BIRTHDAY!

This is exciting because I will be 23.  I don’t know why yet that excites me, but it does.  There’s something about 23 that sounds adult.  I was horrified of 22 because that was when I officially entered into the second quarter of my life and I realized I had to do all the second-quarter things which are really intense.  You see, I have a theory:

Life can be broken into four quarters, each consisting of 22 years.

That’s pretty much the theory.  After you turn 88 those are just bonus years.  You accumulate those in the more perilous sections of dungeons and in treasure chest that can only be opened with the Keyblade.  It’s complicated.

Also, each quarter contains certain achievements that typically need to be mastered.  This allows you to level up appropriately so that the following quarter isn’t too out of your skill level.  Again, complicated, I know.  The quarters are, of course, able to be completed with the previous quarter’s achievements still locked; however, this usually results in slow load screens and less valuable side quests.  Puzzles are also more difficult.  And you don’t get the thunder spell til like seven chapters later which is a real bummer because it super helps in the Cave of Doom.

Oh, I think I just figured out why this is so exciting: I’ll be 23 on the 23^rd.  This must mean something magical, right?  It’s the only time it will ever happen.  I’ll have to do some internet research and find out.