7+1 Mythological Creatures (That Are A Very Real Threat to Your Safety)

In honor of the swift approach of Halloween, I have put together a list of supernatural creatures that are considered by many to be myths.  Yes, these beings may seem too fantastical to exist, but I assure you, they are really real.  Keep this in mind the next time you go out at night, whether you are trick-or-treating or painting doorknobs with LSD or whatever it is you kids do nowadays.  Have fun this October 31^st, but be sure to keep an eye out for these creatures of darkness, things like…

7. Ghosts

Many people think that ghosts aren’t real; that they are only a figment of the imagination, or outright lies.  Well, as someone who has lived in haunted houses for approximately my entire life, I consider myself something of an expert at detecting paranormal activity, and I can assure you that they are real.

A ghost lives in one of the buildings on my college campus.  I know this because I have seen him.  Well, I’ve seen his work, at least.  Every day in one of my classes, the door swings shut of its own accord.

Suspicion

WOOOO!!!  Are you scared yet?  No?  Then read on!

There is also a ghost in my dorm room, as I’ve previously stated.  He doesn’t really do anything, but at night when it’s dark, he waves at me from the closet.  Sometimes he glides over to chat. 

He’s okay, for a ghost, I guess.  He’s just not much of a conversationalist.



"Hey.  You asleep?  I'm lonely."



6. Werewolves

Werewolves are everywhere, just everywhere.  The problem with identifying werewolves, though, is that people don’t usually even realize when they’re face-to-face with one.  Also, they are usually horribly killed, so they are unable to ever tell anyone that they saw a real live werewolf.

A good way to stay alert to werewolf activity is to be aware of what’s going on in your community.  Have there been many grisly maulings and/or murders in your area?  Have many small children or animals gone missing, or resurfaced with terrible werewolf-like mauling wounds?  Most importantly, have any surviving victims of such attacks begun to hunger for warm blood and flesh at the full moon, and then started turning into werewolves?  Does anyone in your community get visibly upset when you wave a gun loaded with silver bullets in their face?  Then, sad to say, you probably live in a werewolf-infested town, or possibly an actual werewolf pack.  If you find that the latter is true, then you are probably a werewolf yourself and have no need for this entry.  I’m sorry to have wasted your precious time, which could have been used mauling non-werewolves.  Or other werewolves, if you’re into that.  I’m actually not completely aware of how werewolf societies function.  Moving on…

5. Vampires

Ah, the timeless vampire.  Once seen as a hideous demon beast, he eventually evolved into an elegant and seductive sophisticate.  Now he is a hideous demon beast again, albeit a glittery emo one.



Life is so sad and sparkly; it makes me cut myself.



The best way to defend yourself against a vampire is to wear full-body chain mail, with a steel throat guard.  Also, a little garlic perfume or cologne wouldn’t hurt.  And always remember, if anyone gets too close to your neck for any reason; punch them in the most sensitive and closely available region, because apparently vampire physiology is a lot like a human’s, now.

Thanks to my sister for being the model and inspiration for this picture.

I myself have not yet met a vampire in person, but I know that they exist.  I have seen them on television, boldly revealing secrets of the vampire lifestyle.  I would think that they should be punished for this, but, meh.  It seems that vampire leaders have just stopped caring.

Lets face it; it’s gotten a lot less awesome to be a vampire.  Anne Rice doesn’t even seem to want in anymore.

4. Elk People

Awww snap; this just got real. 

Elk People are, for the unlearned, a race of people born with the lower half of an elk, and the upper half of a person.  They are never born the opposite way.  Such a creature is a Person Elk, and they are a largely benign people.  Elk People, on the other hand, leave home when they reach adulthood, build shacks to live in near roads, and then shank travelers for their money. 

The Proud Elk-Person

Let me make this clear:  the Elk People do not need this money.  They may become very wealthy by this lifestyle, and they seldom pay their fair taxes, but their riches mean nothing to them.  If they have a guest, they will offer them at least half of their wealth; the money is meaningless to them.  They shank for the love of shanking. 

And this is why they are on this list.  Elk People may be fantastic hosts, but they are a terrifying possibility for travelers with soft, shankable tummies.  Elk People are a very real threat to the American people, which can only beg the question:  Why won’t Obama address the REAL issues?!

AHA!  I knew it!

3. Demons

Demons exist, and I know this, because my dorm room is the devil’s bathroom.  It is hot and humid, like he’s just showered, so I guess that his hygiene is pretty good at least, in case any of you were worried about that…

Yes, I know.  My room is both haunted by a chatty ghost and used as a cleaning station for Satan himself.  I know what you are thinking; No one should have to live in such conditions.  It’s true, but what can I do?  I suffer on in silence.

My point about demons is this: if demons live in your house/apartment/dorm room, as long as they practice good hygiene, I advise you not to worry about it.  Live and let live.

Buuuut… If your demon roommate doesn’t ever shower or do their laundry or eats all of your snack cakes?  You should really talk to your RA about the situation, because that’s just gross and inconsiderate.  And if your RA isn’t able to help, go to your local Catholic Church and see what the going rate on exorcisms is; it’s usually best to let experts handle the situation. 

Whatever your choice when it comes to handling demons, make sure you set limitations from the very beginning.  Make certain that they understand that you will not tolerate mooching, a stinky room, or any sort of demonic possession.  Hear them out, too.  Maybe they have a few complaints about your behavior.  For this living arrangement to work, you must respect each other’s boundaries.

Making it work!



2. Zombies

Zombies are the walking dead.  They are everywhere.  There is no good in debating hypothetical apocalyptic scenarios involving zombies overtaking the Earth.  It has already happened.  Open your eyes.

Every day when I leave the safety of my dorm room, I see hordes of zombies wandering the campus.  Luckily, I have been able to evade them so far.  They don’t seem that interested in catching me, so I am forced to assume that they have decomposed past the point of being able to use any sort of sense that may help them to catch me.  Nevertheless, I am always vigilant, lest I be caught unawares.

When I am home, I sit up all night, watching over my house from the safety of my perch on the counter.  I sit there all night, ready to fight should the need arise, until my father comes down in the morning, confused.  He has surely gone mad due to the crisis; he seems completely unaware of the dire situation.

Poor, crazy Dad.

That is all right.  I seek no thanks, nor any kind of recognition.  I only ask that you learn from my example.  There is not much else to say on this subject.  The only defense against a zombie is vigilance.  Also, headshots.  So, the only two defenses, then.

1.  Witches

I became aware of several witches at my school early in the semester.  They wear all black, with high collars and long skirts, and shiny, pointed shoes.  I did not understand them at first so, naturally, I feared them, and avoided the Witches at all costs.

In a blaze of enlightenment, however, I realized that the “Witches” may actually be Wiccans, and so they probably worship nature and are super-cool and I have no reason at all to fear them or hesitate to befriend them.

Tolerance and acceptance!

I reached out to these women, with the intent to learn more about their beliefs, but I had made a horrible mistake.  These were not Wiccans.  These were the Old Kind of Witches.

This kind.

I will not bore you with all the details on how I eventually escaped these skanks of Satan, but I will say that I now have a much greater respect for the baking skills my mother taught me, and the fairy tales I was read as a child.

I will avoid making a grossly insensitive and obscene reference to my family's German heritage at this point.

Due to ongoing legal investigations, that is all I am at liberty to say.

+1. The Great Pumpkin

Yes, the Emperor of Evil has made the list.  The Great Pumpkin may have poor publicity, but he is as real as you or I.

Every Halloween, The Great Pumpkin rises out of the most sincere pumpkin patch, supposedly to give gifts to the good boys and girls of the world, but in actuality… Well, let’s just say that there is a reason no one has ever seen him.

Seen him and lived, that is!

Bet you wish you'd gone to that Halloween party now, don't you?

Take my warnings to heart, or you may be just another ‘missing person’ statistic, who has, in reality, become prey to the creatures on this list.

          WOOOO!!!  I bet you’re scared, now!  Mission accomplished, Me.

The 7 Types of Adult Learners: A Survival Guide

In college, one is surrounded by many young men and women; striking it out on their own for the first time, they are eager to learn and grow into the bright and interesting adults they feel they are destined to become. 

That doesn’t happen for most of them.

Over time, they lose sight of their goals; they become worn out from the constant pressures of deadlines, tests, work, and competition with their fellow classmates.  Eventually, they give up on the optimistic dreams they once had, and resign themselves to the daily, soul-crushing monotony of higher education, in the hopes of someday getting a job so that they can put their own children through college.

For this student, there is one thing that helps them put the sadness that their lives have become into perspective:

The Adult learner.

Now, don’t get me wrong; I have nothing against Adult Learners in theory.  There is something to be admired in the person who risks the comforts that they have accumulated for themselves over their lifetime to go back to school and improve themselves, or the blue-collar worker who is finally able to go back to school and receive the education that they need to go further in the world.

And then there are the creepy ones, who make all the young and pretty students want to run away in terror and live out their lives in the hills, rather than share a classroom with them for one moment longer.  This list is dedicated to those people.

7. The Serious Student

This Adult Learner is the most likeable on this list.  She has gone back to school to make herself more appealing to employers, or maybe she already has an education, but has decided to completely change direction in her career and needs to take a few courses to bulk up her knowledge of her new vocational path.  Maybe she simply wants to better herself, or set a good example for her children.  Either way, she is here to learn.  This Adult Learner tends to be friendly, but not overly so.  She is bright, usually articulate, and is generally a pleasure to work with.  She uses her life experiences to sometimes help you see things in a new way, without being overbearing.

6. The Sad One

This Adult Learner is similar to The Serious Student, in that he genuinely wants to learn.  He differs, however, in that he can’t.  The Sad One tries his hardest, but seems completely incapable of absorbing even a speck of information from the classes he is taking.  Watch him as he stumbles awkwardly through an analysis of a Shakespearean passage, and you’ll see it plainly on his face; sadness, shame, and the knowledge that he is spending his hard-earned money to give an arrogant 19-year-old the opportunity to smirk and correct him in the most condescending manner possible. 

All decent human beings within the vicinity will stare intensely at their notebooks and pretend they are just as lost as he is, or at least pretend that their answer is just a different opinion, and that his was equally valid.

He knows the truth, though, and it’s sad.

5. The Out-of-Placer

Like The Sad One, The Out-of-Placer doesn’t belong there.  He has no idea what’s going on.  However, just as often as not, he has no idea that he has no idea.  He may not even be aware that he is in a classroom.  He always looks slightly bewildered, and his mouth may hang agape.  Unlike The Sad One, he probably will never offer an answer or opinion, and if he does, it will most likely make NO SENSE AT ALL.  Even the way he dresses marks him as an Out-of-Placer.  He often looks as though he has either stepped straight out of another decade (think the 70’s), or he will be dressed completely in one type of fabric.  I, myself, have encountered the denim-clad Out-of-Placer, but I am sure that they come in many varieties.

Out-of-Placers are slightly off-putting, but are usually fairly benign.  They aren’t aware of their own presence enough to do anything too creepy.

4. The Rebel

This one is kind of sad, too.

The Rebel isn’t a real rebel.  He may come to Philosophy 101 and rant for the full hour and a half about how “The Man” wants to hold him down and has too much control, but he is the first to complain that the world is falling into chaos because Big Business is under-regulated.  He wants you to think that he’s a hard-core rebel, but in truth, this is the guy who leaves obscene remarks about politicians he doesn’t like in the comments section of a YouTube video of a 2-year-old doing the Hokey-Pokey, but doesn’t actually even vote in elections for reasons that fall somewhere between “I forgot…” and “It’s not like my one vote really matters, anyway.”  In the big scheme of things, this guy doesn’t really matter, either, but he will infuriate you, regardless.



On the other side of the Rebel coin is the 30-40 something that seems to shop exclusively at Hot Topic.  From behind, they seem like just another (circle one) Goth, emo, skater, punk, or other, but then they turn around, and you see the lines in their face.  And you can’t quite put your finger on it, but there is something about this combination of early middle age and punk style that will give you an aneurism, just from looking at her. 



To look into her face is to look into madness.



Your brain will implode and your face will fall off, then you’ll eat your face and start getting naked because nothing makes sense anymore.

3. The One with Something to Prove

You will meet this one, and you will hate her fiercely for the rest of your life.  She’s probably in her late forties-early fifties.  Maybe she’s divorcing and wants to prove her independence, or maybe she’s just trying to finally show Brenda from her book club that she can so learn to write/paint/make a movie.  She will almost certainly be pursuing an ‘artistic’ degree, or else she will be trying to become a nurse or counselor.  There will just be something about her phony sweet personality that will rub you the wrong way.  Others you may be able to ignore and move on from, but not The One with Something to Prove.  She has something to prove, and she will not be ignored.

She will glare at you when you say that reading Twilight is like raping literature.  She will always speak with a fake smile that barely covers up the rage that comes when you have led a cushy, privileged life and are suddenly surrounded by a group of people who don’t think that living on the same block as a black person gives you ‘cred’.  She will make it clear that she is there to prove her worth, and that she’s in for the long haul; she’s not leaving until she has achieved her goal and earned all of your respect.

She will inexplicably disappear one day, and never return to class.  Nobody will ever acknowledge that she was ever there, and you will wonder where she went for the rest of your life, and you will hate yourself for it.

2. The Creepy Older Guy

This one could also be The Creepy Older Woman, but I’ve met the male version, so that’s the one I’m discussing.  The female version is exactly the same thing, only a woman.

The Creepy Older Guy usually isn’t too terribly old.  He’s probably about 40; still young enough to think he can hit on 20-year-old girls without being creepy.  He is wrong.  This is how he gets his name.

He will start out by being a normal level of friendly (holding the door for you heading in or out of class, saying good morning or “Have a nice weekend; see you Monday”) while maintaining abnormally intense eye contact.  By the first group project, he will somehow manage to be assigned to your group (I suspect, because college professors really enjoy making their students uncomfortable).  He now can get all of your contact information for a completely legitimate reason; so that he can get a hold of you for project-related things.

He will start calling and asking you to meet him at the campus café for coffee and sandwiches “to discuss our presentation.”  Your group project is not on his mind.  Do not go to meet with him if at all possible.  The best way to interact with this guy is solely through email, but if you do get roped into meeting with him face-to-face, insist on meeting somewhere well-lit, and arrange for your roommate or another friend to meet you at a certain time to walk you back to the room.  I’m not saying that all Creepy Older Guys are rapists, I’m just saying that they will act like you’re on a date, and you will need an escape strategy. 

After the semester ends, you will see this guy walking around campus, and will do literally anything to avoid him.  This is not wrong.  Trust your instincts.  I’m deadly serious about this one.  Look at my face.  This is my serious face.

I'm super serial, you guys.

1. The Take-Control

This Adult Learner seems to think that he’s gone back to school not to improve his own education, but because those guys that get paid to teach aren’t doing it very well, and they need him to step in and help out.

Yes, The Take-Control, also known as a Know-It-All or, even more commonly, An Arrogant Jerk, appears on campuses across the nation.  Make a relevant point in class?  He discredits it, and presents his own idea, which is strikingly similar to your own.  Ask your instructor to explain a complex theory?  No worries; this guy understands it way better.  He’ll explain.  Even if the professor tells the Take-Control that he’s wrong, he will continue with his statement with all of the confidence of someone who has just been high-fived by the instructor and told that he was brilliant.  He cannot accept that he is ever wrong, and he is almost always wrong.

 

God forbid you are ever in a group with the Take-Control.  He will do just that; take control, and he will run your group into the ground.  There is a reason he is a Take-Control; he has no control outside of school, because he should never be in control.  Some people are simply not leadership material, and he is one of them.

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Well, these are the kinds of adult learners that I, personally, have encountered, but feel free to leave a personal and hilarious encounter of your own in the comments.  With your help, I may update the list some time, and hopefully help guide some other poor soul in their dealings with these fiendish individuals.

About Me, and also Ryan Reynolds.

Hello, world.  I’m Amanda, and this is my super-exciting awesome blog.  Welcome!

So, I’ve started this blog because I love to write and tell stories, and making people laugh is one of the best things ever.  I genuinely welcome your delighted comments, and will grudgingly accept constructive criticism.  I plan to try and add a new entry every Monday, but no promises, since I’m just starting out and settling in. 

What can you expect here, you may ask?  Stories of my ridiculous, everyday life, which for some reason, tends to involve gratuitous violence, comic book references, shameless blends of reality and daydreams, and also the occasional bit of advice from my wise but most likely insane father.  Enjoy!

Well, let’s get right down to it, shall we?

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My roommate, Sarah, loves to watch movies.  She loves it.  She loves it so much, in fact, that if you asked her to name her favorite movie, she would most likely laugh, and then kick you in the heart.  Yes, the heart.  Sarah will not suffer those who speak before being spoken to.

If you had waited for her to give you permission to speak, however, she would have answered your question by genre.  As in, her favorite horror movie, favorite comedy, favorite thriller, etc, etc.  And all without kicking you, even once.  Do you see how good things can be when you show her proper respect?

I, on the other hand, am not a movie person.  Sure, I go see all of the comic book adaptations (and then complain endlessly about them), and I’ll even watch something if it happens to be on and I’m in a lazy mood but, really, I don’t usually like sitting through movies.  I feel like I’m wasting a couple hours of my life on something totally unnecessary. 

And I prefer my life-wasting to be completely not unnecessary.

 

So, this past weekend, I decided to do something nice.  I thought Hey, maybe if I bring in a movie to watch with Sarah this week, she’ll stop crying about how I never watch movies with her.  Also, the kicks to the heart may stop.  I hate that.  So, I brought a copy of The Amityville Horror back to campus with me for us to watch.  The sexy version.  And I learned a couple of things about myself.

1.                          From now on, I will stick to trying to scare Sarah by reading chapters out of my ghost books to her.  That seems to work best.

2.                          It is nearly impossible to be frightened by a movie when your suitemate is playing the opening to “Smoke on the Water” in the room next to you.

3.                          That the same suitemate, Rebecca, was surely crazy when she called the movie bad: no movie containing a shirtless Ryan Reynolds could ever be a bad thing, and also;

4.                          There is literally no point at which I would not have still hooked up with him.  Seriously.  In the middle of him trying to murder his family, I’m still going yeah, mama likes.  He’s just a beautiful man, even with that crazy beard.

Huh, that’s about it.  I thought that list would lead me somewhere.  Oh well, sorry about that.  Guess I’ll have to just…

quickly change the topic!

I jokingly mentioned scaring Sarah with a ghost book.  That happened.  I was reading her a bedtime story (yes) out of a book of allegedly true ghost stories, and then talk turned to other creepy stories that we knew, and soon we were so creeped out that we couldn’t go to bed, and I actually had to have Becca come into the room and check under my bed for…

...anything. 

Just anything at all.  Was that embarrassing?  Yes.  But, I earned a valuable piece of information about what scares Sarah.  It’s dolls.  The creepy looking ones, which is all of them.  And that means that she is going to find a bed full of creepy dolls one of these nights.  And that will be the night that I disappear, never to be seen again.

Hopefully, I’ll have a chance to post another entry before then.