Timewaster's Guide Archive
General => Rants and Stuff => Topic started by: Mr_Pleasington on September 03, 2003, 07:13:45 PM
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Okay, I'm a big guy. Six one, two fifty, and I can bench over three hundred (or I could a while back). Heck, I was captain of the football team way back in high school. I'm a brute.
And you know what freaks me out...spiders!
Man, I hate spiders.
I live in Missouri, popular resort of the Brown Recluse. Small, quiet, and immune to most treatments because the insidious little buggers have no nerves in their feet. Their bite isn't fatal, but you'd wish it was as it causes skin to slough off.
So, since its cool out, I opened the apartment up last night and turned the air off. A few hours later I noticed a large number of bugs in the house...moths, gnats, etc. So I went and patched the holes in my screen with tape. There I was later, shoeless in my PJs getting ready for bed, when I notice a huge spider on the floor while brushing my teeth. Freaked me out! So I got a flyswatter and killed it. I was curious if he brought friends with him.
So I get home today and there are two spiders on one of my windows, three on another. Some big some small. I manage to kill them with ease but I fear for the ones I can't see.
The ones under my pillows or in my shoe.
God, I hate spiders.
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We had hobo spiders (the western cousin of the brown recluse) in our old house. It was the main reason we moved, since my wife was about to give birth and didn't want any spiders to help raise the baby. Our new place is blissfully free of them.
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I don't mind spiders as much as other insects ingeneral. With spiders I know what I'm getting: big abdomen (or thorax, or whatever that butt-part is called,) teeny head, eight legs, and a web. Other insects offer a variety of horror that my imagination could have a heyday with. For example, is this a bug that will burrow into your ear and eat you from the inside out, or is it one that has a stinger in back thorugh which it lays eggs underneath your skin. Yuck! Each of the Indiana Jones movies has a room swarming with something, but in my opinion Temple of Doom is the creepiest that way.
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Yeah, I'm not a fan of spiders myself. Recently, an aquaintance was storing his record collection in my garage. Unfortunately, several huntsman decided to come along for the ride. After killing two, I told him to remove the records, or I would burn them.
I still look on all sides of the room before entering it.
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Yeah, we got spiders. I don't like 'em, but they don't bother me as much as, like Kije, the bugs I can't identify. They bug my wife though. (heh)
I think spider-raised child would be cool. Would they pick up abilities? or just skills?
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Spiders don't bother me that much. When I was in High School, a few spiders layed their eggs underneath my bedroom window. One day I noticed that not much light was getting into my room. When I pulled up the blinds the entire window was crawling with baby spiders. It was pretty cool I thought, but my parents went out and killed most of them anyways.
I think snakes freak me out more. My older brother always kept reptiles around (In hind site, this should have been a clue to my parents that he would become a future professor of reptile studies). I can capture and hold snakes. I use to hunt for them when I was a kid. However, almost every night after I've seen a snake, I wake up with nightmares involving snakes.
I also have nightmares about people. I think it's for simular reasons.
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I think I'm going to start having nightmares about YOU.
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But Hobos unlike the brown reculse are very poisonious. I hate spiders too. But I've never been too bugged by wolf spiders which are every where in Nebraska (and the midwest) . We had ones that were the size of my hand in our yard, true most was their legs but they were huge.
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I saw a black widow once, in Argentina. It was actually pretty cool. I wasn't too freaked about it because a) it was miles from my apartment, and b) I wasn't about to go sticking my hand too close to it.
I used to see little fuzzy baby spiders that were black and had little red spots when I lived in Kansas, but was told those weren't real black widows, This one in Argentina, though, was all black and sleek and the hourglass was there, and she looked wicked. As in wicked cool.
Seeing black widows is probably something that happens to people all the time, but it was the only time I'd ever seen one.
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they're realy common in this part of the US (Utah, Idaho). You won't see many around the populated parts but go out to the rural areas and you'll find them prety easly.
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I'm afraid of a few things. Not a lot.
Things like heights. I hate heights. Dunno why, just do. I get this bad feeling and then just wait for my mind to blow up so I can stop thinking about it.
Then there's new people. I'm not so much afraid as I am very passive about saying 'Hi' or starting any real lively conversation. Unless I have to.
Bugs/insects in general freak me out. I see a spider, I kill it. I see a bug, I kill it. I hate bugs.
Girls scare me. I try to talk to them, then I just end up turning around and not doing anything. Ya, that sucks. Especially here on campus now. Out of that all guys high school and now this. Augh! Girls! Why must I be attracted to them, but not able to please myself and speak to them.
I can't think of anything else right now, but when I do I'll be sure to tell you.
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Things like heights. I hate heights. Dunno why, just do. I get this bad feeling and then just wait for my mind to blow up so I can stop thinking about it.
Ever get that feeling like you're going to lose control of your body and fling yourself off the precipice? Yeah, that's freaky.
Like the feeling I used to get around girls. (no, just kidding, that one IS just you).
Let me explain to you why my family is generally cautious around spiders (and my brother is terrified of them).
My brother served his mission in the Phillipines, and he claims (much of this relies on his "claims" but he screams like a little girl when he sees a spider - literally, I am NOT making any of this up - so I think there's at least a kernal of truth to this) .... anyway, I was saying, he claims to have seen spiders that ate birds. Spiders that built webs over streams to catch leaping fish. Which is pretty big. I mean, even if you're talking about a hummingbird, you're talking about something that's gonna have a body nearly as large as your fist, and then there's the LEGS <shiver>. These are spiders that you don't step on. More or less you have to use a baseball bat or some l33t kung fu skillz to get rid of.
Anyway, the REAL fear comes from an observation that seems to hold up whenever I pay attention to it. Whenever you kill a spider, the next spider invading your space is usually of larger size. My brother's theory is that the dying spider releases a sort of telepathic death knell that reveals his location when he dies, which attracts the attention of larger representatives of the spider type. Having seen Phillipino spiders, he hestitates (read, "is scared to the wetting point") to even kill the smallest spider.
Leastways, that's the way he explains it to me. The effect it has on me is that i just think of those bird-eating spiders of the Phillipines whenever I see an 8-legged arachnid. <shudder>
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You know what does it to me? Sharks. Especially Landsharks.
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Contrary to popular belief, the most dangerous animal is not the lion or tiger or even the elephant. The most dangerous animal is a shark riding on an elephant, just trampling and eating everything they see.
(Jack Handey)
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Raid my children. It is all about a large, comforting can of Raid. My theory is that the spiders don't know they are dying from Raid until it's too late.
42, you probably wouldn't have nightmares about people if you hadn't hunted and captured them when you were a kid.
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You forget, spiders are psychic. They can read your mind and know what you're doing.
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Only if you believe they're psychic
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Is that like how gravity only works if you believe it works?
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exactly
But . . . I believe in gravity
Do you?
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Yes, but for centuries many peole didn't, and we have no record of any of them floating off somewhere. Belief != truth.
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Do you have any record of these alledged "people" not believing in gravity?
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Actually, we do. Not they they believed specifically that it didn't exist, but that they didn't believe in something at all.
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And you believe these reports?
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are you trying to build a logical argument? So if I believe in the reports they exist and therefore the people exist? I gues I don't know where that will go, so I'm going to bite.
Yeah, I believe 'em.
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Just because they didn't believe in the concept of gravity as we know it doesn't mean that they lacked belief in the principle behind it. Throughout history, mankind has held a firm belief that they will not go flying off into space for no good reason. Their belief made it true, whether or not they referred to it as gravity.
A better argument for SE's side would be babies--they don't believe in anything yet because they're not mentally capable of it, and yet they seem just as bound by gravity as everybody else. If your personal laws of physics were governed by your own beliefs then babies would be weightless for several hours after birth (and, technically, wouldn't ever learn from experience that gravity existed and, therefore, would never be affected by it).
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Yeah! Babies! Babies are the answer!
(Make love, not war!)
I admit that I had thought of that, but I admit that I hoped MoD wouldn't. Gee, thanks for ruining it, Fell.
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Babies are bound by gravity because they don't have the ability to believe in gravity or to believe gravity a false theory. Their parents, however, believe that their babies will not go floating off into space for no good reason. This is why babies are not weightless after they are born. Then the babies learn by example. If their parents don't go floating off into space for no good reason, then why should they?
No, the way to defy gravity, as told by Arthur Dent, is to simply forget to fall.
But that has nothing to do with spiders or their alledged psychic abilities.
As you can see by Saint's blind belief in the fact that there used to be people who didn't believe in gravity, reality is based on belief. Therefore, spiders are not psychic because I do not believe it.
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That's foolish talk. They don't have to DISBELIEVE, according to your earlier statement. I daresay you had never had an opinion on the psychic nature of spiders until I brought it up, there for you neither believed nor disbelieved. Ergo, if they have psychic abilities, then your failure to believe in them was inconsequential; whereas if they did not have psychic abilities, it could not have been due to an active disbelief on your part, as none existed.
And that doesn't even BEGIN to approach the problems of opposing beliefs, and doesn't even touch the arguments about whether you actually can DISbelieve something or simply believe in an opposite worldview. It also doesn't bring up the complication of kids who jump off roofs getting injured by hitting the ground despite their very real belief that a cape will enable to fly (note that it is the injury that ends the belief, not the end of the belief that causes the injury).
Therefore, the "if I believe in it than it is real" theory is false.
Therefore, Spiders are psychic and are probably plotting to suck your brains from your head as we speak.
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Incidentally, this is exactly the sort of spurious logic conversation you'd have with the Computer in a game of Paranoia. Except instead of arguing spider neuro-biology, you'd be arguing about whether you were commie-mutant-traitor who deserved death.
Doesn't that make it just that much more fun?
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Ah, consentual reality. What a fun theory. If only it were true.
(For fun times with consentual reality, I recommend a good game of Mage)
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I second that comment. Awesome game, especially if you start thinking about what happens if a mage gets a bunch of normal humans into a shard realm.
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Actually, MoD, falling was an essential part of Arthur Dent's ability to fly. He just had to forget to land.
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Yes. And I happen to find suprious logic fun sometimes.
Fell, I'd swear you were wrong, but I won't. Because swearing is wrong, and I probably am too.
Just for the record, however, spiders are not psychic. Even if I can't prove it.
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Ah... but what about scorpions? If they do not manipulate our brain waves, i dont know what does, apart from my cat.
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Spiders are psychic
Cats are psycho
Scorpians, well... they're part of an obscure narcissistic cthulu sect using the illuminati to take over world governments.
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No, Entropy, your cat is manipulating your brainwaves. Never doubt that or you will give your cat the opening he/she is looking for.
I've never fought a scorpion in real life, so I guess I wouldn't really know if they are psychic
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So, this has nothing to do with psychic cats or gravity defying babies, but:
I'm terrified of house fires.
Also, in New Mexico they have wasps that eat tarantulas. They're called Tarantula Hawks.
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Mustard, who said you were allowed back on the forum? Little freak.
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What? I'm not welcomed back with praise and glory? C'mon - this is like Aragorn tromping back into Minas Tirith here.
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Hey, welcome back, Mustard!
It's been too long.
How have you been?
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Personally, i have immense vertigo. Second story windows are iffy... anything above that i just don't wanna go near the windows at all. I went up the empire state, and just stood a metre away from the edge. Nearly crapped myself. If the support is flimsy, i'm even worse... i'd make a terrible tomb robber or thief since i'd start hyperventilating whenever i had to go on a roof.
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I have a strange deire to throw myself off of heights mainly because I feel that whatever im on is collapsing.... strangely I like flying...
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If we're talking about all fears, not just bugs, then my biggest by far is needles--I can't stand them. I also have a small degree of agoraphobia, but it's not so much a fear as a nausea--immensely large things, including numbers, often make me dizzy.
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Needles creep me out as well, but I am able to overcome my fear to give blood. Incedentally is their any weirder feeling than having your warm blood run down a tube in your arm into a bag when its freezing outside... ewww.
Who's afraid of blood?
I had a friend that was ok with the grossest things but the second she saw blood she was out cold.
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You also had those two weird girls who wouldn't eat meat because it was "gross"
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I had to go in for wrist surgery a few years ago. I was lying on the gurney, talking to the anesthesiologist while he was getting me set up. He put the IV in my hand and I started getting all woozy. I said "Wow, this stuff works really fast." The doc responded confusedly, "I haven't hooked you up to anything yet." Then I passed out.
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ehhh, not eating meat isn't a biggie for me. Becca was cool, and had a beautiful singing voice. Besides at least they knew what sex they wanted to persue from week to week.
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I've almost passed out twice, and to be honest i'd rather pass out than hover at the edge. I freak out the Red Cross workers because I go completely whitish grey and my pupils dialate like crazy....
After a snack and some soda im back, but my stomachs upset all day... weird hunh.
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I don't fear needles. But I am uncomfortable around them. My jaw clenches and my muscles tighten up. I just don't like them.
My anesthesia experiences:
When I had my wisdom teeth removed, I got the shot, and didn't think anything was happening. Then, when the nurse came in to ask how it was going I was about to ask for more. "How you doing?" she asks. And that's when I saw the walls fly away from me. "I'm all right." i say. The next thing I remember is waking up and being told to get my butt out of the chair. The next thing I remember after that is waking up and being told to get my butt out of the chair... again.
Then when I had my hernia corrected. I didn't sleep this time. The docs were listening to classic rock, and I was singing along and everything. Then I cried when it was over and kept asking if everything went ok.
I prefer the sleeping, I look like less of a nard.
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Lucky bastard, I had a navy dentist take my wisdom teeth...
I went in and he said, well I can only give you a local... so he hits me, and I dont feel any different. THen he turns to me and says Im going to have Dr. So and so do this, because he never has. Im sure my eyes bugged out like crazy and I gave him the hell no look, I think I even said Hell no you won't. He just chuckled and told me that I either got my teeth out that day or I could wait another six months. Since they were beginning to get impacted I let them do it. So this guy grabs some sort of clamp and begins wrenching teeth out of my mouth in the most painful way I can imagine... And Im screaming and they stop and look at me and then they realize they only gave me half the local that they were supposed to...
Man that hurt...
Funny part is when I was a kid (no lie) my mom used ot pull my loose teeth with a pair of needle nose pliers....
I dont like needle nose pliers to this day...
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<Over Generalization>
Military doctors universally suck. They're terrible. Ask me some time about how I got diagnosed for the hernia (a story that will not go on the message board)
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Yeah I have to disagree, the majority of military doctor's Ive had are pretty good.
Its getting to see them thats the hard part.... think of the worst HMO you can and then triple how bad you think it could be to get to see the doctor.
For instance...
In bootcamp repeated marching with boots that were a little too big for me caused me to develop a stress fracture in my foot. Rather than have someone X-ray it and maybe do something about it I got advil. Whats funny to me was that I could barely stand. After that I hid my problem untill the end so I could graduate with my company.
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They are bound to, since they will be paid less than normal doctors.
I have two other dislikes/fears. One is of needles; i hate the sensation of them being stuck in. I dont fear them, i guess, i just hate the feeling. They stuck 4 of them in me on monday :(
The other one is wierd. Whenever two metal things like forks or scissors jam together i hate it. Maybe its just the feel of them scraping. But i have no big problem with sharpening stuff by scraping them; only if they jam together. Wierd, and kinda a bad thing for a possible military career.
And i dislike mess. But have no intristic problem with blood. I had an ingrown toenail for 6 months, and that meant blood, not much of it, but my socks always had blood over the toe. The annoying thing is that since i got it dealt with on monday, its bleeding even more - my first bandage soaked right through.
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Jeffe, try the NHS. It took a month to get a GP appointment, and a month and a half at least to get the surgery appointment. Annoying as all hell. If you want it done fast, then private is your only answer, which costs loads.
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We have the same problem here unless you have buckets of cash... but at least everyone gets treatment under your system.... woe be it to the uninsured here if they get sick...
They either live with it or die. Very few free clinics.
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feh, military doctors DO suck.
General care is EASY. I went for routine checks and "i don't feel well, look at this" all the time when I was military. But no matter what, the doctor was a tard. Military doctors are the worst.
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Ive had a lot of good care w/ military doctors too...
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I've worked for the last four years for the Physician's Division with an HMO that shall remain nameless (the largest Health Care group in the Mountain West), and of the 893 doctors that I personally work with, I can think of very few of them who are very good. Of course, some are excellent in their medical knowledge, but most of them are pretty lousy at patient follow-up care. On the other hand, the ones that are good at follow-up care are often pretty crappy medically.
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Still it beats having someone saw an arm off or applying leaches or bloodletting doesn't it.
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Back to the needles, I get to have one today. The australian government is providing all year 12 students with a free meningacocal (sp?) vaccine, since we're the biggest group to get the disease. No, I'm not afraid, just irritated by the fact that I'm going to be stabbed. Those things hurt a bit.
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The needles only bother me when I can't see them going in. If I can watch, it's not a problem. Something to do with the suspense of it, I imagine.
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I'm exactly the opposite: if I don't see it go in I can pretend like it's not actually happening. If I see it go in--myself or anyone else, including movies and TV--I freak out.
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Im the same way Fell, but oddly enough I can cut into skin, and watch surgerys, but needles no way.
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you're all pansies.
/me shoves a needle in his arm and watches half the forum faint.
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Well that didn't hurt at all. I was expecting it to be a tiny needle, but it was even smaller. Had I not known it was going in, I wouldn't have noticed it. I did watch it go in, but then looked away - mostly out of boredom.
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Wow Jam, you can watch? Needles don't bother me much, though I did have some bad experiences with two when I twisted my knee. 60cc of blood drawn the first time, 33cc the second time. And I'm in pain, and the doctor is jerking my knee cap all over the place to find the best place to stick this huge needle. *shudder*
But I can't watch them go in. Eggh.
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Ow. They neglected to mention that the day after receiving it, it would feel like someone punched me in the arm. Really really hard. Ok it's just a bruise, but it hurt more than the actual needle. Which is backward I think - if someone is going to stab me with a sharp implement, I want to feel the pain then and there, not the next day.
Still, I didn't throw up like some people did.
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I think bruised from shots is a touch and go thing. Sometimes it happens and it's ugly, sometimes it doesn't. I've heard that it directly correlates to the skill of the impaler.
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I've heard it correllates to the wimpiness of the person being shot,... er... getting the shot. Pansies.
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Hey! As I said, I wasn't afraid of it at all. It just hurt the day after.
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You know what scares me? Gemm. That's what scares me. He is truly, truly, truly outrageous. And he also doesn't post to AORP like he should.
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Gemm is in AORP? Oh yeah. He's Hans
And your character is telling my character to trust his character's outlandish idea in Avast Ye?
I don't understand. And how could I possibly wrap a waist sash around my head in a way that didn't make me look like a leper?
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My character is telling your character to trust the captain's idea. No special reason. He just saved Smiddy's life twice, so he trusts the captain implicitly.
Use it for a hood or something. Shadows. Act sultry instead of mean, too.
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Well I would, but I've totally forgotten Hans' story. And the stuff I had on it is all gones...
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Well of course I'm going to be sultry to them.
/me shakes head
She's just mad. She's a redhead with a temper. She does know how to control it.
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I'll resend it right now, I think I still have it in my outbox.
Yeah, there. It's out.
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mmmmmmmmmmmm sultry!!!!!!!
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SE, where did you send those to exactly? I've checked all 3 of my boxes and I didn't get them. Unless you snail mailed them to me.
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Gemm09 AT aol dot com
What address do you WANT me to send it to?
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Ok, words I have no idea what they mean. Like this one: Caligynephobia. What the butt does that mean? Hmmm? And one I just made up/popped into my head the other day: Nopulence. Ahhh!
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it's fear of beautiful women. Something I'm sure you have. :-*
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Holy Befallen! Really?! Thats insane! I can now say what I have without giving anything away since not many people know what that means I'm sure! Yeah!
Ummm... whats the root of that word? My dictionary doesn't seem to have the word itself.
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you goof. i know you looked up the word before you posted it.
going backwards through the word though (to show how big an etymology nerd I am)
Phobia is fear
gyne is woman (actually, I think it comes from the Greek gynomai, which actually means to beget or be begotten, but which we use to mean women in a medical sense)
cali from the Greek kalos (with a short 'o') meaning 'beauty'
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....no. As if you didn't know this was coming, I forgot I had a dictionary in my room.
And in it I only get the name of some city for Cali.