I will cut you.

Okay, so this data is from 2006, but I still find it promising.  Not to those of you who live in Arizona, but for myself, who will be leaving the desert for the city in a couple of months. 

Ummm, what the hell is with Arizona's rape and murder rates? We take the cake on every category, but this kind of winning is certainly losing. 

A lot of people imagine New York to be a scary, dangerous place.  And I won't say that you shouldn't be cautious, but I'm a pretty paranoid person and I feel safer there than I do in good ol' Gilbert, Arizona.  Mostly because there are always people around at all times.  And honestly, there are some scary, trashy people in AZ and I don't trust them.  I went jogging in my neighborhood last night before 10pm and saw one other person.  How easy would it have been for someone to be hiding in the bushes and attack me? No one would notice. In New York there are always people out and I guess I trust the human spirit enough to believe that if there was an issue, they might step up to help me.  Maybe this is naive, but I'm okay with that. 

One of the best things I have ever done was take a Self Defense class.  ASU East offered them for free so a few of my friends went with me a couple years ago.  It was so awesome being in the class with all the girls who wanted to kick someone's ass if they tried to turn them into a victim.  I like girls like that, badass girls.  Our instructor was an ex-Marine who taught soldiers hand-to-hand combat, how to kill someone with your bare hands.  I am all about this.  I would kill a motherfucker and I really believe that.  But I guess there is no telling what you would really do in that situation unless it actually happened.  I pray that I don't ever have to find that out and if I do then I pray I won't freeze up and instead use my pencil to shove in his ear so it pierces his brain, then snap the end off so he can't get it out and the scum dies.

In case I don't have my pencil I always make sure to bring my knife with me on first dates.  There was a loser that I was interested in briefly and too long, who drove his drunk ass to my campsite near his in the middle of the night and blew out a tire right in front of my campground from all the swerving that was going on. Idiot.  He abandoned that piece of shit and left the doors unlocked with all his stuff inside, that is where I got the knife.  It is the best thing that ever came from that dumbass.  The knife is awesome and I love it, a nice heavy sharp bitch.  I feel like one day it might come in handy, maybe to cut rope, maybe to cut someone.  Better safe than sorry I figure, which is why it sits next to my lip gloss in my purse on first dates, and sometimes beyond that if I don't really trust the guy.  Which begs the question, why was I ever hanging out with a guy I didn't trust?  I don't know. 

There was a stupidly wealthy man that I dated (which will be a story unto itself someday as soon as I can figure out a way to write about him without being sued) and he always made me a little nervous.  Not in the cute little butterflies and giggling way. I just couldn't really read him and sometimes he was a bit intense. Like sometimes things were great and he was so nice, and then sometimes I was afraid he might not let me leave his house and was going to lock me in his bathroom forever.  Which might not be so bad because the shower is about the size of my current bedroom.  I'm just saying, you never know when you need it. 

It makes me mad I can't bring my knife with me on a plane because I would like to have it when I travel and stay in hostels with smelly, annoying, obnoxious, drugged up, German boys. 

If you prefer to not carry a weapon (pussy), then maybe you will be down with this option.  Let this be a warning to all you rapists out there. Behold, the anti-rape female condom, Rape aXe:

You might have already heard about this when it was in the news a while ago.  aXe was invented by Sonnet Ehlers, a South African woman, after speaking with a rape victim who said, "If I only had teeth down there." Rape aXe is a latex sheath with razor sharp barbs inside.  When the male penetrates this thing attaches to his manhood, if he tries to remove it it just digs in deeper and he can't pee until it is removed.  It has to be surgically removed which would alert medical staff and police.  It also prevents the woman from contracting any STDs or getting pregnant.

Some people have argued that this is barbaric but rape statistics are on the rise, with children and infant rape rates rising 400% in the last decade.  Rape aXe takes away some of the fear and vulnerability.  And the fact that it even exists might make some think twice before they attack.