Cupid kind of gets a bum wrap when it comes to holiday mascots. When held up against behemoths like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, that chubby little bastard just doesn't hold a candle. Maybe it's because Cupid is the most academic one of the lot; his origins lie in ancient Greek myth after all. It is probably because he is a fat little baby that shoots people with arrows and makes them fall in love. Maybe I'm just weird, but this image is beyond rediculous. How are we supposed to take him seriously? Cupid is way past due for a face-lift in my opinion; something to make him more relevant to today's audience. I imagine a Navy SEAL whose sole purpose is to make people fall in and out of love; the illegitimate love-child of Solid Snake and Elizabeth Barrett-Browning.
Imagine this: it is a bright spring day in the city park. The birds are chirping, the sun is shining, and love is in the air. Actually, love is lying under a row of shrubbery where no one can see him. He works to control his breathing so that he doesn't rustle the leaves that cover his body to break up his form. His face is covered in green and brown face paint in order to match his leafy surroundings. His one indulgeance is a cigar smouldering in the corner of his mouth. In his arms is a modified 50-caliber Barret M82 sniper rifle. Rather than deliver a high power bullet capable of traveling nearly a mile and a half, the rifle has been altered to deliver a round that when it hits its target, it alters his or her physiology to inspire various emotional states. Some shots create a sense of extreme sexual arousal, some a deep passion that could be described as "love," and others that are even capable of creating hate and antimosity.
The hunter waits for an opportunity to strike. After many hours, he sees his window. A young man in his early twenties sits down on a bench. Minutes later, an attractive young woman walks by with her fluffy little dog. She pauses while her pooch pops a squat to fertilize the grass. The moment to act is now. *click* A round slides into the chamber of the rifle and cocks into place. With his finger over the hair-sensitive trigger, he steadies his breath and gazes through the thermal scope and finds his exact target. Without a moment's hesitation, he pulls the trigger. The built in silencing mechanism renders the bullet virtually silent as it exits the barrel and buries itself into the chest of the woman. She lurches back with a start. The man rises from his seat to see if she is OK. Their eyes meet, a conversation ensues, and the two end up walking away together. As the new couple disappears over a low hill in the distance, Cupid puffs his cigar, gives a satifed nod, and resumes his search for more victims.
Let's see Santa compete with that kind of bad-ass-motherfucker!
Showing posts with label series. Show all posts
Showing posts with label series. Show all posts
Friday, February 13, 2009
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
It's A Sad Sad Sad Sad World
If any of you out there who follow my inane diatribes are gambling people, now is the time to call in your bets on whether or not I decide to shit all over Valentine's Day. I mean, I've already deleted any hope for online dating, and knocked over falling in love, so this would be the natural culmination, right?
Wrong! In a suprise move of metacognition, I am instead going to shit on the people who shit on Valentine's Day. Sure, all the pink hearts and kissy-face teddy bears drive me up a wall, but you know what? That saccharine tripe bugs the hell out of me every day! You know the people I'm talking about. Here's a quick checklist to see if you fit the profile.
Do you:
A: Feel a certain sense of hopelessness in the weeks preceding February 14th?
B: Refer to Valentine's Day as "Singles Awareness Day?" (Awwww...it spells "SAD"...how clever)
C: Thank God that you don't have a machete every time you see two people holding hands?
D: Feel sick to your stomach when you smell chocolate?
E: Think bears are something to be feared, not hugged?
If you answered "yes" to one or more of these, hang up that colostomy bag, 'cuz I'm about to rip you a new asshole.
I admit that misery loves company (hell, I do it all the time for shits and giggles), but letting one single day completely ruin your life? Some people even have the audacity to claim that Valentine's Day is the most depressing holiday of the year. Seriously? A couple months ago, Christmas was the most depressing holiday. Before that, it was probably your birthday. I think the problem here is commitment. I don't mean the inability to commit in a relationship which is probably why you've never had a real boy/girlfriend, or maybe it's your over-willingness to commit that scares away anyone who likes you because you start talking about kids on the third date. I refer to none of these things. You need to commit to your misery. If you're going to be sad, be sad all the time. Don't wait for a holiday to creep up on you to bum you out. At the very least, be depressed for all of winter like me. Consistency; that's the key.
Also, stop ragging on people that were actually lucky enough to find somebody to mate with them. I have no woman to call my own at this point, but I don't blame every other person for it. I don't blame myself either, actually. I prefer to think that I am merely unappreciated in my own time, and one day all those chicks who turned me down are gonna cry themselves to sleep every night for letting me go. I'm sure you probably think you'd be too cool to care if the situation was reversed, but you're not. Admit it, if you get this bent out of shape single, a significant other is a surefire recipe for certifiable insanity.
Advice? No, it's your shit, I can't tell you what to do. February 14th is a day on the calendar. It is no different from any other day. Folks bitch and moan about its significance because they want it to have meaning. If a person waits for one day out of the whole year to express love, then I say "fuck you" to that person. Or if you wait for one day to say "fuck you" to love, then I respond with "double fuck you!" Everybody wants love all the time...deal with it.
Sorry for all you folks out there who lost money. Even I bet the other way; I lost $100.
Wrong! In a suprise move of metacognition, I am instead going to shit on the people who shit on Valentine's Day. Sure, all the pink hearts and kissy-face teddy bears drive me up a wall, but you know what? That saccharine tripe bugs the hell out of me every day! You know the people I'm talking about. Here's a quick checklist to see if you fit the profile.
Do you:
A: Feel a certain sense of hopelessness in the weeks preceding February 14th?
B: Refer to Valentine's Day as "Singles Awareness Day?" (Awwww...it spells "SAD"...how clever)
C: Thank God that you don't have a machete every time you see two people holding hands?
D: Feel sick to your stomach when you smell chocolate?
E: Think bears are something to be feared, not hugged?
If you answered "yes" to one or more of these, hang up that colostomy bag, 'cuz I'm about to rip you a new asshole.
I admit that misery loves company (hell, I do it all the time for shits and giggles), but letting one single day completely ruin your life? Some people even have the audacity to claim that Valentine's Day is the most depressing holiday of the year. Seriously? A couple months ago, Christmas was the most depressing holiday. Before that, it was probably your birthday. I think the problem here is commitment. I don't mean the inability to commit in a relationship which is probably why you've never had a real boy/girlfriend, or maybe it's your over-willingness to commit that scares away anyone who likes you because you start talking about kids on the third date. I refer to none of these things. You need to commit to your misery. If you're going to be sad, be sad all the time. Don't wait for a holiday to creep up on you to bum you out. At the very least, be depressed for all of winter like me. Consistency; that's the key.
Also, stop ragging on people that were actually lucky enough to find somebody to mate with them. I have no woman to call my own at this point, but I don't blame every other person for it. I don't blame myself either, actually. I prefer to think that I am merely unappreciated in my own time, and one day all those chicks who turned me down are gonna cry themselves to sleep every night for letting me go. I'm sure you probably think you'd be too cool to care if the situation was reversed, but you're not. Admit it, if you get this bent out of shape single, a significant other is a surefire recipe for certifiable insanity.
Advice? No, it's your shit, I can't tell you what to do. February 14th is a day on the calendar. It is no different from any other day. Folks bitch and moan about its significance because they want it to have meaning. If a person waits for one day out of the whole year to express love, then I say "fuck you" to that person. Or if you wait for one day to say "fuck you" to love, then I respond with "double fuck you!" Everybody wants love all the time...deal with it.
Sorry for all you folks out there who lost money. Even I bet the other way; I lost $100.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Don't Fall For It
Today, I would like to talk to you about falling. Falling is a serious matter. I still remember when my 92 year-old grandfather fell last year and broke a hip. The subsequent surgery and recovery almost killed him from exhaustion. Falling is the second most common work-related injury, and almost 400,000 people die from falling related accidents every year, not including the people who do it as a form of suicide. When an angry populace cannot get their hands on enough rope or swords or fancy-ass guillotines, what do they do with their shitheel rulers? They defenstrate them; throw their asses out of windows. Y'see? Falling has gotten so complex that we have different words to describe certain types of it. And how many times have you been woken up from a peaceful night's rest with that stupid freefall sensation? To be sure, falling is a most unpleasent experience, so why should falling in love be any different?
Falling requires three key ingredients: I'll refer to them as the trip, the fall, and the landing. The trip is the moment that instigates falling. It can be deliberate, such as stepping off the edge of a building or sticking your leg out in front of someone, or accidental, like just not paying attention to where you're stepping. To place this into the context of love, the trip is basically the thing that causes you to notice someone, be it a glance, a conversation, a hug, or anything else that makes you say to yourself, "damn..."
Next there is the fall proper. Technically, it is the space between the trip and the landing, so it could be argued that the fall does not actually exist; similar to how cold is merely the absence of heat, or dark being the lack of light. Semantics aside, this is also where we are the most helpless. We become victims of gravity. You are going down and there is not a thing you can do to change that. The paradox is that this is where the mind does the most work. Although usually brief in a temporal sense, the action appears to slow down and a thousand thoughts rush past. Conversely, you may not even be aware of what is happening until you're already on the ground. In all likelihood, the first and most common feeling is shock and fear. Our reptile brains take over and our first priority becomes survival. There is seldom time do anything other than reach out an arm and hope for the best. The unbridled passion you feel for your paramour sweeps you along whether you like it or not. This is the same cerebral cocktail that is responsible for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. You get that? Chemically, love is a mental disorder.
Finally, we land from the fall. The old maxim says that it's not the fall that kills you, it's the landing. That's true enough. Falling forever might mess with your inner ear a bit, but it probably wouldn't be too bad. There may be one way to fall, but there are a thousand ways to land. Of those, very few are pleasent. Unless you fall over something soft, you will be shocked, bumped, and quite possibly hurt. Do I have to keep drawing these love parallels, or can you figure out the landing part for yourselves?
I could tell you to just spare yourself and never fall in love, but I won't (I'm not that cynical). The truth is that no one is immune to falling. Everyone from babies to the elderly fall, although those two groups do seem to take up the lion's share of it; kind of a reversed bell curve if you think about it. It's part of the human condition. Does it suck? Most times, yes it does. In fact, most times, you'll probably get hurt, but rarely will it kill you. Just pick your ass up and watch your step to make sure that it doesn't happen again.
Falling requires three key ingredients: I'll refer to them as the trip, the fall, and the landing. The trip is the moment that instigates falling. It can be deliberate, such as stepping off the edge of a building or sticking your leg out in front of someone, or accidental, like just not paying attention to where you're stepping. To place this into the context of love, the trip is basically the thing that causes you to notice someone, be it a glance, a conversation, a hug, or anything else that makes you say to yourself, "damn..."
Next there is the fall proper. Technically, it is the space between the trip and the landing, so it could be argued that the fall does not actually exist; similar to how cold is merely the absence of heat, or dark being the lack of light. Semantics aside, this is also where we are the most helpless. We become victims of gravity. You are going down and there is not a thing you can do to change that. The paradox is that this is where the mind does the most work. Although usually brief in a temporal sense, the action appears to slow down and a thousand thoughts rush past. Conversely, you may not even be aware of what is happening until you're already on the ground. In all likelihood, the first and most common feeling is shock and fear. Our reptile brains take over and our first priority becomes survival. There is seldom time do anything other than reach out an arm and hope for the best. The unbridled passion you feel for your paramour sweeps you along whether you like it or not. This is the same cerebral cocktail that is responsible for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. You get that? Chemically, love is a mental disorder.
Finally, we land from the fall. The old maxim says that it's not the fall that kills you, it's the landing. That's true enough. Falling forever might mess with your inner ear a bit, but it probably wouldn't be too bad. There may be one way to fall, but there are a thousand ways to land. Of those, very few are pleasent. Unless you fall over something soft, you will be shocked, bumped, and quite possibly hurt. Do I have to keep drawing these love parallels, or can you figure out the landing part for yourselves?
I could tell you to just spare yourself and never fall in love, but I won't (I'm not that cynical). The truth is that no one is immune to falling. Everyone from babies to the elderly fall, although those two groups do seem to take up the lion's share of it; kind of a reversed bell curve if you think about it. It's part of the human condition. Does it suck? Most times, yes it does. In fact, most times, you'll probably get hurt, but rarely will it kill you. Just pick your ass up and watch your step to make sure that it doesn't happen again.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
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.
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.
Monday, October 13, 2008
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.
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.
Monday, October 6, 2008
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!
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!
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
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
...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
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Neither Prime, Nor Composite
Consider this the compliment to the Cuddle Monster. This is no monster though; no ghouls, freaks, or spooks are involved in this one. In fact: it is the lack of these things, as well as everything else that motivates this fear. I can only describe it as the fear of being alone. Abandonment is the most primal of fears. It is instictual in fact; engrained on our very DNA. So why do we fear being alone? The answer appears to be simple enough: because life is one big game of dodgeball and it really sucks when you're the only one on a team and everyone is trying to peg you square in the nuts from across the gym.
We're social animals. We need the company of our own kind. The only critters out there that are good at being alone are the ones that are singularly created killing machines whose sole purpose is to be a mean little bastard to everyone else (i.e. honey badgers). We homo sapiens are more complicated than that, and we've certainly done a good job at trying to avoid ending up alone. I mean, everything from marriage, to sports, to racism is fundamentally based on the idea of unity; that it takes more than one person to make something happen, to find happiness.
In a more psychological sense, we need others because it gives us value. The very fact of knowing that somewhere out there in this big clusterfuck is at least one person who cares about what I do make us feel good; like we matter. And we do, because as soon as you really let yourself become entwined into another person's life, your actions become a deciding factor in those of that person, maybe even the thing on which his or her happiness is contingent. This is only one extreme though. Meaningful relationships are key, but there is an entire spectrum of interaction that fulfills so many other needs, from the utilitarian to the truly miraculous.
This is not to say that isolation is not without its virtues. Can you truly understand yourself as an individual without the occasional quiet moment of reflection. Whether it's meditation, prayer, laying down for bed, or taking a shit, we allow ourselves times of reflection because sometimes it sucks to be around other people. In the end though, we all want to go back to others.
Are we afraid to be alone because it leaves you with no one around, or because it only leaves you around? Only you can answer that question.
We're social animals. We need the company of our own kind. The only critters out there that are good at being alone are the ones that are singularly created killing machines whose sole purpose is to be a mean little bastard to everyone else (i.e. honey badgers). We homo sapiens are more complicated than that, and we've certainly done a good job at trying to avoid ending up alone. I mean, everything from marriage, to sports, to racism is fundamentally based on the idea of unity; that it takes more than one person to make something happen, to find happiness.
In a more psychological sense, we need others because it gives us value. The very fact of knowing that somewhere out there in this big clusterfuck is at least one person who cares about what I do make us feel good; like we matter. And we do, because as soon as you really let yourself become entwined into another person's life, your actions become a deciding factor in those of that person, maybe even the thing on which his or her happiness is contingent. This is only one extreme though. Meaningful relationships are key, but there is an entire spectrum of interaction that fulfills so many other needs, from the utilitarian to the truly miraculous.
This is not to say that isolation is not without its virtues. Can you truly understand yourself as an individual without the occasional quiet moment of reflection. Whether it's meditation, prayer, laying down for bed, or taking a shit, we allow ourselves times of reflection because sometimes it sucks to be around other people. In the end though, we all want to go back to others.
Are we afraid to be alone because it leaves you with no one around, or because it only leaves you around? Only you can answer that question.
Monday, September 22, 2008
Attack of the Cuddle Monster
Tonight, I'm going to get a little tangental. I'm not dealing with a proper monster; maybe kind of like cookie monster. It's somewhat relevant because I'm dealing with something that really freaks some people out. Officially, the topic is personal space with particular attention being paid to its role in interpersonal relationships, but from here on out, in the spirit of the season, its nom de guerre shall be known as the Cuddle Monster. I don't really know what got me thinking about this. Maybe it's just some kind of cosmic energy with it being the autumnal equinox and all, maybe it's because Fall gets me kind of twitterpated, or maybe it just happened for no damn reason at all.
This little bugger is a crafty beast. It has no one singular corporeal form, it instead appears in a different form to each person. It can be anything from an unwanted kiss, to a forced hug, to anyone stepping within 18 inches of you. Let's face it: people are kinda particular about their personal space. What is it that makes us so defensive about our little bubble? Of course, the only person I can speak for is myself, so why not use me as an empirical baseline to be used in all future research?
Having said this, I'm pretty liberal when it comes to other people touching me. I remember once hearing a beauty pageant question that went along the lines of, "Which of the five senses could you absolutely not live without?" Although I wasn't in the running, although I should have been, I immediately came up with an answer that I always have with me in case the issue comes up.
"I could not, would not, live without my sense of touch. To never feel a balmy summer breeze, the embrace of a child, or the gentle kiss of a loved one is a life incomplete, lacking that most fundamental elements of happiness, the ability to feel good from the smallest of God's gifts."
*applause applause* I get the crown.
I for the most part welcome friendly touching, especially from members of the fairer sex. There isn't a lot that I won't let a woman do to me...well, almost...pending certain laws and public statutes...plus you have to remember that Jesus is watching. Anyways, I suppose my comfortability stems from the fact that I had very warm, physically affectionate parents growing up, so it's what I know. I can see others having more distant parents, so physical closeness makes them uncomfortable, or it could be rebellion against over-affectionate parents. I have to laugh when I see a couple like this. They love each other, but the closest they ever come to expressing it is a fist pound. I kind of like to pretend that once you find a good enough person, you'll want to be all cuddly, as gross and annoying that it is.
As much as I actually like the Cuddle Monster, I hate it when he rears his head in public. I have the same opinion of new love that I do of drug users: you have your right to do what makes you feel good, but do it away from me or suffer the consequences. Sorry folks, a salud to the fact that you're getting laid, but keep it out of my face.
So in conclusion, I guess depending who you are, the Cuddle Monster can either be a fearsome beast with the potential to make you incredibly uncomfortable, or more in the vein of Grover, a cute, if sometimes annoying, little fuzzy dude that can make your day.
This little bugger is a crafty beast. It has no one singular corporeal form, it instead appears in a different form to each person. It can be anything from an unwanted kiss, to a forced hug, to anyone stepping within 18 inches of you. Let's face it: people are kinda particular about their personal space. What is it that makes us so defensive about our little bubble? Of course, the only person I can speak for is myself, so why not use me as an empirical baseline to be used in all future research?
Having said this, I'm pretty liberal when it comes to other people touching me. I remember once hearing a beauty pageant question that went along the lines of, "Which of the five senses could you absolutely not live without?" Although I wasn't in the running, although I should have been, I immediately came up with an answer that I always have with me in case the issue comes up.
"I could not, would not, live without my sense of touch. To never feel a balmy summer breeze, the embrace of a child, or the gentle kiss of a loved one is a life incomplete, lacking that most fundamental elements of happiness, the ability to feel good from the smallest of God's gifts."
*applause applause* I get the crown.
I for the most part welcome friendly touching, especially from members of the fairer sex. There isn't a lot that I won't let a woman do to me...well, almost...pending certain laws and public statutes...plus you have to remember that Jesus is watching. Anyways, I suppose my comfortability stems from the fact that I had very warm, physically affectionate parents growing up, so it's what I know. I can see others having more distant parents, so physical closeness makes them uncomfortable, or it could be rebellion against over-affectionate parents. I have to laugh when I see a couple like this. They love each other, but the closest they ever come to expressing it is a fist pound. I kind of like to pretend that once you find a good enough person, you'll want to be all cuddly, as gross and annoying that it is.
As much as I actually like the Cuddle Monster, I hate it when he rears his head in public. I have the same opinion of new love that I do of drug users: you have your right to do what makes you feel good, but do it away from me or suffer the consequences. Sorry folks, a salud to the fact that you're getting laid, but keep it out of my face.
So in conclusion, I guess depending who you are, the Cuddle Monster can either be a fearsome beast with the potential to make you incredibly uncomfortable, or more in the vein of Grover, a cute, if sometimes annoying, little fuzzy dude that can make your day.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Frankly Speaking
Brief short answer test question: which classic monster has been misrepresented more than any other?
Answer: Frankenstein's Monster
Aside from the obvious nomenclature issues (Frankenstein is his creator's name, not his name), for the most part, this poor guy has been reduced to a green zombie. This is not of course a slam on zombies; they'll get theirs in due time. Let's start with the source: Frankenstein was written by Mary Shelley, then 19 year old lover of Percy Bysshe Shelley, one night in 1816 after the two of them and Lord Byron had spent the evening drinking and reading ghost stories. They then resolved to see who could write the scariest story. Mary wrote Frankenstien, and Lord Byron gained the inspriation for The Vampyre, the forerunner of the gay Victorian vampire. Clearly Mary was the winner.
So the creature was designed to be frightening from the beginning, and indeed he was. Imagine a man sewn together from various exhumed bodies. Now, take all of those Hollywood images of a green skinned gargantuan with the giant flat top and bolts in the neck, and throw them out the f-ing window. Keep the height, but give him long, black hair and an eerie tranluscent yellowish skin that allows you to see his blood vessals and such underneath. Eeeeeew!
The grotesqueness is key to the scariness, but there is more at work here than pure pug fugliness. What is truly scary about the creature is that despite his outward appearance and superhuman strength and endurance, he is a man; a man with feelings, a mind, and all of the trappings of humanity. He feels loneliness, fear, anger, and vengeance, and is fundamentally weak enough to succumb to them as we all are, and though he is capable of murder, he still suffers from remorse after the act. He is as complex a character as any other, and by complex, I mean more than,
"Meeeeeh, I'm a horrible misunderstood monster who is hated by others, but you are the one person who sees beyond the mask, but you still don't know if I'll suck your blood, so let's make out."
This idea was translated in an excellent manner by Boris Karloff in the classic Universal film. You could see the pain and confusion in his eyes, you felt it as much as he did. It broke your heart when he accidentally drowned the little girl, because you knew that he was still a danger and had to be stopped. This model was only charactured in subsequent portrayals, adopting the "Herman Munster Model". I will note that for all of its problems, Van Helsing did a decent job at restoring at least some of the creature's nobility, even if it was at the loss of its scariness.
So why is he scary? It's not just that he is a hulking brute with an unnatural visage. Frankenstein's monster scares us because he was created by a mortal. He is man-made, and he is largely a failure at the attempt to create life. We fancy ourselves as the most talented beasts to walk the planet and are capable of anything, and yet we are not. The sky is not the limit, and there are some things that we simply cannot do, or should not. We possess the potential to create our own destruction, and not as a faceless disease or other abstract means, but in a grossly twisted reflectionof ourselves. We fear him because he reflects our own shortcomings as individuals, and as a species. We look in the mirror and are horrified at what looks back at us.
Answer: Frankenstein's Monster
Aside from the obvious nomenclature issues (Frankenstein is his creator's name, not his name), for the most part, this poor guy has been reduced to a green zombie. This is not of course a slam on zombies; they'll get theirs in due time. Let's start with the source: Frankenstein was written by Mary Shelley, then 19 year old lover of Percy Bysshe Shelley, one night in 1816 after the two of them and Lord Byron had spent the evening drinking and reading ghost stories. They then resolved to see who could write the scariest story. Mary wrote Frankenstien, and Lord Byron gained the inspriation for The Vampyre, the forerunner of the gay Victorian vampire. Clearly Mary was the winner.
So the creature was designed to be frightening from the beginning, and indeed he was. Imagine a man sewn together from various exhumed bodies. Now, take all of those Hollywood images of a green skinned gargantuan with the giant flat top and bolts in the neck, and throw them out the f-ing window. Keep the height, but give him long, black hair and an eerie tranluscent yellowish skin that allows you to see his blood vessals and such underneath. Eeeeeew!
The grotesqueness is key to the scariness, but there is more at work here than pure pug fugliness. What is truly scary about the creature is that despite his outward appearance and superhuman strength and endurance, he is a man; a man with feelings, a mind, and all of the trappings of humanity. He feels loneliness, fear, anger, and vengeance, and is fundamentally weak enough to succumb to them as we all are, and though he is capable of murder, he still suffers from remorse after the act. He is as complex a character as any other, and by complex, I mean more than,
"Meeeeeh, I'm a horrible misunderstood monster who is hated by others, but you are the one person who sees beyond the mask, but you still don't know if I'll suck your blood, so let's make out."
This idea was translated in an excellent manner by Boris Karloff in the classic Universal film. You could see the pain and confusion in his eyes, you felt it as much as he did. It broke your heart when he accidentally drowned the little girl, because you knew that he was still a danger and had to be stopped. This model was only charactured in subsequent portrayals, adopting the "Herman Munster Model". I will note that for all of its problems, Van Helsing did a decent job at restoring at least some of the creature's nobility, even if it was at the loss of its scariness.
So why is he scary? It's not just that he is a hulking brute with an unnatural visage. Frankenstein's monster scares us because he was created by a mortal. He is man-made, and he is largely a failure at the attempt to create life. We fancy ourselves as the most talented beasts to walk the planet and are capable of anything, and yet we are not. The sky is not the limit, and there are some things that we simply cannot do, or should not. We possess the potential to create our own destruction, and not as a faceless disease or other abstract means, but in a grossly twisted reflectionof ourselves. We fear him because he reflects our own shortcomings as individuals, and as a species. We look in the mirror and are horrified at what looks back at us.
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