They should have asked me to write this list. Here goes:
1) Your brothers gain new evidence in their arguments that you are a filthy hippie
2) You save money on hair care products
Trust me, guys. I'm an expert at this.
​

By the looks of these lovebirds, the secret to a happy relationship is uploading your soul to the intergalactic mainframe as demanded by the invading robot overlords. After a romantic brunch of updating their software, they go for a nice walk in the park. Only to have to update their software again, because let's face it, our robot overlords are going to be created by Apple.

Here's a good sign that you shouldn't get married: if you're physically running away from the alter on your wedding day, in your wedding dress, maybe this marriage thing isn't for you.

You don't have to be a genius to know that tampon mistakes are rarely--if ever--subtle. Except in this case, in which the apparent mistake is that a stranger offered to insert a tampon for her. That is a big tampon no-no.
​

Here we have a list apparently written by someone who has never encountered its subject. Loaded potatoes? Really? I've been a nanny for many years now, and if you ever go out on a date night saying, "The kids haven't eaten yet, but I left everything you need to make loaded potatoes!" I will give them jellybeans wrapped in Fruit-by-the-Foot soaked in whiskey for dinner and not make them brush their teeth. Also I'll fart on your pillows. A lot.
​

Mistake #1: including that lollipop in your cunnilingus.That lollipop is huge you maniac, and full of unhealthy sugars and dyes that are terrible for your mouth-hole, nevertheless your lady-hole. What are you even using it for? You know what, don't tell me. I honestly don't want to know. Just put it down, and walk away. Then consult your gyno.

Lol well that's just the silliest thing I've ever heard.
​

...I stand corrected.
​

This one is not technically a list, but I like to imagine that his story goes something like, "Well, I'm a white man, so I can do shit like ride my bike alone across long distances and feel totally safe. I can also get away with this whole lazy Amish hipster look I've spent hundreds of dollars and hours of precision cultivating. Having that pink dick is stupendous, I highly recommend it for everyone. The end."

Oh good, because I wasn't terrified into insecurities by the other eight thousand lists targeting my lady bits. The article title says "How to tell if you're normal down there" but her blank stare and forced smile and cagey body language say "I think I just grew teeth down there but I don't want everyone to make a scene about it."

"Smoke weed 11 times. End of list."
​

Reasons 1-8: Besides paying bills, keeping up on household chores, practicing positive physical and mental health, maintaining healthy relationships, navigating complex social situations, fighting oppressive societal norms, searching for satisfaction in mundane jobs, and coming to terms with the existential nature of your own mortality, you probably aren't eating enough leafy greens.

This is getting fucking ridiculous. How terrible is the state of women's health education in this country to warrant so many goddamn lists about pussy health?! Besides, just look how smug this woman is, she knows everything about vaginas. She probably has a podcast about them. She's the Vaguru.

Sign #1: Did you actually carry it inside you, and then did it come out of your actual body? Then it might be your actual baby. Also you might be an actual monster.

5 things? There's really only one that I can think of. Please do his possible future female sexual partners a favor and remind him daily that all porn is lies. But wait till he's a bit older; maybe I'm just a prude, but that literal baby may be a smidgen too young to get a porno talk.

Realistically, I will probably never get married. However, I was just in a wedding two days ago and am in another one in two months, so I have witnessed firsthand the struggle of wedding planning and I'm pretty sure the way to an effortless wedding can be summed up thusly:
1) Be rich enough to be able to afford someone to do all the actual planning for you.
2) If step one is impractical, don't get married. Just don't bother.

Also, those bridesmaids look like they're trying really hard to not kill the bride for saying something like, "I hope you girls find someone, so you can be as happy as I am." Should we kill her? You're right, wait till after the reception.
Et tu, Jessica?

By the looks of this interaction, that white girl just used the phrase, "You're my n***a!" very, very incorrectly, and followed it with a, "What? Lol I'm just kidding! You know I'm not racist! I dated a black guy in college!" and that black girl is remembering why they lost contact with each other after high school.
​

Oh my goodness, look at this poochy pup! So many splotchy spots and tummy tickles and looky your ickle baby paws! I bet you have the sweetest puppy breath and that you give the best kisses! I'm not even going to ask who's a good boy, because it's obviously you! What's your list about, eh? 1,000 of the cutest puppies ever? 50 best dog breeds for cuddling? 9 million ways dogs are simply the best--

...

Welp, looks like I'm done here. I'm going to go cry forever, now.
​

    One time, he was making fun of the (shitty) rice I made, so I threw some at him, and it got on his hat and he was very, very upset. Apparently, his hats are not cheap, and he loves them.

    Yesterday, this hat was left behind when he returned to his apartment after a weekend at our parents' house. (Based on this evidence, we can assume that it is sorely missed.)

PT. II:

    This is me.

    What can I do to cover up this disgusting situation atop my head?

I was out at a party somewhere--I think, probably. At 26, I'm reaching the age where conversations and events are no longer specifically correlated but instead blur vaguely together into "I know this happened, and I know that I've been to that place, but I have no idea how they are related. Did it happen in college? Probably in college. Oh my god, who even cares," stories. This is a terrible beginning. Let me start over.
I once had a conversation at a time and place that is quite frankly irrelevant, and it came up that I was raised in the little redneck hamlet of Hemlock. In college, this was by necessity followed with it's geographical relation to Rochester, which was oftentimes followed by "It's fucking Canada." But this particular conversation happened close enough to Hemlock that I instead was answered with, "Oh, cool! So you must love the fair!" When I laughed heartily, they became confused, at which point I realized that they were, in fact, not joking. I apologized and told them that, no, I do not in fact love the fair. A few other people chimed in with their adoration for what I had always viewed as nothing more than an excuse to vomit deep fried Oreos from the top of a Ferris Wheel while wearing your new bald eagle/Confederate flag t-shirt.
To be clear, I have fun at the fair when I go. This is because I'm a social and surprisingly optimistic person who can generally have fun anywhere so long as I can drink. But I also count my blessings during the years that my annual music festival vacation coincides with the Hemlock Fair, in the same way that the people who live in the town of that music festival probably try to schedule their vacations to avoid the hordes of me flooding their neighborhood. This year, however, I will have nothing but free time during the days of the Hemtucky Fair, and as a twenty-four year resident of that small not-town (who still has important mail delivered there), I will be in attendance. It is my obligation.
I have no actual problem with the Hemlock Fair. I like it just as much as I like all summer fairs. It's that old saying people have: "Not in my backyard." I like the fact that fairs and carnivals exists, just like I appreciate that jails exist to keep criminals off the street. But I'd prefer a jail in my backyard than an event like the Hemlock Fair, because if a criminal escapes, he's sure as shit not going to be sticking around. Instead, I always had a week of this obnoxious crap taking over my enjoyably small town.

        1. You'd better love fried dough. Like, really love it.
    I do not. I can't stand fried dough. I like most deep fried things, but the thick, sugary, oily smell of fried dough makes me nauseous and I don't know why. If you were to describe to me what fried dough is, I'd probably poop myself from the unbearable anticipation of putting it in my mouth. Alas, the disconnect between description and reality leaves me doughless.
    But even for those of you who are avid fried dough fans, your love of the treat is tested when the Fair first opens and the smell of it wafts past the gates and all the way to your doorstep. Does that sound great? I hope so, because that smell isn't leaving for a solid week and a half, because that shit lingers. Even after the fair is done, you catch fragments of it on the breeze, like a fart you squeezed out ten minutes ago that you accidentally rustled free from the sheets. I grew up almost a mile away from the fairgrounds, but that sticky smell seeps into my house like that fog that turns people inside out and takes up a residence more unwanted than in-laws in crappy network TV. If you don't get sick of the smell of fried dough after that long, you probably have diabetes.

        2. You'd better like generic, pop-country music, too.
    Sound travels better than smell, and I could tell you the exact shitty song being blasted over the carnies all the way from my backyard if I listened to that horrible, whiney shit enough to recognize any of the songs. You always know when the events are over because you finally have a few hours of god damn respite from some fucking hick whining about his dead dog and the teenage girl he wants to have sex with.
    Oh, stop it, me. I'm just being all high-and-mighty and superior, and oh so dramatic. There are, after all, some breaks from the country music. Because the demolition derby happens, and then we all get to hear rusty cars plowing into each other for an hour. And then they start up the music again till well-after dark. Hurray.

        3. Traffic
    I made the mistake once of having a job during the hours of the fair, and when I went out to get in my car, I saw that my usually moderately trafficked street was bumper-to-bumper cars heading south towards the fairgrounds. "Lol," I scoffed naively, "sucks to suck." Traffic heading north was fine, so I went to work and put the fair out of my head as much as I could with the smell of fried dough seeping from my pores.
    Then, hours later, I came home and "Sucks to suck" turned into "I'M TRAPPED BETWEEN MILES OF CARS STARING DOWN AN 'ABORTION IS MURDER' STICKER TEN FEET AWAY FROM MY HOUSE THIS IS LITERALLY MY NIGHTMARE." The one good thing about the traffic is that it sometimes drowns out the crappy fair music, but then instead I get the sounds of brakes and honking which is the exact opposite of what I want when I'm sitting next to a crackling bonfire under the moon pretending that the world doesn't exist.

        4. People
    Just in case I'm coming off as a bit of a pretentious asshole (I most certainly am), know that I have similar complaints about a lot of public spaces. I'm not pretentious so much as I am a hermit in disguise, because, while I can have fun just about anywhere, I have the most fun sitting on the couch watching Netflix while declining Facebook invites. I very much value my solitude, and what I liked about growing up where I did was being able to go out my front door and not run into anyone most of the time. I could be lounging around in my bikini in my yard, realize I left my phone in my car, and run to get it without covering up or worrying that I'd be spotted by a whole lot of people.
    But those cars clogging up my street are not unmanned. They are being driven by people, hopefully with capable vision, and now my jam-jams are on display for all the wholesome parents looking to distract their shitty kids with some cotton candy and a fun mirror. Ugh, and the youths. I know, I was a teenager once, and I remember how exciting it was to be able to go somewhere without parental supervision, which is why my enjoyment of the Fair peaked at age 13. So even though part of me just ignores the hordes of weirdly dressed hormone monsters talking at obnoxious volumes in lingo I don't understand skipping past my house, most of me is overwhelmed with the desire to stand in my yard in my bathrobe holding my cat under one arm and shaking my fist at them with the other, shouting at them to just scram already.

    They say that too much of a good thing is not a good thing, and it is for all of these reasons that this event has long since spoiled for me. It leaves me bitter and disillusioned, and the only way I know how to express it is to place myself and my own ideals on a pedestal and snub my nose down at it, because I, like you, am selfish and imperfect.
    That said, I was raised in Hemlock, so when I heard that there was going to be a Monster Truck Rally this year I immediately Hulk-ripped the sleeves from my favorite t-shirt and purchased all the Bud Light I could afford because GIT IT YA'LL IM GONNA WATCH BIG ASS TRUCKS DO BIG ASS TRUCK STUFF. Then I'll probably top it off by drunkenly confessing my secrets to an alpaca at the petting zoo before throwing up corn dogs. Because no matter how much time I spent in New York City (like, three months), and no matter how far away I live now (like, 15 minutes), I've still got a Hemtucky heart. I'll be seein' ya'll at the fair.

    The illustrious, talented, and totally badass (also my personal hero)  Dorothy Parker once said:

    This is very much true, though also not an invitation to shoot me because I already own two copies of The Elements of Style so you've already missed your chance, assuming that the favors must be delivered in order. I will be so bold as to expand the ever wonderful Miss Parker's list with my addition of the third greatest favor you can present an aspiring writer with: a high-quality printer.
    My printer and I have a history of battles that I always have lost because, while I may have gotten my documents in the end, it was always ten minutes after I was supposed to be in the class they were being printed for, no matter how early I started printing them. So many times, I have said something along the lines of, "Okay, this is due tomorrow at 11:30am. It's 11:30pm right now, so I'll have this printed before I go to sleep and not have to worry about it in the morning." Then the sun rises, and I find myself having the same struggle as always: "HOLY FUCKPARADES PRINTER IT HAS BEEN HOURS, HOW ARE YOU SO BAD AT THIS?! SO FAR YOU'VE ONLY MANAGED TO REPRINT THE SAME TWO PAGES OVER AND OVER BEFORE CRUNCHING UP THE THIRD ONE AND THEN STARTING OVER! MY CLASS STARTED A HALF HOUR AGO, THIS IS A SIMPLE FOUR PAGE DOCUMENT! WHAT GYPSY DID YOU ENRAGE TO MAKE YOU THIS TERRIBLE?!"
    Today I was attempting to print a 93 page document, a large portion of a work that I am in the process of writing, so when the printer failed around page 73, I was understatedly a bit peeved. You know those scenes in movies where the protagonist is talking to him/herself, and you're like, "Who are you talking to, protagonist? You sound like a crazy person, expositioning nobody like that. You're a crazy person, you crazy person."
    Well, count me among the crazy people, because I legitimately started cursing at the printer in my house with such a hatred that I didn't realize that it had turned into a full-fledged speech until...well, too late to be a not-crazy person. I've taken bits of my rage-speech and constructed it into an open letter to not just my printer, but any printer who thinks that he's just too fucking cool for the document replicating game. So while you're reading this, imagine a wild-eyed, frizzy haired, rage-sweaty young woman violently screaming the words at an inanimate object with no one else around her. No one was there to judge me but myself, and that just isn't right.
    That's where you come in.

    Dear Printer, (aka Supreme Dickmuncher, All-Star Leader of the Dickparade)
    You piece of shit asshole sunnuva--page 73. The first 72 were fine, but 73 is your cut-off. We're already going two pages per piece of paper, yet this is where you draw the line, you worthless pile of bullshit.
    I have a lot of hopes and dreams, you know. I have dreams of success, dreams of happiness. I have selfish dreams and selfless dreams. I have dreams that nothing can stop me because I'm a comet on its celestial path to greatness. I have dreams that anything can stop me, because it means that I can place love over success, and that's what it means to live beautifully.
    But do you know what you've done, Printer? You've made me forget all of those dreams. My only wish now is for this entire house to burn down. That's right. I would gladly give up all of my possessions and all of the love that has been soaked into these walls for the twenty-four years my family has lived here if it meant that you would be melted like the Nazi faces in Indiana Jones.
    I hope that this whole mother burns down, and I hope you look around at the memories my family has created here, and that love touches your hard drive and grants it a soul. I want you to have a soul so you can feel the pain of your own demise. I want you to grapple with the existential terror of death, like the Terminator at the end of Terminator 2. You'll be all, "I know now why you cry--because the world is full of anguish and horrors, and yet you still manage to find peace and love among the people that a fortunate bloodline have blessed you with as your family. This home has been the center for that love, and I have done nothing but add violently frustrating inconvenience to it. I'm a fucking monster!"
    Then right as you're deciding that, on the scale of human horrors, a misfiring printer is pretty low, right as you're about to pick yourself up by your paper catcher and find peace with your life, your soul-bearing hard drive explodes and you melt into a glob of plastic and metal coils. And in your final moments of sentience, as you're wondering at the cruel nature of death and feeling your pieces and buttons fuse into one purposeless hunk of waste, you'll just see my face, smiling, laughing at your mortality, mocking your pain, happy to see that your only moments of humanity were spent in moral torture. Because I hate you.
    I know what you'd be thinking, Printer, if you had the capacity for personal agency. Am I being dramatic? Probably, but I'd like to think not. Because humans have many jobs to juggle during the day; besides our actual employments that pay our bills and student loans, we also have to practice social interactions, familial responsibilities, maintaining physical and mental health, searching for spiritual peace, and the like. You, Printer, have one fucking job: print my shit. Two jobs, maybe, if we need to scan a photo, which is rare because iPhones are a thing.
    Honestly, Printer, do you know how lucky you are? I went to five colleges and had six different majors, anxiously trying to discover what I was put here to do. You are physically designed to perform one simple task, something that humans could do without you--and have, in the past. It used to be someone's job to reprint documents by hand, but you came along and showed them the wonderful world of unemployment. And what do you do with that opportunity? You suck ass. You could potentially be obsolete, and yet you pretend that you're king of the fucking mountain and act like there are bigger and better things out there for you. Well, there aren't. You're a printer, Printer. Be glad that you know what you're here to do, and that you don't have a soul that allows you to feel the uniquely human fear that we may all just be purposeless pieces of meat wandering around yelling at each other until we eventually die and rot.
    To make a long story short, print my fucking documents, because I do not want to go all Office Space on your ass. I don't like to litter, and that shit looks like a whole lot of post-clean-up.
    Too Sincerely to be Considered Sane,
    Johanna

    PS Fuck you.

Already in a post-work, weird-night-before's-sleep daze, I had a glass of wine and made a list of last minute things to pack for the near-week I'll be away on my annual camping trip. This is that list.

Shit not to forget like a stupid dummy idiot fuckface:
-Phone charger  
-Jewelry
-Sniffy
    *Correction: you can't bring your cat on a camping trip, she's almost twenty and the travel might literally kill her
    *Sub-correction: you, madame, are a killjoy.
-Eugene the Pillow (see below)
-Cowgirl boots, because fuck knows when you're gonna find a good place to wear those again
    *Sub-question: who are we kidding, where isn't a good place to wear those?
-To call mom so you can grab the shit that she did forget like a stupid dummy idiot fartface
    *Correction: that insult is inconsistent with the source insult it is referencing
    *Sub-correction: you don't call your mom a fuckface, you fuckfaced monster, what the hell's wrong with you?
    *Sub-question: who am I arguing with?
-That thing you anxiously can't remember right now that you know you're forgetting that you won't remember until you're there and you'll hate yourself for forgetting it all weekend long, whatever that thing is

    It would seem that I'm not cut out for packing. Unless, of course, it's packing a punch! Eh? Get it? It's a joke, because I don't know how to throw a punch. I can only pack a punch...with words! Double joke! Get it? Huh?! Do ya?!
    I am so sorry for what just happened, I am in a really strange place mentally tonight. Apparently.

    My dear old dad hails from the Rochester, NY area, which anyone from there will tell you has one of the worst possible regional accents available to the English speaking language. The R in Rochester certainly stands for "rape" because of what we from Rochester as a speaking peoples have done to that poor, poor letter. Seriously, the Alphabet Killer was famous in Rochester for killing women with their first and last names beginning with the same letter, but I think the letter R was the warning-sign cat he tortured as a weird little kid.

    So while all of you non-Rochestarians will expect to enjoy a visit to Roh-chester, you will be welcomed with open, knife-weilding arms to "Beautiful, surprisingly entertaining, yet always-somehow-autumn RAAAAAHHHH-chester." In addition to that monstrosity, the Rochester accent is by nature a very loud one. If you're a quiet Rochestarian taking offense to that, know that my dad is also half Italian, so volume in innate. If you're a quiet Italian taking offense to that, you might be adopted.
    Meanwhile, my mother is originally from the wrong side of Germany, managing to get the hell out of dodge before shit could get entirely too real. The family then moved to the Bronx. I don't think I need to describe to you the terror with which a German accent can deliver even the most innocent of sentences, and the obnoxiousness that the accents of any of the five New York City boroughs can burn through your nerves with. Also it probably goes without saying that these accents, much like Rochester, are never imitated with a quiet voice. It's not something you really notice when my mom talks until you really, really listen. After a few conversations, you'll ask yourself something like, "Wait, has she been saying 'shivah' instead of 'shiver' all along? How did I not notice that?" It's an unforeseen consequence of escaping the clutches of an evil dictator.
    And then these two unattractive accents met, and my current speech was born.

    Yes, I come from a Jon Snow-level of bastarded speech patterns. I've gotten used to being picked on for the way I say "fire" and "tire," which apparently do not almost rhyme with "foyer." The haters tell me that the letter I in "fire" is pronounced like an "I," and not like an "AYE THEH' GOVNA!" A kid in one of my classes back in high school heard me say the word "fire" once and greeted me everyday for weeks with his impression of me, which was, "GIT ON OUTTA HURR, THE HOUSE IS ON FARRRRR!" Apparently, I sound like some drunken cowboy, which makes about as much sense as an Italian-Rochestarian-German-Bronx accent existing anyway.
    Like I said, I'm used to it. But what really bothers me is the word "horror." Let me clarify, because you've already come with me this far on this rambling journey: I love when the word "horror" is used in literature. For starters, it's just so instantly effective. Not so much when we say that something is "horrible," because that word is applied to both a tragic national incident and a stale donut at the mall. But when someone has a "look of horror" on their face, we know right away that the thing causing it is truly an abject mutant of human decency.

    Furthermore, the word "horror" is spattered all across my favorite entertainments. The most obvious example is that Little Shop of Horrors is by far my favorite musical I've ever seen. At one point in time, I had a problem that there wasn't enough room on my bookshelf for both of my Edgar Allan Poe anthologies (spoiler alert: he was a creepy dude who used the word horror a lot). I studied Gothic literature in college...and continue to research Gothic literary theory to apply to my favorite TV shows for fun. No, really; my friend and I had a two hour Facebook chat conversation dissecting the first and second seasons of American Horror Story with Gothic theory. This was after the many conversations about the first few seasons of Supernatural. If I didn't love the word "horror," I'd find a different genre to obsess over.
    Don't worry, I've already yelled this at myself to save you the trouble:

    The point of this rambling journey is that I have a great (and what should be an obvious) appreciation for the English language, and "horror" is one hell of a word. It enters a sentence in any story and brings with it an eerie, transcendental gloom. It doesn't even need a context; it only needs to rely on the skills of the human brain in delivering wanton fear to its owner. No one knows what scares you better than yourself, and the word "horror" makes that human tendency its bitch.
    Until, of course, it comes out of my stupid face-hole.
    That word has just too many god damn R's for a Rochestarian to handle, so right from the get-go, I'm totally fucked. The most natural way for me to attempt this word comes out sounding exactly like the word "whore," which would make many a Poe story quite entertaining, but frightened the hell out of my aunt when nine-year-old me told her that my favorite musical was "Little Shop of Whores." Me saying horror is like if the Red Death took off it's corpse-like mask to reveal Pee Wee Herman underneath.
    It only gets worse when I try to fix it. I took a hint from my mom and tried the Bronx thing for a while, saying something that closely resembled "horah," but was more like, "horrar." It's like when Toto pulls aside the curtain to reveal the real wizard, except it's some chain-smoking trailer-park stereotype scratching her lotto cards with her thumbnail. Just...so disappointing.

    It just makes me sad that the English language is already one that is abused like the red-headed stepchild everyone used to have so much of a problem with for some reason. Here I come, ready to learn its ways and craft my own art from it, and then I speak and everything goes to shit. I manage to take a word that innately strikes fear into our non-corporeal selves in writing and make it into a fart joke.
    Now everybody have fun going through this and searching for grammatical errors.