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Tuesday , December 14, 2010

nogoodforme ix: Our Most Irrational Fears

PIGEONS

I am hesitant to qualify my extreme phobia of pigeons* as being "irrational". It makes perfect sense- pigeons are disgusting, dirty, stupid, creepy, filthy, gross, horrifying, weird-colored, disgusting, gross, gross, disgusting, creepy, filthy, revolting, and ugly as sin. Every single thing about pigeons is frightening to me, especially the way they puff their chests out on subway grates and all huddle together in a sickening mass of repulsive pigeon energy and make that fucking creepy fucking "coo" noise of theirs and they're so scary I hate them ew ew eweewwwww EWWWW!!!!! I'd rather break my own leg than be trapped alone in a room with a pigeon. If I was trapped alone in a room with a pigeon, I'd pass out from fear, so that's kind of cool, at least I wouldn't have to deal with the pigeon. You'll notice there is no image of a pigeon accompanying this paragraph. This is because I am too scared of pigeons to even Google Image Search pigeons. If I had to look at that many pictures of pigeons, I would throw up. Also, if there was a picture of a pigeon up on nogoodforme.com, I wouldn't be able to look at my own blog until it dropped off the front page. I guess I can see how this is a little bit irrational. (Laura Jane)

* My ornithophobia is not limited to pigeons. I'm fucking terrified of ALL birds, not counting the small wee cute ones who hop around, but pigeons are the worst of it. Turkeys, vultures, parrots, macaws, and cockatiels are also immensely scary, but they are a smaller part of my life than pigeons, so I care less. That being said, if there were as many turkeys roaming the city streets as there are pigeons, I'd be scared-er of turkeys than pigeons.

WALKING DOWN STAIRS

This is actually a mild but real phobia of mine. I hate walking down stairs. I can do it, but I have to concentrate and stop talking or whatever it is I want to do. When I was little, I imagined hands coming through the backs of each stairs, grabbing my ankles and making me fall and break my neck. And now: YOU WILL TOO, MUAHAHAHAHA... (Kat)

THE POSSIBILITY THAT "THE CREEPY ALARM" MIGHT BE REAL

ABOVE: What Google Image Search thinks the Creepy Alarm looks like, which is kind of cool of Google Image Search

Sometimes I feel like every dude I've ever had a crush on is in possession of something called a "Creepy Alarm", which rings and/or sends him automatically-generated e-mails anytime I ever do anything remotely him-relatedly creepy. It rings when you gossip about him, it rings when you Internet-gossip about him, it rings when you gossip about him to your mom. He knows. If the dude has a Tumblr or a Twitter or a band Myspace, and you refresh it twenty times in the space of five minutes, the Creepy Alarm will ding and alert him to the fact that you're behaving like a psychotic fucking stalker. "Cut this crazy bitch out of your life, like, STAT," drones the Creepy Alarm. The Creepy Alarm also works in conjunction with Facebook to tell your crush how creepily many times you creepily creeped his or her profile today; what's more, I hear that a Creepy Alarm iPhone app is in the works. (Laura Jane)

HARRY HAMLIN SUDDENLY APPEARING IN THE BACKSEAT OF MY CAR AND TRYING TO KILL ME WHEN I'M DRIVING ALONE AT NIGHT

(Harry Hamlin: Sexiest Man Alive, or cold-blooded killer?)

If you know what I mean. If you don't know what I mean, I'm not going to tell you, because it would be super-spoily of me and I hate spoily people. But yeah, I think about this a lot; it's a total mindfuck.

Other than that, all of my fears are entirely rational: heights, car crashes, plane crashes, roller coasters, disease, dying alone, losing the people I love, homelessness, creative failure, ghosts, earthquakes, fire, sharks, drowning, and all the other "biggies." So that's why you're only getting one blurb from me here. (Liz)

CHOKING TO DEATH ON BATH BEADS

ABOVE: Baby LJ Awaits Impending Death By Bath Bead

Remember bath beads? Opalescent magenta or turquoise orbs that soften and release fragrant oil into your bathwater. They were a big part of my life in the late 1980s, when I was four. My parents thought putting bath beads in my bathtub was a real "treat" for me. GUESS THE FUCK WHAT, MOM AND DAD? IT WASN'T.

As a child, I was convinced that bath beads could somehow work their way into my mouth, and I would swallow them, and then they would get lodged in my trachea, causing me to choke to death in the bathtub at the tender age of four. I don't know why logic didn't intervene here- this situation is a literal impossibility, unless I physically put a bath bead into my mouth, and even then, I'd still have to make the decision to swallow it. Considering I was too freaked out of bath beads to touch or even look at a bath bead- it was never gonna happen, Baby LJ. But I guess that's why children aren't adults. Because they're stupid. (Laura Jane)

WHEN A TV IS ON IN AN EMPTY ROOM

I get this directly from The Ring. Ever since seeing that movie, I really hate having a television set on when the room is empty because I'm convinced a restless evil spirit will enter through it and literally frighten me to death. (Kat)

PEOPLE MIGHT KILL THEMSELVES IF I DON'T E-MAIL THEM BACK TEN SECONDS LATER

Hi, everybody. I'm sorry that I'm not as diligent at e-correspondence as I used to be. In fact, I'm no longer diligent about e-correspondence at all. I'm slack about it, but it's not because I hate you. It's because I am no longer governed by the irrational belief that the spiritual well-being of others is wholly dependent on the speed with which I respond to their e-mails. So chillax, Gang! I promise I'll write you back one day. Though definitely not today. (Laura Jane)

EMPTY PAPER BAGS BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD

I blame this on my friend J. from high school, who once told me she imagined severed heads inside empty bags by the side of the road when she saw them. Goinks! Now I imagine that too! (Kat)

QUITTING SMOKING & THEN DYING IN A PLANE CRASH EIGHT MONTHS LATER

Wouldn't it fucking suck so bad if you went through all the trouble of quitting smoking, only to die in a plane crash eight months later?

Yes. It would. It would fucking suck worse than fucking anything. This is my main motivation for never quitting smoking. It's too much of a gamble. (Laura Jane)

Tags: bath beads, childhood, death, fear, Harry Hamlin, neurosis, nogoodforme ix, paper bags, pigeons, psychosis, stairs, The Creepy Alarm

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