Reasons That You're Probably Insane

You're probably insane if you:

Ever talk to yourself outloud
Ever answer your own questions
Ever talk to your pets
Ever talk to inanimate objects
Compulsively check your e-mail
Compulsively check your Facebook
Blow off real-world activities in order to tend your farm in Farmville
Blow off real-world activities in order to play any flash game
Spend multiple hours each day playing any kind of game
Feel inexplicable joy when your cellphone goes off
Feel joy when other people are hurt
Fail to feel anything in response to tragedy
Feel joy in response to tragedy
Feel any other otherwise inappropriate emotion during any situation in which a normal person would feel one specific and obvious emotion
Take any kind of medication
Practice any kind of religion
Pray during scary, life-threatening, or stressful situations
Actively try to be unique
Obsessively try to fit in and be like everyone else
Obsess over the lives of celebrities
Frequently watch the news
Exercise on a regular basis
Drink sweat farmed from animals
Are a omnivore
Are a vegan or vegetarian
Are pro-life
Are pro-choice
Have ever lived on terra firma
Know how to read the english language
Think that I'm just using this list to play games with your head

Reasons I Might Be Crazy

Some reasons I might be crazy:


I often find myself counting my steps.
When I'm in the grocery store I find myself counting in foreign languages in my head as I navigate around people. When I do this and get to a point I can't remember I switch rapidly to another language and cycle through all the ones I know.
I frequently practice conversations with people in advance.
I frequently come up with comebacks or funny stories to tell in advance.
Even though many things bother me to the point of distraction I deal with them passive aggressively rather than head-on.
I over-plan simple things like bus trips to unfamiliar places and conversations I don't want to have.
I sometimes wait to see if problems will go away before dealing with them.
I carry on conversations with myself in my head. Both talking to and answering myself.
I narrate my life inside my head editing as I go along. You know how Scrubs is narrated? I do that. All the time.
I never stop thinking. My head is always busy.
I tap on things and pace back and forth when I'm uncomfortable.
I go through the same motions again and again when I deal with customers to the point that I even brush my hair out of my eyes at the same points during every transaction.
I come up with optimal PC phrases to say to customers to make them happy and use them over and over again.
I am not fond of greetings.
I am startled when I am referred to by my real name. Especially outloud.
I begin conversations with no preamble.
I talk about whatever I happen to be thinking about at any given time.
I can be quiet for long stretches some times but at others I speak like it's a compulsion.
I have this paranoia that I need to get a MRI to find out if I have Multiples Sclerosis.
I prefer fantasy to reality.

The Man Who Golfs in Thunderstorms

A man who golfs in thunderstorms is, without a doubt, looking for trouble. And a someone who attracts emotional drama like a man who golfs in thunderstorms? Well, that's a person worth writing about. I will not mention this person's name, reveal the identity of those they are involved with, talk about anything I have been specifically asked not to talk about, or generally do anything worth suing over. Because yes, this is a real person and real events I'm about to detail. Why? Because it's worth writing about, as I mentioned, and also because he's kind of been driving me insane lately. Passive aggressive much? Well, maybe a little.

I have known the Golfer for about a year now, I guess. He is, I think, twenty-six years old. He was married right out of high school for seven years to what I have been told was a very crazy person but that's really all I know about that. He moved down to the city that I live in about a year ago to be with this girl who seemed all right the couple times I met her. Very laid-back pot-smoking individual living hippie-style with a bunch of other people. We'll call this girl Sea. He was living with Sea (and the other people that lived in the house) and working down here and he somehow managed to drive Sea away by being too cuddly. Seriously. That's pretty much how he explained it to me.

As a result of the fact that the Golfer was living with Sea when they broke up he came to "temporarily" live on our couch until he could "find his own apartment" because the Golfer is my roommate's brother. So the Golfer moved out of Sea's house and onto our couch. For a while after he spent a bunch of time "taking rides" with a chick that he was working with that I will call Elle. I met Elle a couple of times and she seemed okay but was obviously much more interested in dating the Golfer that he was in dating her. And by that I mean that the Golfer liked hanging out with her but didn't want to date her and was totally oblivious of the fact that Elle wanted to date him. So he hung out with this Elle chick for a couple of weeks until he started something with another coworker whom I will call Thorn. There's a reason that I decided this particular person's codename should be Thorn and I'm sure you'll figure out why as you read on.

So let me tell you what I know about Thorn given that I can't recall having met her (and I don't think I actually have met her at any point). Thorn is twenty-one and so just a little older than myself being as I am almost twenty-one at the time of this writing. Before he started dating her the Golfer already knew two things about her that would have made me not want to date her at all. Number one, Thorn has cancer. Not cancer in the way that I jokingly say that all of your cells are cancerous but cancer as in she has a tumor growing in one of her lymph nodes or something to that effect. Number two, Thorn also has Multiple Sclerosis. They say that the younger you are diagnosed the worse your MS is. I have personal experience with MS as my mother was diagnosed when I was ten and my aunt a few years later. My mother was diagnosed in her forties, had good health insurance to cover medications and the thousands of dollars worth of injections she does every year and she's still been noticeably affected by her MS. I cannot imagine being with a twenty-one-year-old who was diagnosed with MS. Especially not because she was diagnosed because she started falling.

So, maybe I'm a terrible person but I wouldn't have started dating Thorn. But the Golfer did. And she already seemed to have some relationship issues. Around the time they started dating she had just taken a restraining order out against her previous boyfriend whom she had been living with. Which, to me, was an obvious sign of trouble. You know, one of life's roadsigns that states "Whoa there, use your big head to think about this one" but should really be accompanied Ian McKellan's voice as Gandalf saying "You shall not pass." But at first Thorn seemed weirdly... generous by buying the Golfer a fancy phone
and putting it on her phone plan and such. But by the time their two-week anniversary rolled around her bitchy insanity started to become clear. And if I weren't a terrible person and had actually started dating her it would have been at this point that I stopped. When people who aren't ridiculously wealthy, fabulously beautiful celebrities are dating and one of them is insane at least one of them is going to end up hurt so it's best to end it as quickly as possible. The Golfer did not do this.

Instead he spent a lot of time at her place (when she had moved in somewhere her ex was not inhabiting) and not just while she was there. He started to get all buddy-buddy with her roommate(s?) and their friend(s?) because they liked Magic and the Golfer does as well. He'd even sleep in her room when she was not there. This seems a little creepy to me but I guess that could just be my opinion. He announced one day that he was going to move in with her since he was spending so much time over there anyway. But he was not officially going to move in until the beginning of the next month. Before that could happen Thorn got cold feet or something and decided she needed to go and stay with some people (and not just some people but from what I understand these people were restraining-order-ex's family) to sort out her feelings. Then the Golfer announced that he would not be moving until August at the earliest (it being June still at this point).

Things sort of seemed better between Thorn and the Golfer after she "thought about things". For a few minutes, anyway, because it was just after that things took a turn for the worse. Thorn went to go and get a IUD (a internal contraceptive device if you're not familiar) implanted upon the orders of a doctor different than her usual one. So after getting the IUD implanted Thorn went off to work and because she didn't want to lose any money by leaving she suffered through painful cramps and bleeding during her shift and returned to the emergency room afterward. It turned out that she'd had a spontaneous abortion because that's what happens if you're already pregnant and you have a IUD implanted. Despite the fact that she supposedly knew about it the doctor that ordered the IUD did not tell Thorn that she was already pregnant. I don't know about you but I feel like if I was a doctor giving orders for a patient who was already pregnant to get a contraceptive device implanted it might occur to me the idiotic redundancy of the situation. How about you?

The part that struck me as weirdly out of place was that when the Golfer relayed this information to me he told me about the spontaneous abortion first and then told me that wasn't even the worst part. He interrupted himself then to assure me that it was his and that wasn't the bad part. He then explained about how the doctor that ordered the IUD supposedly knew about the pregnancy but didn't tell Thorn because she knew from her chart that she'd recently had a painful miscarriage and didn't think that she would want it. The part that struck me as weirdly out of place? The assurance that it was, of course, his. I think if I were in that situation worrying about whether it was mine or not (as it was already gone anyway) would be sort of low down on my list of priorities. I'd be thinking a lot more about suing the doctor because hey, that is what malpractice insurance is for, right? I certainly wouldn't be thinking about naming the dead fetus or getting my skin permanently etched with ink to commemorate the life (if you can call it that) of the fetus.

So while the Golfer was busy designing a tattoo and thinking about suing doctors another thought had occurred to me. What if Thorn didn't have a spontaneous abortion because of the IUD? What if Thorn had gotten an abortion and made up the crazy story about the IUD and the emergency room visit and the doctor who knew she was pregnant because she, Thorn, didn't want to be pregnant and didn't want to tell the Golfer? I was almost inclined to believe that there was a sue-worthy doctor oversight because that somehow seemed more acceptable to me than the idea that someone crazy enough to make up a story like that to cover up getting an abortion existed. So my mind went with the slightly less insane option.

Meanwhile in Wonderland where it's starting to look more and more like Thorn lives, Thorn pushes the Golfer away and her ex-boyfriend (of the restraining order, if you recall) comes to stay with her for a while. At first it seems like she and the Golfer are merely fighting as a result of the emotional trauma that has happened but then, despite a lack of status-change on Facebook (a ever-important relationship indicator in this day and age), it seemed like they were not dating. There was nothing particularly definite about it but it seemed like it had been just a few days between my wondering whether they were still together at all and the Golfer getting a date invitation from a dating website. When did the Golfer sign up for a dating website? I have no idea. What possessed him to want to get involved with another girl so soon? Well, let's just say I don't think those were thoughts that went through the head he keeps on his shoulders (apparently for decoration).

Not only did the Golfer get a date but he got a date invitation from a hot Asian chick. The Golfer is, admittedly, not the hunkiest studmuffin in the world despite the fact that you might get that impression from his string of girls. Now, when a hot chick who is on a dating website invites a guy who isn't swimming in riches to go on a date it should be obvious that there is something about this girl that makes her undesirable for dating. And the first time the Golfer met up with the hot Asian chick (whom I will be calling Ruska because despite the fact that she is extremely Asian she has this really obviously inappropriate and incredibly Russian name) in a sort of pre-date thing he found out what it was. Ruska, whose age I do not know but is (hopefully) at least mid-twenties, has two children. One child is four and the other one is just a year old. During the pre-date she invited him to go on a second non-date ostensibly to see if her younger child was going to be okay going to movies. But this was not a date. This was a test. I even flat-out told him that it was not a date but a test.

Now, the Golfer claims that he is not looking for a serious relationship especially not after the thing with Thorn. And yet despite knowing that the non-date with Ruska and her children was a test the Golfer went anyway. Maybe I wasn't clear enough with my warning about the test. Going meant he passed the test. So while he may have verbally said to Ruska that he just wanted to be "friends" or something and that he wasn't looking for a serious relationship the signals he sent to her by passing the test were quite the opposite. Going to a kid's movie with someone else and their children and being cool about it sends long-term relationship signals whether you like it or not. Regardless of the signals the Golfer sent Ruska sent some of her own as well and not just by being the one to initiate contact and set the date. The Golfer and Ruska and her older child (the younger one ended up not even going despite being the pseudo-reason for the outing) were the only ones in the theater and the kid wanted to be all grown up and sit a few rows in front of them. So the Golfer had a little x-rated Winnie the Pooh experience.

To continue with the mixed signal-sending the Golfer has gone to hang out with Ruska on multiple occasions even though they're just supposed to be friends and he isn't looking for a long-term relationship. Not only that but the Golfer had Ruska (and her children) over to our (and by "our" I mean mine and my actual roommate's not the Golfer's because he's just supposed to be crashing with us "temporarily"... since March) apartment on at least two occasions while I was home. This is wrong not just because of the mixed signals thing but also because not only is our apartment not particularly child-friendly but also because the Golfer sleeps on our couch and doesn't have a room. My roommate was not very happy when he found out that the Golfer took Ruska into his room and did ... I don't know because they shut the door one of the days that she was over (the day when she just brought the one littler kid who seemed to be sleeping both when they arrived and left).

Meanwhile in Wonderland Thorn has apparently decided that she still wants to be together with the Golfer. At this point the Golfer is not so sure he wants to be together with Thorn and it might be that sanity is kicking in or maybe it's the "friendship" with Ruska that's giving him courage but he basically tells Thorn he doesn't want to be with her anymore. Despite this (because she lives in Wonderland, after all) Thorn text-messages him constantly, sends him messages on Facebook and whatever else and perhaps they even have face-to-face conversations. Having read some of their text messages her tone in these conversations varies wildly between sweet and loving and all "I love you and want to be with you, the Golfer" to angry, resentful, mistrustful and quite "I want to cut off your balls and roast them over a fire because everything bad that has ever happened in the world is ALL YOUR FAULT!" Not only that but Thorn is trying every manipulation card in the book. Up to and literally including a manipulation ("greeting") card she gave him to tell him about what for the moment I will call the surprise plot twist.

Because the card just so happens to be sitting on one of the end-tables in my living room I will include the complete text here:

"As long as I have you, no problem will ever be too big, no day will ever be lonely, no smile will ever go unshared... because as long as I have you, I'll always have everything I need to be happy." That was just the text that was printed on the card though the underlined words were done by Thorn. On the inside cover in her hand Thorn writes: "Whats Meant to be will always Find away~" On the opposite page underneath the inner printed text Thorn writes (note that "Claire" and the replacement of -illegible- for something unreadable and "Thorn" instead of her real name are the only changes I made): "today one of the best things happened, the dr said Claire Might still be here, we did blood work and only time will tell. Nothings definite it could be Ectopic all I know is there is still a chance for our little girl to be here and after loosing -illegible- yesterday I need this Miracle. fer now I'd like this to stay between you and I as if we do lose her No one really gets hurt. But our little Girl Might still be with us. Congrats daddy! Thorn"

Oh yes, you read that correctly, in Wonderland through the magic of plot twists dead fetuses become live festuses again. I know that was a bit crude but I feel I can be nothing but blatant in the face of that reality. Because that seems to be the reality. The medical explanation for this being that she did not have a spontaneous abortion but rather the bleeding was from her body rejecting the IUD and she was still pregnant with this child they'd been mourning. I feel like it has been long enough that she may have noticed prior to saying anything at all to the Golfer. So why wait until now to tell him? Maybe because she wanted to go to the doctor first? But she didn't wait for the test results. So maybe because of Ruska? Or maybe she got pregnant again (possibly from the restraining-order ex she was seeing again)? Or maybe she's not pregnant at all because she's been threatening to get an abortion (after mourning this clump of cells)? I have no idea. Because this is now. Right now it's a soap-opera choose-your-own-adventure of futures.

Oh wait, one more thing, because a good soap opera does not stand for just one major plot twist. Sometimes they're super-sneaky and throw two major plot twists together. Because the morning the Golfer comes home to report about Thorn's apparently pregnant state he also asks my roommate (the Golfer's brother) how he feels about being an Uncle? Which is confusing because the Golfer and roommate's older brother has three children. But then the Golfer added the single word "twice" and his meaning was suddenly, weirdly clear, because as it turns out not only is Thorn still pregnant but Ruska is pregnant as well.

Today's lesson: Condoms are cheaper than children.

What happens now in the exciting new adventures of The Man Who Golfs in Thunderstorms? I really have no idea but I think I can feel some August thunderstorms brewing.

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.