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The buzz of love is busy buggin' you
by lajoie at 11:51 PM on December 04, 2003
While doing my daily diligence here in the office, I came upon something beautiful. Sometime this early evening, sitting at the old internet and drawing machine I looked down at my wrist and noticed a strange little bundle. Soft and white, it looked like a little slice of heaven. But really what it looked like, was a dead bug, wrapped in a nest of matted silk fur. Its shiny legs, like skinny little wax beans, were carefully tossed over a fragile body....a picture of comfort in death. Poor little guy I thought. Poor little...
BAAHH!!
That damn thing was alive, and it was angry, and I say this in all seriousness, running right up my arm to bite my eye. So I shot up out of my chair, banged my leg on something loud and heavy, and started shaking and whipping my arm around to get it off. In fact I think I even blurted, “Get it off!!”
Now, I’m pretty good with critters normally, even gentle and caring. I’ll quietly cup a busy moth, once indoors, within the hollow of my hands to shoo it outside to a better, hopefully smarter life. I’d do the same for bees, houseflies, snakes, rats or possums. Spiders are a little different, but I’m all for saving them if they’re nice and sweet and don’t initiate a survival reaction. I shook that deadly sucker off somewhere near my seat, but since I couldn’t identify the body, I quickly flipped my seat over onto the ground and started shaking it. I blew into the crevices, slapped some surfaces, generally patting the whole contraption down with my hands. I even briefly thought about getting some spray glue to bury ol’ spidey up in the nethers of my chair. Perhaps that’s a little rash I thought. So I calmly turned the seat back into an upright position and surveyed the small mess I had just dusted up around me. A couple of books on the floor, a kicked-out plug for the space heater, my leg hurt a little....that’s when I noticed that people were looking at me. Maybe five people were looking, all told. I think they knew what was up, but I didn’t say anything. I wanted to say something cute to stave it off, something like “I thought I saw an elf” or “that was a small play about the value of clean underwear. The End”, or even “Turrets!” and then cussed up a rotten sailor’s storm. Maybe they’ll ask questions next week, when they’re drunk at our humble Christmas party. I’ll have to explain our Christmas party later.
Never did find that spider though.
comments (17)
As a person who is deathly afraid of spiders I only have one thing to say: Beware, you never know when that spider (or its friends) will strike again.
by Lucy at December 5, 2003 1:30 AM
I am not afraid of anything except for snakes. They scare the living shit out of me. Once my uncle tested my manhood by making me shoot a rattler in the yard. I 'bout to shit my pants.
by anna at December 5, 2003 7:46 AM
You would have been my new hero if you'd actually been able to pull off the "that was a small play about the value of clean underwear. The End." line.
If you like cute bugs, you should check out the beautiful bug shots in Mr Blank's archive (look under photographs).
PS: Lajoie, I loved you in that new T-Mobile commercial where you through your old phone number over a wall.
by mg at December 5, 2003 11:09 AM
I saw that T-Mobile commercial and thought the same thing MG! I was like "What the hell is Lajo doing hocking T-Mobile crap" then had a good laugh at Lajo's expense. Good shit.
Lajo, I freaking HATE spiders. I think my fear stems from my Mom. Everytime she saw a spider she would squeal and hop around trying to stomp on it but never getting close enough to do damage. It could also be the tarantula like wolf spider that hopped on my leg, in our garden, when I tried to step on it. I almost shit myself. It was tough when I was in the Army because we'd always be out in the woods training and, inevitably, laying behind fallen trees and such for cover. This one morning I woke up covered in daddy longlegs (I know they aren't arachnids but are close enough for me) and damn near had a heart attack. We were under noise discipline so I couldn't even cry out. My frantic brushing and hopping around did attract some attention and a few fellow soldiers got a big laugh out of it. I wasn't amused at all.
by Ezy at December 5, 2003 11:20 AM
My mom is annoyingly unafraid of ANY insect. Spiders? She'll get a tissue and kill them. Roaches? Tissue-- kill. 3-inch long flying roaches? Natch. Silverfish, crickets, slugs, wasps, earwigs-- she doesn't care. But she's scared of dogs and cats. She'll scream if a puppy hops in her lap. Wierd, huh?
Once I was eating lunch by myself at the corporate campus where I was working. I was out on the patio. We had famous tenants like Candle Corporation (corporate real estate, I think), NHK (the national television station of Japan), Bad Boy Records, and Microsoft. A huge junebug landed in my hair. I jumped up and started screaming and flailing wildly. After a second I realized that these scions of the corporate (and hip-hop) world probably thought I'd lost my mind, so I made the effort of yelling "Bug! Bug! Aaah!" a few times. I don't know if it worked.
My brother is deathly afraid of spiders. One of our family cats, Mickey, is not very bright and the first time we gave her a collar with a bell on it she kept trying to escape from the ringing noise. We didn't realize it until we got home from shopping. So we pulled up in the driveway, and Mickey dashed past with a crazy look in her eye, the collar jingling all the way. We went in the house and heard the fire alarm going off-- then it stopped-- then it started again. My brother was sitting on the couch with his arms crossed. He looked like he'd been waiting a while. We asked him what was going on. He said, "There's a spider on the smoke detector." I took a look, and a fat wolf spider was indeed hanging out on the smoke detector sensor, occasionally setting it off. I could still hear Mickey running around outside. I said, "Why the heck didn't you just knock it off with a broom?" All he said was, "I hate spiders, man." Mickey ran by again. So I knocked the spider off with a broom, and went outside and took that jingle bell off my poor, dumb cat. Best cat-and-spider story ever.
by jean at December 5, 2003 4:19 PM
Lajo doesn't watch TV because he's too busy being on it. As I noted before, that's him being pelted with water balloons on that Nissan Sentra spot. Resemblence= striking.
by anna at December 5, 2003 9:42 PM
yikes. my internet connection has been pretty dicey these last few days. it's amazing how you can feel like you lost an arm just because you can't check email for a day and a half.
you're right jean, that's hands down the best cat + spider story i've ever heard of. unless anyone can trump it with something racy about catwoman and spiderman...
i almost have to start watching t.v., just to keep up with these commercial antics. problem is, even if the desire to watch t.v. increases, it doesn't change that fact that when i turn it on, you can't see much. the thing's essentially been reduced (or upgraded, depending on your take) to a simpson's only receiver. actually, every episode looks like the simpson's, but with a lot of snow in the foreground. they're like christmas specials. all of them.
lucy, i don't think i'll see the spider again, though other bugs are on the rise. it's the rainy season now, and all the little insects start migrating indoors because even they don't like the cold wet crap going on outside. i'm kind of enjoying it, but the grey, rainy weather here get's some people down. during december it usually rains every single day, off and on for the whole month. and sometimes it lasts until march...
makes my bikes rides fun though, what with the unofficial enema i get everyday from the gutter water streaming up off my back tire as a reward.
ezy, i can sympathize with your story. when i was just a young lad, i used to go to these really rough, bordering on 'outward bounds' camps during the summers. though i've never been under noise discipline, mine was the agony of essentially sleeping outdoors for four straight weeks, in various states of cover. something was always bound to crawl up, or in something of yours in that period time. expected even.
i guess that's why i'm pretty ok with any old creature, as long as it doesn't rise from the dead when i'm practically brushing it with my eyelashes in observation and bare its hairy teeth.
i think i saw blood on the teeth.
by lajo at December 6, 2003 3:38 PM
Glad you liked it, Lajoie :) I wasn't sure if it was just funny in my own mind, but now I have a second opinion. Does Fox run a million reruns per day of the Simpsons up in SF like they do in LA? Because I think that was the best thing ever to happen to Fox. I love how I can sit down at the TV (which I try not to do too often), and half the time get to see a random Simpsons gem from way back when.
by jean at December 8, 2003 3:51 AM
yeah, there's a bevy of shows here. i'm not sure about times and whatnot, but with the simpsons in syndication is practially like it's own channel. if you have to wait more than 30 minutes for a new one to start, you should call your local cable guy to compain.
by lajo at December 8, 2003 5:17 PM
You should see the giant flying cockroaches here in Western Autralia!!! They fly right at you, in your face, AAAHHH!!!!
by Asiah at December 15, 2003 8:10 PM
Asiah, the giant cockroaches would be the least of my worries in Austrailia. You guys have an outrageous amount of shit down there that will kill you or worse, leave you alive and wishing you were dead. You've got brown snakes, tiger snakes, taipans, fierce snakes, death adders, mangrove snakes, among others, funnelweb spiders, redback spiders, white-tail spiders, and just when you thought it was safe to go in the water, great white sharks. That's a deadly place my man.
by Ezy at December 16, 2003 9:46 AM
and let's not forget the deadly wild dogs, which when they bark, shoot bees from their mouths.
by lajo at December 16, 2003 1:00 PM
and the evil platypus that shoots fire from its ass and laser beams from its eyes. Those are pretty dangerous.
by Ezy at December 16, 2003 1:21 PM
...or the dude that pitches full cans of Fosters through your chest cavity.
by lajo at December 16, 2003 1:44 PM
Yea, he's quite the kidder huh?
by Ezy at December 17, 2003 11:58 AM
I find the detonating kukaburras particularly frightening.
by Linz at December 17, 2003 12:17 PM
shit hell...out here we've got marmots. when you go off camping for a couple of days, pack an extra radiator hose. they like to chew through that and other important wiring below parked cars because of the salt content. story goes, one unsuspecting couple drove off, out of the camping lot with some weird engine problems. miles down the road they pulled off, lifted the hood, and the marmot was in there, wrapped and splattered over everything... they're the size of angry badgers if you've never seen them.
by lajo at December 17, 2003 6:25 PM