Twenty-Five Reasons I (seldelaterre) Am a Little Bit of a Dick:

25. I have a speech impediment. It’s a mix between a stammer and what is called a block, a complete shutdown of the vocal chords that happens at weird times. Both problems go away when I’m comfortable with the person I’m speaking with, which means it’s likely psychosomatic. Cute, right?

Reason this makes me a dick: I reserve the right to rip the head off of anyone who tries to finish my sentence or tell me what word I’m supposed to be reading.

24. While we’re talking about my brain, I have a neurological disorder called synesthesia, which means that two or more of the senses are connected in funky ways. It’s fairly common in the general population (John Mayer has it, he sees colors when he hears sounds and there’s another form of it where people see each letter of the alphabet as a different color all the time RAINBOW ESSAYS YAY), but my form is comparatively rare. I taste sounds. Certain sounds, and the sounds are pretty much random, make me taste things. The French language tastes of vanilla, German of lemon-scented air freshener (eck). The word “phonograph” tastes like chocolate, so on and so forth.

Reason this makes me a dick: If someone is listening to music that disagrees with me or if there’s a noise that makes a bad taste in my mouth I WILL go brain-diva and force someone to make it stop. It’s neurology, have a heart!

23. I have poisonous blood. I can’t give blood transfusions or mix my blood with anyone else (because that’s what I wish I could be doing on a Friday night, you know), their spinal cord would collapse onto itself, their joints would mimic arthritis, and if left untreated with powerful antibiotics they would develop serious neurological problems. In short, I am a supervillain.

Reason this makes me a dick: ….I repeat, supervillain.

22. I am terrified of spiders. I can’t even look at a picture of one.

Reason this makes me a dick: Spider Rambo.

21. I check coats; sometimes I like to look in people’s pockets to see what they have in there and make little lists. The coolest/weirdest collection I’ve found is twenty-seven bubblegum comics, a kazoo, seventy cents and a pamphlet on how to conduct a breast exam. It was a middle-aged man’s coat.

Reason this makes me a dick: I am judging people based on what they have in their pockets. Shallow much?

20. Shoes are….my kryptonite. Heels, boots, flats, not really sneakers…I get obscenely excited about them.

Reason this makes me a dick: We can’t be friends if your shoes suck.

19. I learned a long time ago that New York is a thousand times prettier if you look up A LOT. The tops of buildings, kites caught in trees, plumes of smoke, people silhouetted against windows…

Reason this makes me a dick: If I bump into somebody I’m like “you clearly do not understand my artsy groove. I just said something cool about kites!”

18. I dream of meeting Oscar Wilde and talking about boys.

Reason this makes me a dick: Have you SEEN Lord Havershire’s absolutely garish trousers? No, I was too busy staring at his package.

17. I doodle unkind things in my notebook during class. Every time some featherbrain says something stupid, I write it down or make a little comic about it. It just looks like I’m taking notes.

Reason this makes me a dick: If anyone in my class were to get their hands on my notes I’d have to switch sections.

16. I leave notes in the interlibrary books I get from other schools. Nothing cute or altruistic, the last two I left were YALE SUCKS and HI HERMIONE (when I got a book from Brown). Maturity in moderation, my friends.

Reason this makes me a dick: The next kid to look up the kind of books I order (Japanese Cuisine in the Heian Era, The Origin of Species, a full anthology of Aeschylus’ comedic work) won’t come along for another hundred years and as such, my mischievous dickery will live on forever.

15. HitRECord saved my brain from being fried forever. I hadn’t written a song in three years before I got on this site and now I feel like a much calmer, much more creative spirit wandering around…

Reason this makes me a dick: I won’t shut up about hitRECord to my friends and I think they’re plotting an intervention soon.

14. I lie about my height more often than I lie about my age.

Reason this makes me a dick: False advertising, like a padded bra.

13. Other than that, I am radically honest. Radically and insultingly.

Reason this makes me a dick: It makes your butt look big, like on a global scale.

12. That said, if I do say something kind or compliment somebody, I mean it. Truly and really.

Reason this makes me a dick: Not saying anything is a stamp of mild, salty indifference.

11. I’ve never been in love, but I have been a raging gold-digger.

Reason this makes me a dick: It doesn’t. He deserved to be bled dry.

10. I curse a lot, but mostly because I revel in the phonetic deliciousness that happens when I combine bad words. What is this shitfuckery?

Reason this makes me a dick: There are a lot of children in the area I live in.

9. I once wore a wig to school to make everybody think I cut all my hair off and got such a positive response that I’ve been thinking about it ever since.

Reason this makes me a dick: When I went to school the next day I teased my hair really big so it looked like a wig and everyone was like FLGBTHLTH39YP78TEE;GFRG

8. I’m running out of things to say.

Reason this makes me a dick: It’s a “25 things collab”, not a “24  things and a cop-out” collab!

7. I sometimes prefer plants to people. I’m at my happiest alone and in a greenhouse.

Reason this makes me a dick: I like your fern more than I like you.

6. Or alone in a really well-decorated rooms.

Reason this makes me a dick: Nobody would leave me alone in a nice room if I hadn’t driven them out by being a jerk. Girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.

5. Sometimes I play my own songs and tell people they’re by some random folk band that doesn’t exist just to see if they’ll try to look them up later on.

Reason this makes me a dick: They never do and I pout.

4. I’ve forgotten how to play some of the songs I wrote in high school and upsets me very much. There was one… something about “I don’t believe in the season of winter, the solstice is just an excuse for the sun…”

Reason this makes me a dick: Winter definitely exists. Denial is not just a river in Egypt.

3. My favorite smell in the world is a perfume called Poison.

Reason this makes me a dick: I troll the Dior counter at Macy’s just to get the little sample papers of it and never buy a bottle because I already have one.

2. I used to be a huge geek for MMOs like WoW and Runescape…I was a beta tester for a Korean gaming company a while back but I’ve been slowly breaking the habit….

Reason this makes me a dick: Gamer girls have to develop thick cyber-skin. No, YOUR mom is an orc!

1. Valentine’s Day just began (oh hey midnight I didn’t see you there) and I don’t have any plans besides buying a pint of franzia and sitting on the bench in front of my building heckling people about the neurological basis of the “love” emotion. SEROTONIN, BITCHES!

Reason this…..oh, fuck it.

-Sel