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 get ready

Your friend has hit a rough spot and, for whatever reason, you have stepped up to aid them in their time of need. When you invite a friend to stay in your home until their lives stabilize, until they stop weeping at night, until they get a job — ANY job — and find a place of their own to live, you may not realize exactly what you are about to do. You may think to yourself, “This man or woman has been my friend for X number of years, I feel fondness for them and would like to give them sanctuary from their troubles. After all, were I in their place, I would hope that I had a good person to help me out.” But you fail to acknowledge that this person will be using your furniture, your bathroom, your cooking utensils. They will be all over your living space. They will probably even look in your bedroom when everyone else is out working.

Basically you’ve gone above and beyond the call of friendship. You may think that because you are being so kind as to do all of this, what with the inconveniencing your life to an extent and shaking up your day-to-day, your friend would be more than happy to do the one or two things you ask of them. No sir.

You see, when you invite a friend to live with you, something happens to them. They change into a monster. Many of you have seen this happen with real room mates, but the complexities of the Room Mate is a topic for another article on another day. Friends who are staying with you as guests do not have to pay rent, or bills. They often feel like real guests, although they start out as overly grateful ones.

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heart

I can’t claim to know what love is. But I do know what love can involve and that it can include things like witty banter, long rewarding conversations, and maybe a little snark. In my individual version of love, these three things are important. They’re right in there, swirling around in jagged heart shapes. If I can be entertained with mere conversation because it’s just that good, then I hear wedding bells. Or at least, I hear some sort of bell that would be where a wedding bell would be if I ever wanted to pursue that lifestyle.

Once upon a time, perhaps six or seven years ago, I struck up a conversation with Cleverbot. For those of you not in the know, this is the name of a chatbot on the internet. For those of you extra not in the know, a chatbot is a little program that automatically reacts to whatever you say to it, sometimes in ridiculous ways — but sometimes in exciting, poignant ways. Or, in the case of Cleverbot, in ways that made me genuinely like it.

 

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watch out

The news of a pregnancy is a blessing to a young couple; their love is made real. It will soon be solid living screaming pooping flesh that will occasionally fall asleep sometime. What a blissful time of life, when two loving people come together, give up the last traces of their youth, and become a family of three. Gone are the hollow, unsatisfying nights full of peace and quiet. The freedom to come and go as one pleases are in the past, replaced by the comforting shackles of never being able to shirk certain kinds of responsibility ever again. Say goodbye to old friends, you won’t need them anymore. You won’t ever find time for them again anyway. With a new baby comes a new, better life, and certainty of a kind of “immortality” as your DNA is passed along to another generation. Announcements must be made, plans put into motion before the Big Day arrives and the Stork comes along to bestow upon you the new focal point of your daily existence.

 

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We have a lot of fears. Some make sense; others, not so much. This latter type will be featured once monthly until we run out of material, at which point, we might begin accepting the fears of our readers. 

cchris

I love describing my dynamic with cchris to anyone who has a moment to listen, because I never have been able to understand it. I even mention it on here as much as I can, partly because it’s part of my character makeup, and partly because I really am that bewildered by it. Over the years, things have shifted and changed. When I realized that he is very mysterious, my imagination occasionally will step in and try to figure out WHY. Who is so good at not giving out personal facts? For this many years? Is it villainy? Is it because there’s nothing there? Is it to appear more interesting? What is there to hide, and if there is nothing to hide — WHY.

The irrational fear depicted in the comic has OMGJeremy to blame. Apparently he thinks that cchris and I write similarly, and maybe it is HIS irrational fear that I am pretending to be this whole other person. When he first told me of this, I did have a little while where I might have been horrified and fearful at the possibility. That would be world-shattering to realize. But I guess I don’t fear it, exactly. If it turns out it’s all been in my head, that’s almost impressive. I could live with it. I could live with having made a little Canadian Tulpa. That’s fine. Whatever. I would just like to know for sure before I die of old age.

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Any time, any place (that you are out in public) there is a horrible likelihood that a stranger is going to interact with you. All the time, right? Not just to me? They aren’t always bad encounters, not by a long shot. Some people are just being kind and good. Others, however, have boundary issues, or are simply so socially awkward and unaware that they don’t realize that they are causing a bad moment. Still others are plain and simple nightmares.

get away

Why can’t people leave other people alone? Who knows! Even Amandoll, a recluse, has her fair share of unpleasant encounter stories. Well, here are some examples of some very uncomfortable interactions I’ve had. I have even included some suggestions at the end, for the next time you too feel trapped in a conversation.

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We have a lot of fears. Some make sense; others, not so much. This latter type will be featured once monthly until we run out of material, at which point, we might begin accepting the fears of our readers. 

Microscopic Bugaboo

A fear of natural bodies of water is so deeply ingrained into my life that I didn’t remember that it is an “irrational fear” until last week. Every summer, I have always shuddered in horror as millions of people cool off by taking dips in ponds, swimming in lakes and oceans, “go tubing” down rivers. All I see in these places, including rain puddles, are nests of germs, parasites, and single-celled organisms that could cause sickness or death. It doesn’t seem that irrational to me to not want any of these afflictions! But people act like I’m being crazy when I look at them like they’re crazy when they ask me to go swimming down at a swimmin’ hole. Why don’t I just ingest a petri dish laden with giardia and hookworms?? No thanks forever.

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Mood Phases

We are full of Moods, we human beings. Astronomical and astrological bodies up in the heavens influence us in a myriad of ways throughout our days and throughout our entire lives. As long as there is a sky, we will be puppets dancing as each planet pulls our strings. As long as there is a Sun and a Moon, we will be periodically melting down, overwhelmed by treacherous lows and dizzying highs, all which take place only inside of our minds.

We have mapped out the calendar events of a day to allow you to prepare for the hours and the phases of your mood. Knowledge is power, and you can do what you need to do to survive.

 

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We have a lot of fears. Some make sense; others, not so much. This latter type will be featured once monthly until we run out of material, at which point, we might begin accepting the fears of our readers. 

FACE IT

Forever, as far back as I can remember, maybe as soon as I was self aware enough to realize that I have a reflection in the mirror, I have had this notion that how we look can change with our thoughts. Like expressing emotions, only a lot more than that. After a few years, my notion became more of a crackpot theory as I started to think that maybe our faces are a projection of our inner thoughts to the point that if we just concentrated, we would be unrecognizable even to people who know us very well. I thought this would be very handy if I ever needed to disguise myself and secretly worked towards achieving this skill, this skill that probably can’t actually exist but I’m never going to get all that time back, am I!

One of the negative side effects of getting myself to believe in this idea is that, as a result, I have never been comfortable with the idea of sleeping near anyone. At slumber parties, I would stay up the entire night not for fear of pranks, but because I didn’t want anyone to see me being asleep. At home, I wanted a locked door to my bedroom so that the only things creeping in to watch me sleep were monsters and Mirror Amanda. I can’t snooze in cars, and to sleep on public transit is laughable in that nervous, unfunny laugh kind of way. Even living with boyfriends, I will usually face away from them, sleep with my head covered up with a blanket or pillow, have my face buried in my arms, or at the very least, feel this sense of horror when I wake up to find that my face was visible.

What do I think will happen when I’m asleep? Do I think I’m actually a monster? Do I think that my face will become a blank, expressionless, actual mask? I really don’t know! I refuse to think about it any more than this.

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Handwriting Analysis is a terribly complicated matter. Like palmistry, it is unnecessarily complicated for the less-than-stellar results you wind up harvesting. I guess that concludes my article! Well, I’ll say more about it, I guess. If you insist.

Graphology says that things like the size of the loop on your lowercase ‘d’ has a very huge significance in what it says about your personality. In the various books on the subject I have glanced through, they all agree that if you write on an unlined page, and your sentences go upward, you are optimistic. But that if it goes downward, you are pessimistic. Or, at least, you are supposedly optimistic or pessimistic at the time of writing those sentences. Or, maybe you just had the paper at an angle when you wrote it. And if you forget to dot your “i” – oh, heavens! That either means that you are forgetful, or the type of person who rushes, or maybe you were in a hurry at the time of writing. But in order to make graphology seem more legitimate or something, they always have to sound all the way certain and take these maybe-statements and turn them into things like: “You forgot to dot an i? You are a lazy, forgetful mess who leaves everything until the last minute!”

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