Monday, January 19, 2015

Cats are Evil

My recent assignment in my English is to write a cause and effect paper that is due tomorrow. It needs to be between 3,000 and 5,000 words so far I have 958. My topic is Toxoplasma Gondii, a parasite found in cats. Since, I am currently stuck for what else to write in my paper I will give a brief summary of exactly this parasite does. Toxoplasma is spread through cat feces, and it will take control of mammals' brains even humans. Rats are affected in a weird way. The parasite increases the dopamine levels in the reward part of the brain when a rat smells cat urine. Normally, a rat would be afraid of cat urine, but when infected the rat will be aroused at the scent of cat urine. This is because the parasite can only reproduce sexually inside the cat's stomach. The rat's arousal at cat urine makes it easier for cats to catch their prey, rats. Humans have a change in personality. Men are suspicious and jealous and gain a disregard of rules. Women become the exact opposite, they become more friendly, trusting, and increase their regard of rules. Both genders have a decrease in seeking new experiences and will stay home more often than those who are not infected. That's just a little bit about the parasite there's a much more in depth explanation here: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/03/how-your-cat-is-making-you-crazy/308873/
I found it completely fascinating how Toxoplasma is so specific in how it controls an animal's brain. I should probably get back to my essay.

Friday, January 9, 2015

Confrontations

I for some reason decided that it would be a grand idea to start taking over my life. Unfortunately, I think I tried to take on too much at once. I tried to take out two problems tonight, and so far neither one of those problems is going well. This is probably why I should sleep on things before attempting confrontation. I might actually formulate a plan before. I also did my confrontations that wussy way over texting, but there is a reason for that too. Both the people I decided to express my thoughts to
are people I can only contact through texting. One of them was my mother, she's always a tough one no matter how you try to talk to her, but I do really need the money from my bank account that is in her name too because of child-parent crap. I have a large sum of money in that account that will be extremely helpful for college which is just a huge ball of anxiety that I'm trying not to think about yet. I really need to get a grip on my social anxiety or I fear I may be alone for all eternity, but then again that might not be so bad.

Sunday, January 4, 2015

New Year's Woe

I'd say I have a New Year's resolution, but it's not really. I decided I need to get in shape (such a cliche resolution anyways) before I go off to college since I have a pretty good idea of where I'm going to go. I will most likely be moving to the city for college which absolutely terrifies me. Never have I ever lived in a city. I've lived in the same county my entire life and it's population is less than a city. My county has approximately 25,000 people living in it. Where I want to go to college has about oh 652,000 people that's over 25 times as many people. I'm going to have my handy dandy pepper spray though thanks to my dad who's been obsessing over where I keep it. I have it in my room because I don't need to take it to school with me where there are only a thousand people, and none of them hate me as far as I know or have a desire to attack me. Besides the hallways are too damn crowded for that type of thing to happen. Unless, we have a school shooter in which case my pepper spray would be completely useless. My sophomore year they did find a shell for some sort of a gun I don't remember what exactly. They cancelled the assembly and the dance that week right before Christmas Break, but they didn't cancel school. My dad told me to stay home from school that day because he thought it was stupid that they weren't cancelling school and figured it wasn't really important for me to go that day anyways. I heard that hardly anyone was there. There was probably five people for each class that day. They also had policemen patrolling the school that day as well. So you see they might as well have cancelled school.
Anyways, the reason why I'm trying to get in shape is so that I have a better chance of getting out of a situation if need be. My mom once told me some really high percentage of women that get sexually assaulted by the time they're forty. I was probably 10 years old when she told me this. The likelihood of me being sexually assaulted at the age were very slim except during the summer time when I was around guys in their twenties quite a bit. My mom worked for a whitewater rafting company, and all their guides were in their twenties and were almost always hungover. All they did was drink and do drugs, but that was after work of course. My brother recently told me that some of the guides would say shit like, "Cynthia's daughter is so hot," little did they know they were talking to my brother who would get pissed off because I was waaay too young for them so it was extremely creepy that they would even think that. Now I think I know why I'm so screwed up when it comes to guys. My mom either made me paranoid that they were going to rape me or surrounded me with creeps that she thought were normal. That's some good parenting right there.