Arachnophobia Explained

I am not, for the most part, a scaredy cat. Scary movies don't make me jump, I'm not afraid of the dark or small places, I do not look behind me when I'm walking through a parking lot.

Some might even say that I lack the basic, healthy fears. I've swam in the ocean at night, which apparently means I missed getting eaten by a shark by shear luck. Oh, and whenever I have seen an alligator here in Florida, I've always headed towards it to get a better view, rather than running and screaming away from it, which seems to be the normal reaction (Florida people are TERRIFIED of alligators...alligators = the bogeyman here).

However, I do share that most natural and foundational disgust of one animal along with the rest of humanity: the spider.

If I see one, I don't freak out. I don't yell or jump on a chair, and I have no problem with killing one. But I find spiders incredibly creepy. Yesterday morning, I discovered a spider in my shower, a rather large spider. Did I mention that I found it in my shower, immediately AFTER I took a shower...meaning it was in there with me the whole time? Well, I was throughly creeped out. More importantly though, I was able to distill the two things about spiders that are the reason they are so creepy/scary. Here they are, for your benefit:

1. Their rapid acceleration.

No other animal is like the spider in this regard. Spiders have two speeds: standstill and sprinting. There is no in-between. And the scary thing is, that a spider, standing still in some corner, will at any moment run faster than light itself across the wall right at your face. It's the unknowing when it will bolt that is so unsettling. You can be starring at it for minutes, then you slightly move your finger, and all of the sudden it's streaking across the table. This lack of acceleration doesn't give you any time to predict, to react. You're on pure instinct at that point. Bees and wasps could be equally creepy and the bees most of the time could hurt you more, but they aren't nearly as scary as spiders because they are much more predictable.

2. Once you see a spider, you realize they could be anywhere

As soon as you see a spider, you instantly become aware of the fact that that spider had been in your house this whole time, and you only just noticed it. That time you took a nap last week? Yup, he was in your room. That time you were watching the movie? Yup, he was still there. You just didn't know it. He could have been under your bed, or on a shelf, or on the ceiling waiting to drop down on you. Then you realize that he's not alone. There's probably tons of them, everywhere, you just haven't found them yet. There's probably one of them behind you right now.

New Website

Hey, so this is news! I got a new website. I finally got www.zachswee.com and put up a website, and you should totally go check it out! Let me know what you think of it...

Not Blocked?

It's Monday and I'm at work. My computer is puttering away at authoring a scouting DVD for one of our soccer players, and so while I patiently wait for it to finish, I'm surfing the Internet, only to discover that Blogger isn't blocked. I had assumed that it would be, since sites like Xanga, Facebook, Twitter, and the like are all blocked. But apparently Blogger isn't. Which means one thing, I can update this while at work. That's good news for the potential survival of this blog, since I'm more often at work than at home. Viva La Blog!

Blog?

Apparently I didn't get the memo that says you need to post a blog entry at least once every three years in order to be in the cool club. Also, I may or may not have misspelled "apparently" just now. If I did, it's a funny way to start off a post to a blog that essentially died years ago from malnutrition and lack of exercise.

A quick fact about me: I never (ever) know how to spell exercise. I always (always) have to look it up. Here's how it ranks with other common spelling mistakes I make:

Rare: spelling "fruniture"
Occasional: spelling "Christina" instead of "Christian"
Ubiquitous: Spelling exercise incorrectly the first try, usually "excersice"

(Some close reader might notice that while I will take the time to check and correct the spelling of "exercise," I don't bother to check to see if I spelled "apparently" correctly at the start of this blog entry. This probably says something about me...I just don't know what. Side note: I think the correct word instead of "spelled" that I used before should be "spelt." Personal opinion.)

So you'd think that this was some sort of grammar blog (is grammar really with an -ar at the end??) or some sort of existential post-modern blog. It really is neither, I promise. Honestly, you can't really classify it as much of anything at the moment. I was looking through past entries, and most are ridiculously short or uninteresting or simply links to some audio I recorded with a friend. I've got some more substantial blogs on this site, but those are currently set to private, since I don't have the time right now to read through them and make sure they are safe for public consumption.

It is Sunday, tomorrow is Monday, and it's now my bedtime. Hello week. My name is Zach.