2007.04.06 Damn Spiders

You know what I hate?

Spiders.

File:Batch083-bathroomspider.jpg

Especially big gangly spiders that have made an invisible web such that they appear to levitate suspended at eye level in the bathroom.

And especially when I'm only dragging my weary self into the bathroom because I'm contemplating vomiting. Did you know that having your phobia triggered has the fun potential for also triggering your gag reflex?

My fiancée will be happy to know that, this rare time, it didn't trigger my usual phobia fugue - wherein I find the most ridiculously unwieldy object available to use as a spider-smiting bludgeon. (One time, it was an ottoman.) Although, I must confess, I didn't feel much positive reinforcement by my gritting of teeth (to hold back the spew as well as gird my nerves) and going to fetch the standard spider-smiter, the broom, only to find it guarded by another, similar arachnid.

I really hate spiders.

Yeah, sure, they're an important facet of the biased-sounding web of life. And I can fully appreciate their manifold abilities and adaptations. The truth is that I feel like it's actually my deeply ingrained aesthetic sense of design that contributes to my phobic regard for spiders. In the same way that well-designed vehicles conjure a meaningful joy of appreciation, so too do these well-designed patient little vampires evoke in me a meaningful shudder of appreciation.

And an urge to smash them. Which I did.