The Million Dollar Question

What scares you more than anything else?

It's a simple question. I'm not talking about what fills you with anxiety; a lot of stuff can do that. Anxiety is what you feel when you're walking through a dark forest and hear something move in the darkness. Freaky yes, maybe even a first step to real fear, but not fear unto itself. I'm talking about real, unrestrained fear. Something that happens when your amygdala takes the wheel away from your frontal lobe and steers the car right into the median. Pure, cornered animal terror.

Actually, I don't think that this question can be truthfully answered by most people. I know I can't. I've had moments where I would have bet money that I would be dead in the next few seconds, I'm arachnaphobic, and I'm amazingly insecure, and yet I still don't think I can do it. If you can answer this question truthfully, you probably don't even want to think about it, let alone say it. Real fear is the kind of thing that scars us for life; the stuff of PTSD. The cause of it almost has to be death, or at least severe harm. You lose total control of yourself. All you want to do is escape. You'll do it by any means necessary, even if that means to kill. Can you justify killing if you're too high on adrenaline to restrain yourself because you were reduced to a frightened cornered animal that would do anything to survive?

People claim that they are afraid of a lot of things. Change, loneliness, being misunderstood, commitment; these are just some of the bullshit things that people claim scare them. That's not fear. Sure, they may be some legitimate issues that cause a great deal of stress and axiety, but it's not fear. I wonder how someone who has experienced true fear views these kind of things. Do they see it as a farce; worthless fretting over ultimately meaningless issues? Do they become amplified, creating more fear? Do they fill you with joy by the simple fact of being around to feel them?

And yet, despite our innate aversion to fear, we can't help but want to flirt with it. I suppose that's why this time of year is so popular. I'm especially thinking of haunted houses. We actually pay money to people who let us walk through a series of rooms where we experience a brief glimpse of what it feels like to lose control to fear. And lose control some people do. I walk through haunted houses and admire the production values, but I've had grown adults grab onto me and try to climb me like some kind of cat tree; sometimes even complete strangers. Why do we do it? So we know what it feels like to be really afraid? I don't think so. No matter how believable a haunted house is, we know in the back of our minds that it's fake and that we're in no real danger. If one of those zombie clowns actually walked up to you and grabbed you around the throat and started squeezing, then you'd really freak out. Adrenaline junkies are similar but a little different. Jumping out of airplanes, base jumping, rock climbing, it's all just different approaches to the same idea: fake fear. I don't want to just write this off as some form of emotional masturbation. This is toying with our survival instincts. We do it for an easy reason: to prove our intellectual superiority over more primative drives. We like to think that we can look the devil in the eye and not flinch, but let's face it: we're still animals. Our simple brains are there for a reason, and that is that they keep us alive. Therefore, since I believe that my body knows what's best for me, I try to avoid such negative vibes. Why try to feel afraid when I can do something to feel happy, often with less effort, like actual masturbation.

So what scares you more than anything else? I have no idea, and probably neither do you, and I think it's best that we keep it that way.

The Lady of the Evening

DISCLAIMER: THE PERSON DESCRIBED IN THIS POST IS ENTIRELY FICTIONAL (AS FAR AS I KNOW). ANY SEMBLANCE TO ANY ACTUAL WOMEN I KNOW IS PURELY COINCIDENTAL, SO DON'T READ TOO DEEP INTO IT. I'M DISHING THIS STUFF STRAIGHT UP.

I am being haunted. I don't think it's a ghost, but something has been haunting me for years, and I've just now realized the gravity of it. I think I'm being haunted by a woman.

Since I was about 14, I have occasionally had strange dreams. Taken seperately, each one is nothing odd. They are dreams in which I interact with a woman in various ways, ranging from helping her move into a dorm room, her convincing me to go swimming alone with her, and most recently, keeping her company in a dark scary forest with intimate results. The part that freaks me out: it's been the same woman every time!

Now I don't hide the fact that I dream about women, and usually like it. I've dreamt about female celebrities, gal pals, former girlfriends, and casual acquaintences. But I have no idea who this dream woman is. This is not some girl I know, indeed I have never seen her before in my entire life. Her exisitence is a complete mystery to me. She can't represent any one person, because the only women I have known for that long are relatives (and don't even go there, you sick bastards).

I can never remember her face when I wake up, but I do retain a certain sense of familiarity every time one such dream occurs. I can also recall a few general details that have been consistent. She has somewhat long, straight brown hair, is shorter than me (around 5'9"-5'10" maybe) and has a somewhat slender build, but not overly skinny. Her appearance is never exactly the same. When I was 14, she looked about my age, and has continued to age with me over the years, as if she's growing with me. Her personality is usually the same too. She's typically very quiet, but is very sweet and can be a little timid, but she has a wild streak that can lead her into some interesting situations. She also really like me. A lot. I daresay she needs me. Although she's the same every time, most dreams involve an introduction in which there is immediate and intense chemistry between us, so much so that some dreams end up with us presumably married years later and still very much in love.

Sounds like a good deal, right? No. The reason being that every time I wake up from one of these dreams, it feels like my heart is breaking upon the realization that it was all a dream. I had one last night, and I actually fought myself for about an hour this morning trying to force myself back to sleep so that I wouldn't have to give her up, yet again. It sucked. I was Eeyore for the rest of the day because of it. Why? Why?! Who is this woman and why do I love her this much even though she doesn't exist?

I have a few theories regarding this somnambulist siren. One is that she's my anima, my dormant inner female fighting to express herself. Another is that she's simply my subconscious defragging all of my male urges while I sleep. The final major idea is the one I've invested the most stock in, probably because it's the most optimistic one: she is the woman of my dreams. Now I don't put a lot of faith into the "one soul mate" theory, but I also realize that all bets are off when it comes to love, so I can't help but wonder, what if this chick is my one true love, reaching out to me astrally in some sort of nighttime communion? Is she real? Could she actually exist, and beyond that, have dreams about me and wonder who I am? Are we destined to one day finally cross paths and experience the same connection that has heretofore only been the stuff of dreams? I wish I knew. She doesn't even have a name that I know of, but if you're out there, know that I know you, and while not actively seeking you out, secretly hope that one day we shall meet, because if you are real, if I can even experience a fraction of the love for you that I feel in my sleep, I will die a happy man.

Hurm...I just realized how heavy this post was. I need to come up with something a little lighter next time.

What the Hex Going On?

A rare twofor today, but I have to get this out in the hope the maybe someone out there will have a solution. You see, I have been cursed. Some cosmic being has decided to jerk me around for shits and giggles. The last twenty-four hours have been one thing after another, leading to a day of bad luck that can only explained by some kind of bad juju, and it's starting to freak me out a little. Let me explain my day...

It started on a decidedly sour note. I had a little tiff with a friend of mine the previous night, and you know when they say don't go to bed angry? They were right on the nose. I could hardly sleep; tossing and turning and sweating like I had a fever that was breaking. By the time my alarm went off, I was too tired to even utter my usual early morning chain of swear words. Not only was I not rested, I was still mad. I don't know if anyone out there has ever actually woken up mad, but it's a weird sensation. You're super pissed and feel like crap, but it takes you a second to remember why. So these feelings loom over me for most of the morning, making me unable to focus in class, and eventually, I resolved to forego the rest of my classes and take a mental health day. Realistically, I was only missing one class, and I had the notes for it already, so it was no great loss.

Following a rage-fueled drive home (always good for the body and mind), I made it home and immediately started working to raise my spirits. I went through a little routine that always perks me up, and before I knew it, I was full of forgiveness and cheerfulness and thought that I had this crappy day licked, that is until I left again to do some errands. All I wanted to do was go to the bank, mail a bill, and get my broken watch looked at, that's all. How could I have possibly forseen the threat that loomed after me next? I mean, who wakes up and prepares themselves for an automobile collision with an oven. Yes, an oven, as in I drove my car into an oven as I was leaving. To make things clear, "oven" is not some code word for deer, I literally mean a kitchen appliance used for baking. I didn't even see it coming; it just jumped out at me from behind a bush or something. I'm seriously considering sending a very angry letter to the Missouri Department of Conservation about the growing problem of wild ovens popping up in the suburbs and being a nuisance. So I hit this oven and have to stop and drag it to the side of the road and sweep up all of the broken glass from the shattered front observation window. Once everything was cleaned up, I proceeded to do my errands with a new dent and streak of white oven paint on the side of my car. Joy.

I return for dinner, and proceed to break a plate, a rather sturdy plate mind you, as I was dishing it out. It was at this point that I started to think that something was a bit off. I do not have days that are this bad. Somebody must have cursed me somewhere. I'm hesitant to do anything now for fear of it backfiring and resulting in me breaking something else. So if anyone has a solution for curing me of this spiritual malady, let me know. I've already prayed, lit a candle, performed a tarot reading, consulted a ouija board, and sacrificed a bull, a goat, and two chickens. Any other pointers out there?

Unlimited Potential

There is an old riddle/paradox out there that has confounded even our greatest minds for the longest time: What happens when an unstoppable force meets an unmovable object? Sure, this conundrum last popped its head up in The Dark Knight, but it goes back way farther than that. I find it a fascinating question, largely because in order to contemplate it, you have to shut off the logical portion of your mind. Logically, only one of these forces could actually exist, and based in a physical universe that is finite, neither of them could. So all you people who cling to the teat of logic like a baby squirrel monkey does to its mother have to check your hats at the door.

I love it because it is such a great metaphor for conflict. On the one hand, you have the unstoppable force, a being of limitless drive and energy that can never stop. I cannot help but respect and admire the sheer ambition and motivation of it, always moving forward without giving a damn about anything that might stand in its way. I know poeple like this, and although that drive sometimes leads to them acting a little self-involved and oblivious to the feelings and needs of those around them, they know how to go out there and grab life by the balls and take what they want from it.

Then you have the unmovable object. Stalwart, determined, unbending to anything, it's the epitomy of strength. I know people like this as well. They are the ones who commit to a conviction and refuse to yield. Unmovable often comes across as stubborn, prompting those around it to ask, "Why don't you just move? Is it that hard to change?" When your very nature is to be unmovable, the aswers to those questions are, "Because I can't," and, "Yes it is." Just as the force will not stop for anything, the object will not budge. Why does it not move? Is it out of fear for losing something? Is it to prove a point that was long ago forgotten? Or does it simply do it because that is what unmovable objects do?

So, the stage is set and our characters are in place. What happens when they collide? Do they destroy one another? Do they merge and become a single entity? Do they create a new unlimited paradigm? One thing I do believe is that one cannot triumph over the other. They are both too perfect and too pure to be destroyed by the other. There is no winner and there is no loser. This of course means that either both win or both lose. Ever the optimist, I'd like to think that both end up winning, but this can't happen if the two remain in their present states. A fundamental change must take place in both, not by one, but by both parties involved. The object cannot suddenly decide to move, nor can the force choose to retard itself. There must be balance; a give and take in the universe.

So why ponder such things at all? Peace and clarity. Two things that I wish more people had.

This Will Destroy Us All

I have recently discovered what is quite possibly the most terrifying monster that has ever existed. This is no mere mythical beast that has been relegated to the annals of the oral tradition. Every other supernatural demon of hell is dwarfed in the mere shadow of this creature. Yeti, gorgons, bunyips, even the Beast of Gevaudan can't hold a candle to it.

It hails from the untamed jungles of the Indian subcontinent. The first sightings go back thousands of years. Farmers reported seeing a creature about the size of a dog when on all fours and brown in color, looking vaguely like a combination of a wild jungle fowl and a monkey. It was covered in a coarse covering that resembled either heavy fur or thin feathers. The legs and feet are bare and end in long talons. Long, muscular arms allow it to swing through the thick jungle flora to create the illusion of flight. Dark glassy eyes meet your gaze as they rest above what can only be described as a toothy beak. The early people of India gave this abomination of nature a name, a name whose origins are lost with their early language, but it still casts a chill down your spine.

They called it Chunkhi.

The chunkhi is no mere legend though. Over the centuries, sightings of the chunkhi have continued. Once in a while, you can catch an article in New Delhi newpapers or Indian television reporting that children have gone missing, storefronts being damaged, or food getting stolen. Most of the time, these are commited by hoodlums or the occasional monkey, but don't be fooled, the chunkhi is responsible for at least some of these instances.

So far, these events have been contained to India, but last month, I found an obscure newspaper article from a few years ago that reported a strange creature found near the Nebraska/Missouri border. When questioned, the witness replied, "Well, it looked like a cross between a chicken and a monkey!" Poignant and terrifying words. Could the chunkhi have come to America somehow?

Now is the time to be afraid.

So That's Why They Call It Liquid Courage

I have found something out that may get me the Psychologist of the Year Award. Never mind that I'm not a psychologist, but it's that awesome that they'd give it to me anyway. I have found the conclusive link that proves that fears are learned behaviors and are largely the result of our overly complicated brains.

Allow me to enlighten you: it came to me last night as I found myself in the woods in the middle of the night completely by myself. I'm talking totally alone, as in I could have been attacked by bears and nobody would have heard me scream, nor the bears munching on my delicious flesh. Yes, I taste delicious; kind of a combination of BBQ, onion, and cheddar cheese. What bear couldn't resist that? Anyways, I digress...so I'm out there in the forest, completely alone, and I start to get this weird creepy feeling in the pit of my stomach. The woods at night is not a good place for me.

I have a particularly active imagination (go back and read some previous posts if you don't believe me) and my mind loooooves to play tricks on me. It's a curse that I've carried my entire life. As a tyke, I'd lay awake in my bed, looking around my room at all of the black, amorphous shapes that could be the Grim Reaper, or a mummy, or some black-shrouded demon that was going to get me and drag me down to hell. I don't see those things anymore (the shock therapy helps, zappy zappy!), but a dark area still plays out as some some twisted game of staring at clouds. I'll turn my head and think I see some vaguely human shape and jump pretty good. Another family trait is that I startle extremely easily. It really friggen' sucks. All I have to do is zone out for a minute and the slightest thing will make me jump like a chihuahua in front of a twenty-one gun salute. I was carrying a trash bag and almost shit myself because its ruffling sounded like someone was running up behind me. The worst part about the whole thing is that there is never any release to the fear, just a constant dread. At least when you watch a scary movie or go to a haunted house, something jumps out and scares the piss out of you and the tension dissipates. If it builds up long enough, it's almost orgasmic. So as I walked around in this state of horror blueballs, I remembered something that had happened to me the previous night.

I was at a reptile show as part of a wedding reception, and by this point the open bar had started to take its toll on me. A brief aside: I did not put "Go to a reptile show drunk" on my Things To Do Before I Die List, but I should have and recommend that all of you do, cuz it's awesome! At one point in the show, I was holding a tarantula in my hand. A tarantula in my hand! A MOTHERFUCKING TARANTULA IN MY GODDAMN HAND!!! To educate some of you out there, I am a pretty big arachnaphobe, which is fancy talk for spiders scare the bejeezus out of me. So for me to hold this huge fucking spider in my hand was kind of a big deal. I knew what I was doing, but I didn't care. I knew that I would normally have wigged out and maybe even killed the thing accidentally, but I didn't. Sure I tensed up and all of the blood flushed from my head, but I've done that in the bathroom before. So in my drunken state, I was less fearful of having a tarantula in my hand than I was stone sober on the forest at night.

My final conclusions: fears are ultimately the result of our higher reasoning skills jerking around our older reptilian brain. If alcohol is present in sufficient levels to shut down that pesky frontal lobe, then it is very likely that not as much stuff will freak you out. Had I had my load on in the trees, I probably would have felt much more at ease, as well as probably singing "More Than A Feeling" at the top of my lungs. I think I have stumbled onto a whole new area of research that should seriously be investigated further. I mean, how hard can it be to find people to pay and get drunk? Who says students can't get interested in the sciences?

I'll be famous!

Send in Anyone BUT Them!

Alright now, it's October and I've been pussyfooting around this whole scary shit series long enough. It's time to get serious. We're going to deal with a truly contemptable plague of evil that is sweeping across our society and threatens to destroy us all...

...CLOWNS!

The irony of clowns is so sweet, I'm pretty sure it will give you diabetes. Here we have a universal class of human beings who have devoted themselves to the art of making people laugh, and yet they are one of the most feared and misunderstood images in our world today. Does anyone not know somebody who is afraid of clowns? Are you afraid of clowns? I'll bet you are. Yeah, you put on a brave face and pretend that you can take it, but as soon as one of those jolly white-faced fellows saunters in your direction, your heart starts to race, and you begin to wonder if he's going to hit you over the head with that balloon pump and drag you off into an alley where he'll do unspeakable acts to you. What exactly? Murder? Rape? Ritualistic sacrifice? All of the above? Don't ask me, it's your imagination, sicko.

What is the source of coulophobia, as it's called in clinical circles? The most basic reason it would seem is the makeup. The face of a clown is meant to exaggerate the existing features and contours of the clown's face. Now exaggeration is the cornerstone to comedy. I refuse to dissect humor, but funny is built upon blowing things out of proportion. This distorion of reality is not natural, humans with faces this grotesque would be shunned by mainstream society. Think of that hunchbacked dude from 300. That guy made week-old road kill look like a good lay. Clowns take that look and apply it in a brightly colored 2-D pattern on their faces. It's easy to see why this weirds people out, especially young kids who are still trying to conceptualize the world around them. You think you finally have a grasp on what other people should look like, and then all of a sudden in comes this clown to the schema. Holy-fuckin'-shit-balls-with-nuts-and-a-cherry-on-top!

So, this basic premise is in place. What happens next is that some of the more creative among us decide to run with the idea and make a caricature of it, creating a class of clowns that are freaky in their own right. It, Poltergeist, Spawn, Batman, and even Doctor Roxo the Rock and Roll Clown have all created pre-packaged images of scary clowns that require no thought of our own to understand how evil these bastards are. Add to that instances like John Wayne Gacy, a very real monster, and its no wonder why so many people today are terrified of clowns. It's a wonder I'm not; I was scared of everything as a kid. I was scared by my dad in clown makeup once as a very young lad, but that's the only instance I can recall.

What really unnerves me about clowns is none of these factors. What bugs me is the fact that there is an entire school of art that is devoted to clowning. Individuals who take this stuff so seriously that they have developed an entire craft to putting paint on your face and wearing giant shoes. This whole Commedia dell'Arte thing robs clowning of its basic principle, and if there is one thing that guides me in this plane of reality, it is that...say it with me now...

Jokes are not funny if you have to explain them!

Of course there are also Ute myths of a race of cannibalisitic clowns known as the Siats, so maybe there is something to this scary clown thing.

I will leave you with the supposed eerie words of one of the masters of horror, Lon Cheny: "There is nothing funny about seeing a clown in the moonlight."

If you do see this, run like hell, if you haven't shit yourself first.

This Post Dedicated to Larry Harmon, the King of TV Clowns