Ordering By Description
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Making Up Words for Marketing
Making up pseudo-words for marketing is something that companies have been doing to induce us to make us buy their products for some times. It's something that I've been exposed to my whole life and it seems relatively normal to me if very hokey when we have cereal like Count Chocula. Count Chocula or Booberry do not appeal to me to make me want to buy them but I suspect that this helps them advertise to children who, while having no money of their own, have six times the ability of any kind of advertisements to convince people that they do know who have money to buy them things through a process known only as "whining". Advertising hokey things to children who are impressed by it and selling things through their whining is a generally-accepted way of selling things.
Making up entire languages, however simplistic, is something somewhat newer for advertisers. Making up a whole new language is the next level of the made-up words scheme. Except, this level was not intended for children. Children can remember Booberry because their little simian brains think that kind of thing is worth a giggle or two but they have a pretty hard time grasping the english language never mind some kind of hacked-together romance-based stilted- okay so I realize here that I've just started to describe the english language itself but I guess that's just because advertisers are not very imaginative about that sort of thing and my original point is that children have a hard enough enough time with their first language never mind a second one even though they are essentially the same.
The reason a whole invented language is appealing is because it conveys a sense of eliteness to those who comprehend it. This method worked out especially for advertisers of widely-consumed products generally intended for adults. Obviously adults are a little more suave and like to think that they know how advertisement works and yet the advertisers still manage to get them. Because if you can walk into a store and navigate their menu created in an absurd invented language and come out with something that you actually want to drink you are superior to everyone who cannot do the same.
My first experience with this was my freshman year in highschool when we went on a school trip to see a play and ended up going to a mall to sort of hang out after it was over. My friends decided that some caffeinated beverages would be good so we went to Starbucks and my friends said totally incomprehensible things to the cashiers and received presumably corresponding things in return. I did the only thing that I could and said that I would have the same as one of my friends had gotten and ended up with some kind of hot coffee beverage that I could not now even attempt to tell you what it was or tasted like or even looked like. This marked the beginning of my serious aversion to establishments like this.
I then routinely avoided getting anything at any place that required me to speak in a language created solely to sell me things by the kind of people who thought that getting a degree in marketing so they could create advertisements was a good idea. The problem with this total avoidance was that it made it difficult to get a cup of coffee in certain places. Coffee in gas stations, restaurants, coffee places, cafes and at home are all very different things. Some are good. Some are totally unpalatable. And I finally ended up ordering something somewhere and in my annoyance I decided I didn't care if I did it wrong I just wanted some coffee so I ordered: "Whatever ridiculous holiday flavor you have right now in whatever passes as medium." And I got a delicious medium-sized beverage full of caffeine.
It was very liberating to realize that the made-up marketing language didn't matter because the cashier and I both spoke english. I can go to Dairy Queen and get a so called "moolatta" by saying: "I would like your absurdly-named coffee and chocolate beverage in whatever passes as small." And in return I got a delicious beverage that was like mocha pudding through a straw. That made-up marketing language? That's all it is. It sells the way other marketing schemes sell products. So I encourage you. Order yourself a delicious foamy chocolaty coffee beverage with whipped cream and caramel on top.
Friday, January 21, 2011
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Excuse Me But Your Beliefs Are Mathematically Ridiculous
Excuse Me But Your Beliefs Are Mathematically Ridiculous
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Comfort for People Who Think Science is Bad
I'm not writing this with the intention of upsetting anyone. As a general rule I'm painfully polite and avoid confrontation when possible. I don't like to argue because it tends to be futile. These are more the kinds of things I might say to certain people if I were the kind of person who confronted people. Just my personal beliefs. I'll leave out the age of the world and the actual date of Christ's birth and even the exactness of the calendar year as most people have heard all those. Instead I'll focus on some a little less common.
Waiting in Line: I started with this one intentionally. If there are multiple lines someplace and you choose one but then find yourself thinking that the other line is moving faster- you're right. You're right even if you switch lines. Statistically speaking the other line will always be shorter and faster moving. You're actually right about this. Feel vindicated- you're not paranoid. Unfortunately there's nothing you can do about it.
Winning the Lottery: Despite the fact that the lottery is sometimes won by people the odds that it will be won by you are slated millions to one against. You'd be better off saving the money you usually spend on lottery tickets instead of wasting it (unless, of course your only purpose for buying them is for the purchase of false hope and in that case you go ahead.)
Vaccination/Autism: Correlation is not causation. Anyone who has ever taken any kind of statistical analysis course knows very well that the correlation of two things occurring does not mean that one causes the other. All of the people who think that we shouldn't vaccinate children (vaccination being the single most effect wide-spread public health measure ever implemented in terms of lives saved) because there is anecdotal "evidence" that they cause autism are sadly deluded. Children usually start displaying signs of autism spectrum disorder before the age of three. Children with autism spectrum disorder may seem to be more or less normal children until then. Vaccinations for various diseases are given to children before they start school as required by law (and if they go to a daycare before then they are generally required to have them before entering though it depends on the child care provider). It's generally agreed that after a certain period it's better to get your children vaccinated sooner rather than later. Studies, slates of studies, some of them even double-blind if that's something that concerns you, have shown again and again that the incidence of autism among children is, if anything, possibly a little lower in children who have been vaccinated versus those who were not. If as much money was spent on trying to determine an actual cause of autism as opposed to pursuing this fictitious link maybe we would know the real causes behind it.
Another thing that people say about Autism is that there are so many more cases now and the numbers keep increasing. That is true. Absolutely true. But the numbers aren't higher because of environmental or medical reasons. The numbers are higher, firstly, because the population is a lot larger than it used to be and secondly (and more importantly) because the term "autism" is used very broadly and encompasses a huge number of disorders.
Fair Dice: I decided I had to include this one as a jab at the four years I spent on the high school math team. Teachers tend to teach students about probability and statistics through coin-flips, dice rolls, and decks of cards as these are things that both give board games an element of chance as well as being widely-known. Thereafter every time you play a game and someone rolls too many box cars you say that it's unfair. It is. It is unfair. It's statistically improbable. But the fact that it's statistically improbable makes perfect sense. That wasn't where you were wrong. You were wrong in your assumption that the dice were fair. It's rare to find a die that is never mind the fact that all those neat little problems in your books always forget to account for everything else in the world of physics.
Voting: Both the idea that your individual vote matters immensely and the idea that it does not matter at all whether you vote or not are incorrect. The first is not true because votes in large-scale, important elections never come down to a single vote cast by a single individual. The latter is untrue not because it does come down to a single vote but because if everyone like you failed to vote then the lack of the segment that thinks like you will affect the end result of the vote. So vote or not- it doesn't matter as long as you know that your justifications are wrong.
Gambling: Much like the lottery the odds are harshly in the favor of the house. The only difference is that people win from gambling often enough to make you optimistic enough to waste a lot of money.
Men & Dinosaurs: Dinosaurs went extinct tens of millions of years before anything even remotely like modern man ever existed.
Organic Farming: The idea that strictly organic farming can save the world is absurd. Unless, when you say 'the world' you are talking only about the planet itself, and not the people on it. There just isn't enough arable land feed everyone that does exist or will exist through organic farming alone. So unless you would like to kill off a great deal of the population so that you can make your vision a reality it's just not going to work.
"Protection": The idea that condoms are always effective is wrong. Especially when they are put on improperly, defective, come off, or break. 15-25 out of one hundred women become pregnant after sex using a condom. When used faithfully hormone-based methods are much more effective for preventing pregnancy and, of course, sterilization, IUDs and Implants are most effective at preventing pregnancy. Don't throw away your condoms just yet, though. Because one in five Americans have an STD and eighty percent of those who do have no idea that they do. That means that if you've had sex with more than four different people you're virtually guaranteed to have had sex with someone with an STD. So unless you are your partner are faithful and have been recently tested for an STD you're still going to want to use protection.
Airplane Safety: The idea that airplanes are not safe is incorrect. Flying in an airplane is just as safe mile-per-mile as driving in a car. The only reason you might think otherwise is because the media is obsessed with planes but car crashes happen so frequently that they get far less news coverage.
Bestsellers: Bestselling books are not necessarily books that have sold the most copies. The most popular list of bestsellers (put out by the New York Times) is calculated using both sales reported from retail sales as well as how many books are being printed and 'other factors' which are kept as a trade secret. So the more books a publisher has printed the more likely a book is to become a bestseller. And once a book has become a bestseller the popularity is self-propagating. Books on the bestseller lists are often discounted by retailers, making them more attractive to buyers.
Endings: The sad belief that an author knows when to stop. I could go on but I may have gone long enough and then some already. Anyway. The end whether it's appropriate or not.
-or-
Comfort for People Who Think Science is Bad
I'm not writing this with the intention of upsetting anyone. As a general rule I'm painfully polite and avoid confrontation when possible. I don't like to argue because it tends to be futile. These are more the kinds of things I might say to certain people if I were the kind of person who confronted people. Just my personal beliefs. I'll leave out the age of the world and the actual date of Christ's birth and even the exactness of the calendar year as most people have heard all those. Instead I'll focus on some a little less common.
Waiting in Line: I started with this one intentionally. If there are multiple lines someplace and you choose one but then find yourself thinking that the other line is moving faster- you're right. You're right even if you switch lines. Statistically speaking the other line will always be shorter and faster moving. You're actually right about this. Feel vindicated- you're not paranoid. Unfortunately there's nothing you can do about it.
Winning the Lottery: Despite the fact that the lottery is sometimes won by people the odds that it will be won by you are slated millions to one against. You'd be better off saving the money you usually spend on lottery tickets instead of wasting it (unless, of course your only purpose for buying them is for the purchase of false hope and in that case you go ahead.)
Vaccination/Autism: Correlation is not causation. Anyone who has ever taken any kind of statistical analysis course knows very well that the correlation of two things occurring does not mean that one causes the other. All of the people who think that we shouldn't vaccinate children (vaccination being the single most effect wide-spread public health measure ever implemented in terms of lives saved) because there is anecdotal "evidence" that they cause autism are sadly deluded. Children usually start displaying signs of autism spectrum disorder before the age of three. Children with autism spectrum disorder may seem to be more or less normal children until then. Vaccinations for various diseases are given to children before they start school as required by law (and if they go to a daycare before then they are generally required to have them before entering though it depends on the child care provider). It's generally agreed that after a certain period it's better to get your children vaccinated sooner rather than later. Studies, slates of studies, some of them even double-blind if that's something that concerns you, have shown again and again that the incidence of autism among children is, if anything, possibly a little lower in children who have been vaccinated versus those who were not. If as much money was spent on trying to determine an actual cause of autism as opposed to pursuing this fictitious link maybe we would know the real causes behind it.
Another thing that people say about Autism is that there are so many more cases now and the numbers keep increasing. That is true. Absolutely true. But the numbers aren't higher because of environmental or medical reasons. The numbers are higher, firstly, because the population is a lot larger than it used to be and secondly (and more importantly) because the term "autism" is used very broadly and encompasses a huge number of disorders.
Fair Dice: I decided I had to include this one as a jab at the four years I spent on the high school math team. Teachers tend to teach students about probability and statistics through coin-flips, dice rolls, and decks of cards as these are things that both give board games an element of chance as well as being widely-known. Thereafter every time you play a game and someone rolls too many box cars you say that it's unfair. It is. It is unfair. It's statistically improbable. But the fact that it's statistically improbable makes perfect sense. That wasn't where you were wrong. You were wrong in your assumption that the dice were fair. It's rare to find a die that is never mind the fact that all those neat little problems in your books always forget to account for everything else in the world of physics.
Voting: Both the idea that your individual vote matters immensely and the idea that it does not matter at all whether you vote or not are incorrect. The first is not true because votes in large-scale, important elections never come down to a single vote cast by a single individual. The latter is untrue not because it does come down to a single vote but because if everyone like you failed to vote then the lack of the segment that thinks like you will affect the end result of the vote. So vote or not- it doesn't matter as long as you know that your justifications are wrong.
Gambling: Much like the lottery the odds are harshly in the favor of the house. The only difference is that people win from gambling often enough to make you optimistic enough to waste a lot of money.
Men & Dinosaurs: Dinosaurs went extinct tens of millions of years before anything even remotely like modern man ever existed.
Organic Farming: The idea that strictly organic farming can save the world is absurd. Unless, when you say 'the world' you are talking only about the planet itself, and not the people on it. There just isn't enough arable land feed everyone that does exist or will exist through organic farming alone. So unless you would like to kill off a great deal of the population so that you can make your vision a reality it's just not going to work.
"Protection": The idea that condoms are always effective is wrong. Especially when they are put on improperly, defective, come off, or break. 15-25 out of one hundred women become pregnant after sex using a condom. When used faithfully hormone-based methods are much more effective for preventing pregnancy and, of course, sterilization, IUDs and Implants are most effective at preventing pregnancy. Don't throw away your condoms just yet, though. Because one in five Americans have an STD and eighty percent of those who do have no idea that they do. That means that if you've had sex with more than four different people you're virtually guaranteed to have had sex with someone with an STD. So unless you are your partner are faithful and have been recently tested for an STD you're still going to want to use protection.
Airplane Safety: The idea that airplanes are not safe is incorrect. Flying in an airplane is just as safe mile-per-mile as driving in a car. The only reason you might think otherwise is because the media is obsessed with planes but car crashes happen so frequently that they get far less news coverage.
Bestsellers: Bestselling books are not necessarily books that have sold the most copies. The most popular list of bestsellers (put out by the New York Times) is calculated using both sales reported from retail sales as well as how many books are being printed and 'other factors' which are kept as a trade secret. So the more books a publisher has printed the more likely a book is to become a bestseller. And once a book has become a bestseller the popularity is self-propagating. Books on the bestseller lists are often discounted by retailers, making them more attractive to buyers.
Endings: The sad belief that an author knows when to stop. I could go on but I may have gone long enough and then some already. Anyway. The end whether it's appropriate or not.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Thought Experiment
I want to ask people their written opinion of me. It ought to be between ten and five hundred words. As much or as little as they want, essentially. I will leave the question essentially open to interpretation. If they want to write what they think of my personality they can or what they think of my appearance or whatever impression they might have of me. I'm not afraid of hearing anything bad because these people aren't gossiping behind my back, they're telling me their opinion. What I want to do is compare the answers I receive. I don't care what the answers do or don't say about me. I want to see what the answers say about them.
I imagine there will be distinct groupings among answers. The kind of answers I get may have to do with the context of my relationship with these people. It may have to do with the kind of person they are. It may have to do with how long or short a period of time they've known me. It may have to do with what other people say about me (assuming that at least some of these are posted in a public forum where other responses can be read and reacted to.) The more responses I get the more easily I can sort the answers into different categories.
If you're reading this right now, whether you know me for real or you just read my blog, feel free post a comment about me for my thought experiment. Go ahead. Tell me what you think about me in five hundred words or less.
I imagine there will be distinct groupings among answers. The kind of answers I get may have to do with the context of my relationship with these people. It may have to do with the kind of person they are. It may have to do with how long or short a period of time they've known me. It may have to do with what other people say about me (assuming that at least some of these are posted in a public forum where other responses can be read and reacted to.) The more responses I get the more easily I can sort the answers into different categories.
If you're reading this right now, whether you know me for real or you just read my blog, feel free post a comment about me for my thought experiment. Go ahead. Tell me what you think about me in five hundred words or less.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Pluto Wasn't Plutoed
I wrote the following book review for the book "How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming
". I wrote this at work as something my boss could post on the company blog. Usually what I write for the blog is somewhat different from what I would usually write or tell people but this time I rather like the original and chose to post it unchanged (excluding the editing of a minor typographical error). Here it is:
Most people of my generation would agree that the perfect word to describe what happened to the planet Pluto a few years ago actually arose into use after the fact. Pluto was plutoed. It means it was demoted without due cause or reason. Pluto went from being the last planet to be discovered, an icy but beloved oddball among the nine planets of our solar system, to being nothing more than a “dwarf planet” in truth just the second-largest Kupier belt object among hundreds of others. Mike Brown, author of “How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming” and also one of the people who stood to gain the most from Pluto remaining a planet, paints a different picture of events. Pluto wasn’t demoted without due cause or reason, it wasn’t plutoed, not according to Mike Brown anyway.
Despite being written by a respected astronomer the book is far from dry and boring. It doesn’t read even remotely like an article you might find in Sky & Telescope or some other scientific journal. Mike Brown sets out to tell you a story- not a story of an abandoned planet now cast out of the pantheon but a story of an entirely different kind. It is a story about a man convinced that there were more planets out there in our solar system waiting to be discovered. It is a story about astronomy, about values, about falling in love, and about rivalry but most of all it is a story about science. Even if you disagree with the verdict eventually issued about Pluto’s status among celestial bodies (Mike Brown even disagrees) I’m sure you’ll find that you enjoy this story.
The book was very enjoyable to read and difficult to put down. There’s a lot to be learned about astronomy in this book without having anything forced down your throat. The book is also surprisingly humorous and very compelling. It does not require a very high reading level or contain a lot of complex language. It does include some complex ideas about science and astronomy in particular but the author does a fantastic job of breaking them down and explaining them in an accessible manner. I would recommend this book to anyone old enough to appreciate (and maybe be a little outraged by the demotion of) the former planet called Pluto.
". I wrote this at work as something my boss could post on the company blog. Usually what I write for the blog is somewhat different from what I would usually write or tell people but this time I rather like the original and chose to post it unchanged (excluding the editing of a minor typographical error). Here it is:Most people of my generation would agree that the perfect word to describe what happened to the planet Pluto a few years ago actually arose into use after the fact. Pluto was plutoed. It means it was demoted without due cause or reason. Pluto went from being the last planet to be discovered, an icy but beloved oddball among the nine planets of our solar system, to being nothing more than a “dwarf planet” in truth just the second-largest Kupier belt object among hundreds of others. Mike Brown, author of “How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming” and also one of the people who stood to gain the most from Pluto remaining a planet, paints a different picture of events. Pluto wasn’t demoted without due cause or reason, it wasn’t plutoed, not according to Mike Brown anyway.
Despite being written by a respected astronomer the book is far from dry and boring. It doesn’t read even remotely like an article you might find in Sky & Telescope or some other scientific journal. Mike Brown sets out to tell you a story- not a story of an abandoned planet now cast out of the pantheon but a story of an entirely different kind. It is a story about a man convinced that there were more planets out there in our solar system waiting to be discovered. It is a story about astronomy, about values, about falling in love, and about rivalry but most of all it is a story about science. Even if you disagree with the verdict eventually issued about Pluto’s status among celestial bodies (Mike Brown even disagrees) I’m sure you’ll find that you enjoy this story.
The book was very enjoyable to read and difficult to put down. There’s a lot to be learned about astronomy in this book without having anything forced down your throat. The book is also surprisingly humorous and very compelling. It does not require a very high reading level or contain a lot of complex language. It does include some complex ideas about science and astronomy in particular but the author does a fantastic job of breaking them down and explaining them in an accessible manner. I would recommend this book to anyone old enough to appreciate (and maybe be a little outraged by the demotion of) the former planet called Pluto.
I am Not Turning Into My Sister-in-Law
My supposed sister-in-law is not actually, strictly-speaking, my sister-in-law. She is not married to my brother but they've been together for a few years and they have a two-year-old child and will presumably be together for the foreseeable future. So for the sake of sparing other people that explanation I just say that she is my sister-in-law rather than my brother's baby-mama. Mostly though I just refer to her as Cheryl.
Interestingly I am friends with Cheryl. I don't hate her. This is party because of the kind of person I am and partly because I would find it hard not to be friends with her. She's too crazy to not be interesting. I mean literally crazy. I think she might very well be Manic Depressant. She has been diagnosed with OCD, anxiety, and depression. Interestingly the doctor was most concerned about her OCD and prescribed her some medication that Cheryl ceased to take after a couple weeks because it made her feel as though she had "gotten stoned four hours ago"... all the time.
For further clarification Cheryl has things that bother her immensely. Presumably it's because of her OCD. But things have to get done a certain way. And she will get incredibly bothered and have to go and rearrange the living room or sort all of the change that she can find by the year it was minted. She will get worked up over small things that I don't even think about. Sometimes there are maelstroms of anger at tiny things going wrong.
She is a vegetarian environmentalist who smokes cigarettes. She claims that she would like to just burn down her house and go live in the woods. She doesn't like consumerism but she likes to buy things. She thinks that we should farm organically (this is not rational, not unless your only goal is saving the planet and never mind all those fuckers who have to die in order for that to happen) and despite the fact that she knows that buying products labeled "organic" is illogical she does it anyway ("organic" doesn't actually mean anything in the United States because of commercialism.)
She likes to argue sheerly for the sake of arguing. She likes to read classics so that she'll be able to talk to a wider range of people about the books she has read. She disconnected the internet at their house because she felt it would force her to read more and play more board games. I'm not sure if it helped that particularly but it does prevent her from spending mass amounts of time being a Dirty Facebooker and compulsively buying pseudo-antiques on eBay.
This is also the woman who (not quite literally) threw me out of my previous apartment and caused me to almost move to Georgia. This was a large fiasco in my life that caused me to have to move and rather a lot of financial stress as well as regular stress for that matter.
And while that rant felt pretty good on its own you may be hoping I will soon come to the point implied by the title of this essay. The point really mostly has to do with my roommate's girlfriend and the almost indescribable rage I feel about her existence in general. Unfortunately there's going to be a little more backstory which should hopefully also provide you a little amusement.
It's generally better if I tell this story in the order that I found things out rather than chronologically. My roommate went to visit family for Christmas. He was not dating anyone when he left. He came back to our apartment on Boxing Day (which is the twenty-sixth of December for your edification) and he took a shower and cleaned up his room a little bit. He said he was going to bring a girl over and offered to take me to spend the night at K'van and Cheryl's but I thought that maybe they were tired of having people over after Christmas and said that I could hide in my room.
So I went into my room and cuddled with my laptop. I noticed something about this girl almost before she set foot in our apartment. She has one of the most annoying and hard-to-ignore voices I have ever had the displeasure of being exposed to. With the volume of my headphones at a comfortable level I could still hear her very easily even though the closed door to my room. I probably thought something like: "Oh god, I hope he doesn't bring this girl over often."
Within two hours of this girl being at our apartment a thing happened which is not something that should happen on a first date. I didn't actually see it because I was in my room but I heard it easily enough. She dragged Sean into the bathroom and (I imagine) pointed at the toilet and said: "You see this? You don't do this. The toilet seat goes down." ...I have it on good authority from married women that this is a bad habit that you do not try to break your significant other of until you are at least engaged and living together if not actually married.
As someone who closes the toilet lid completely (out of habit from when I lived at home because my brother's dog would drink out of the toilet otherwise) after I go to the bathroom I feel as if I should have the right to complain about this to my own roommate if I want to. And I don't want to. I don't care. It doesn't bother me. If you are too stupid to check and make sure that the toilet seat is down before you sit you probably deserve to fall in. I would not complain to my theoretical future spouse that they fail to close the toilet lid before flushing (as not doing so is disgusting) but hey, whatever, as long as I'm not in the room feel free to spray microbes and bacteria everywhere!
The next day I finally met this girl because (of course) she spent the night. She started calling herself Sean's girlfriend even though they were definitely not dating when he left she she lives in the town we live in (not where Sean went for Christmas) yet magically she had become his girlfriend in this time. I could already see signs in my apartment that, if my life were a novel, the reader would take as horrifying foreshadowing. My roommate left with her later that day to go do whatever and I optimistically thought she wouldn't be back soon if I were lucky. They returned after a while and filled our apartment with the nasty smell of a giant pan of pulled pork (which is actually still mostly-uneaten in our refrigerator more than two weeks later as I refuse to touch it on general principles). They also drank vodka cran and she got extremely drunk. I erroneously thought that the fact of her being drunk had to do with her behavior that night when I sort-of hung out with them (sort-of because we were all in the living room even though I would have preferred she were pretty much anywhere else).
She stayed the night again that night. In fact, from the time he first brought her over (before which they were not dating) she stayed at our apartment for four days except when she had to work. In fact, for the last two weeks, she has been at our apartment pretty much constantly aside from working with few exceptions. One day last week I had a day off and she had a day off while my roommate was working and she spent the whole day at our apartment. I periodically fired questions at her in a theoretically non-threatening manner.
It turns out that this girl is exactly one month younger than I am, making her twenty years old. Not only that but she has a one-year-old daughter. I have to wonder who takes care of this child while she is constantly at our apartment. I also have to wonder where exactly she really lives as she is always here.
Other personal traits (read: flaws) that I have confirmed through observation of her include her constant texting or facebooking or whatever it is that she does with her phone. I don't know or care what she does with her phone but her juvenile ringtone has jarred me from my thoughts many times and she tends to make what I assume she thinks are snide comments out loud at whoever is contacting her. She also makes statements that are clearly wrong and then justifies the fact that she is "right" about them because she's his girlfriend and he has to agree with her (because she has boobs, I guess?) She constantly needs to be the center of attention or she tends to lose interest and goes into Sean's bedroom to "nap" (read: regain attention). She attempted to make a simple meal (chicken, dried potato flakes and some kind of vegetable, I think) in our kitchen that did something unspeakably awful to actually ruin our wok (it cannot be cleaned, we are going to have to throw it away and buy another one) and needless to say was never consumed. She has stuff in our shower and a hair straightener on our sink and there are bras on Sean's floor and little sparkly hair-clippies everywhere. I'm not sure if the stuff strewn about is some kind of female territory marking ritual (I suspect not) or if she's just a slob. In short: she acts exactly like my fourteen-year-old cousin (minus the sex and child-having, of course) who I already find to be several years less mature than I was when I was that age.
All the time that this girl has been here I have looked at the things everywhere. I have stared at our poor wok. I have scraped nail polish off one of my endtables in the living room. I have done an inordinate number of extra dishes. I have wondered how much extra her showering and hair-straightening and inability to turn off lights is going to cost me in electricity (our hot water is electric). I have looked at her shoes that she kicked off on the carpet as she walked into the room instead of wiping them on the mat and leaving them on the linoleum by the door like a civilized person.
I have observed all of these various offenses and wanted to tell her about all of her flaws and absurdity to her face in Cheryl's usual style. In fact I even tried to get them to come over to K'van and Cheryl's so that Cheryl could at least tell Sean (who is an old friend of hers before I ever met him) what an idiot he is being. I keep thinking these angry thoughts and wanting vengeance and wondering if I'm turning into Cheryl like the paranoiac that I am. Turning into Cheryl is a terrifying thought. I also think that cock-blocking my roommate is probably not very nice. I realize that I am not exactly normal and perhaps I shouldn't say anything out of the fear that I don't actually have any highground to stand on.
I decided to test the turning-into-Cheryl theory by describing the situation to female co-workers and seeing if a theoretical confrontation with Sean is something they would advise against. It was not. They encouraged it. I can only conclude that I'm not turning into Cheryl. The only thing that worries me is the rage that I feel. I have not actually hated anyone since before I went through puberty. I thought it was something I had grown out of as a rational person. Evidently this is not true. Given the right stimuli I can still hate people.
I'm giving it two more weeks to see if he breaks up with her when the plot points charting the novelty of having sex with this chick intersects with the line marking how much annoying bullshit he can tolerate. I know I've long reached the level of annoyance I can suffer silently and I'm rapidly approaching the level necessary for me to start doing vindictive things to her stuff. Watch out sparkly little girl hair-clippies and watch out unsuspecting pedestrians below my window- soon you're going to meet.
Interestingly I am friends with Cheryl. I don't hate her. This is party because of the kind of person I am and partly because I would find it hard not to be friends with her. She's too crazy to not be interesting. I mean literally crazy. I think she might very well be Manic Depressant. She has been diagnosed with OCD, anxiety, and depression. Interestingly the doctor was most concerned about her OCD and prescribed her some medication that Cheryl ceased to take after a couple weeks because it made her feel as though she had "gotten stoned four hours ago"... all the time.
For further clarification Cheryl has things that bother her immensely. Presumably it's because of her OCD. But things have to get done a certain way. And she will get incredibly bothered and have to go and rearrange the living room or sort all of the change that she can find by the year it was minted. She will get worked up over small things that I don't even think about. Sometimes there are maelstroms of anger at tiny things going wrong.
She is a vegetarian environmentalist who smokes cigarettes. She claims that she would like to just burn down her house and go live in the woods. She doesn't like consumerism but she likes to buy things. She thinks that we should farm organically (this is not rational, not unless your only goal is saving the planet and never mind all those fuckers who have to die in order for that to happen) and despite the fact that she knows that buying products labeled "organic" is illogical she does it anyway ("organic" doesn't actually mean anything in the United States because of commercialism.)
She likes to argue sheerly for the sake of arguing. She likes to read classics so that she'll be able to talk to a wider range of people about the books she has read. She disconnected the internet at their house because she felt it would force her to read more and play more board games. I'm not sure if it helped that particularly but it does prevent her from spending mass amounts of time being a Dirty Facebooker and compulsively buying pseudo-antiques on eBay.
This is also the woman who (not quite literally) threw me out of my previous apartment and caused me to almost move to Georgia. This was a large fiasco in my life that caused me to have to move and rather a lot of financial stress as well as regular stress for that matter.
And while that rant felt pretty good on its own you may be hoping I will soon come to the point implied by the title of this essay. The point really mostly has to do with my roommate's girlfriend and the almost indescribable rage I feel about her existence in general. Unfortunately there's going to be a little more backstory which should hopefully also provide you a little amusement.
It's generally better if I tell this story in the order that I found things out rather than chronologically. My roommate went to visit family for Christmas. He was not dating anyone when he left. He came back to our apartment on Boxing Day (which is the twenty-sixth of December for your edification) and he took a shower and cleaned up his room a little bit. He said he was going to bring a girl over and offered to take me to spend the night at K'van and Cheryl's but I thought that maybe they were tired of having people over after Christmas and said that I could hide in my room.
So I went into my room and cuddled with my laptop. I noticed something about this girl almost before she set foot in our apartment. She has one of the most annoying and hard-to-ignore voices I have ever had the displeasure of being exposed to. With the volume of my headphones at a comfortable level I could still hear her very easily even though the closed door to my room. I probably thought something like: "Oh god, I hope he doesn't bring this girl over often."
Within two hours of this girl being at our apartment a thing happened which is not something that should happen on a first date. I didn't actually see it because I was in my room but I heard it easily enough. She dragged Sean into the bathroom and (I imagine) pointed at the toilet and said: "You see this? You don't do this. The toilet seat goes down." ...I have it on good authority from married women that this is a bad habit that you do not try to break your significant other of until you are at least engaged and living together if not actually married.
As someone who closes the toilet lid completely (out of habit from when I lived at home because my brother's dog would drink out of the toilet otherwise) after I go to the bathroom I feel as if I should have the right to complain about this to my own roommate if I want to. And I don't want to. I don't care. It doesn't bother me. If you are too stupid to check and make sure that the toilet seat is down before you sit you probably deserve to fall in. I would not complain to my theoretical future spouse that they fail to close the toilet lid before flushing (as not doing so is disgusting) but hey, whatever, as long as I'm not in the room feel free to spray microbes and bacteria everywhere!
The next day I finally met this girl because (of course) she spent the night. She started calling herself Sean's girlfriend even though they were definitely not dating when he left she she lives in the town we live in (not where Sean went for Christmas) yet magically she had become his girlfriend in this time. I could already see signs in my apartment that, if my life were a novel, the reader would take as horrifying foreshadowing. My roommate left with her later that day to go do whatever and I optimistically thought she wouldn't be back soon if I were lucky. They returned after a while and filled our apartment with the nasty smell of a giant pan of pulled pork (which is actually still mostly-uneaten in our refrigerator more than two weeks later as I refuse to touch it on general principles). They also drank vodka cran and she got extremely drunk. I erroneously thought that the fact of her being drunk had to do with her behavior that night when I sort-of hung out with them (sort-of because we were all in the living room even though I would have preferred she were pretty much anywhere else).
She stayed the night again that night. In fact, from the time he first brought her over (before which they were not dating) she stayed at our apartment for four days except when she had to work. In fact, for the last two weeks, she has been at our apartment pretty much constantly aside from working with few exceptions. One day last week I had a day off and she had a day off while my roommate was working and she spent the whole day at our apartment. I periodically fired questions at her in a theoretically non-threatening manner.
It turns out that this girl is exactly one month younger than I am, making her twenty years old. Not only that but she has a one-year-old daughter. I have to wonder who takes care of this child while she is constantly at our apartment. I also have to wonder where exactly she really lives as she is always here.
Other personal traits (read: flaws) that I have confirmed through observation of her include her constant texting or facebooking or whatever it is that she does with her phone. I don't know or care what she does with her phone but her juvenile ringtone has jarred me from my thoughts many times and she tends to make what I assume she thinks are snide comments out loud at whoever is contacting her. She also makes statements that are clearly wrong and then justifies the fact that she is "right" about them because she's his girlfriend and he has to agree with her (because she has boobs, I guess?) She constantly needs to be the center of attention or she tends to lose interest and goes into Sean's bedroom to "nap" (read: regain attention). She attempted to make a simple meal (chicken, dried potato flakes and some kind of vegetable, I think) in our kitchen that did something unspeakably awful to actually ruin our wok (it cannot be cleaned, we are going to have to throw it away and buy another one) and needless to say was never consumed. She has stuff in our shower and a hair straightener on our sink and there are bras on Sean's floor and little sparkly hair-clippies everywhere. I'm not sure if the stuff strewn about is some kind of female territory marking ritual (I suspect not) or if she's just a slob. In short: she acts exactly like my fourteen-year-old cousin (minus the sex and child-having, of course) who I already find to be several years less mature than I was when I was that age.
All the time that this girl has been here I have looked at the things everywhere. I have stared at our poor wok. I have scraped nail polish off one of my endtables in the living room. I have done an inordinate number of extra dishes. I have wondered how much extra her showering and hair-straightening and inability to turn off lights is going to cost me in electricity (our hot water is electric). I have looked at her shoes that she kicked off on the carpet as she walked into the room instead of wiping them on the mat and leaving them on the linoleum by the door like a civilized person.
I have observed all of these various offenses and wanted to tell her about all of her flaws and absurdity to her face in Cheryl's usual style. In fact I even tried to get them to come over to K'van and Cheryl's so that Cheryl could at least tell Sean (who is an old friend of hers before I ever met him) what an idiot he is being. I keep thinking these angry thoughts and wanting vengeance and wondering if I'm turning into Cheryl like the paranoiac that I am. Turning into Cheryl is a terrifying thought. I also think that cock-blocking my roommate is probably not very nice. I realize that I am not exactly normal and perhaps I shouldn't say anything out of the fear that I don't actually have any highground to stand on.
I decided to test the turning-into-Cheryl theory by describing the situation to female co-workers and seeing if a theoretical confrontation with Sean is something they would advise against. It was not. They encouraged it. I can only conclude that I'm not turning into Cheryl. The only thing that worries me is the rage that I feel. I have not actually hated anyone since before I went through puberty. I thought it was something I had grown out of as a rational person. Evidently this is not true. Given the right stimuli I can still hate people.
I'm giving it two more weeks to see if he breaks up with her when the plot points charting the novelty of having sex with this chick intersects with the line marking how much annoying bullshit he can tolerate. I know I've long reached the level of annoyance I can suffer silently and I'm rapidly approaching the level necessary for me to start doing vindictive things to her stuff. Watch out sparkly little girl hair-clippies and watch out unsuspecting pedestrians below my window- soon you're going to meet.
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