The One About the Tarantulas

Category: weekleez

The One About the Tarantulas
Tuesday, 17, 2001

i don’t think i can do it this week, you guys.  

so it was supposed to be about Spain this week.  but the library didn’t have a book about Spain! canyoufreakinbelievethat? the massive hall of books did not have one historical book on Spain.  not even one of those horrible Oxford’s Illustrated History of… books.  gheederp?  

so i’ll have to research Spain when i have more time.  sheesh. i do more research  for these weekleez than i’ve ever done for anything.  sad isn’t it?  

i really need to do one on a literary theme don’t i?  i’ve thrown the mathgeeks a bone and the history/geography dorks a bone and even the biologynerds got a couple. but what have i done for all those English majors or Literature goons?  i guess that’s where the prefixes were going to come in.  funny thing that. i was going to do this cool thing with prefixes and then i forgot what it was that i was going to do with them.  not a total shocker or anything, but it still disturbs me that i can’t even remember a little bit about what i was going to do with those darn prefixes. trust me, as soon as i think of it, The One About The Prefixes will be, um…it’ll just be.  

and so today i give you a parafable.  it’s been too long since i’ve done a parafable.  

a couple of weeks ago i was sitting at work and working ever so hard on a sign or a design or something really workful and boy, i was working hard wasn’t i?  and i’m sure you guys know how it is when you’ve been looking at a computer all day long, you get tired of the screen and you have to stand up and walk around a bit or something, right?  well, when my eyes and arse are tired i tend to pick up a broom and sweep the floor.  it keeps me humble. ain’t no shame in sweeping.  

so i’m sweeping and i look around and i notice that there’s a large amount of those granddaddy longlegs spiders on the walls.  and i think to myself, “geez, that’s a lot of granddaddy longlegs!” and of course when you see these spiders there’s always someone who points out that, “those are the most poisonous spiders ever and aren’t we lucky that their mouths are too small to bite us?” DERP?

and so no one points that out to me ’cause i was the only one in the room but i thought about someone pointing out that fact about the poison and all so it was almost kinda just like someone was there.  

and really, i have no idea if those spiders are as poisonous as people say they are. i don’t even know if they’re spiders.  but i do know that i didn’t want them in the office.  so i did what any normal, bug-hating, i-gotta-broom-in-my-hand-you’re-going-down, human would do. well, i would like to say that i very gracefully maneuvered the broom in a katana-like fashion complete with glistening highlights and “shing” metal noises and finishing with a matrix-slow-mo back flip and several bug carcasses at my feet ready to be swept up and put in the rubbish bin with the rest of the drug lords and street punks that i’d taken down that day.  

only it didn’t quite happen that way.  

i decided that i should probably take them on one at a time in order to give them a sporting chance.  i mean, let’s say you and your buddy are standing around the proverbial watercooler and all of a sudden Murray from accounting walks by and is clobbered by a bunch of stiff straw tied to the end of a very unforgiving stick.  popquiz hotshot.  are you gonna stand there or are you gonna flee like the spineless, still living, thing you are? that’s right, you’re gonna run.  smart fella.  

apparently bugs is stoopid.
i knocked one of the tramps to the ground and noticed that all his buddies just kinda didn’t move.  so much for sporting chance.  so i proceeded to smack the wall with my trusty broom and managed to knock all the icky bugs to their almost doom.
that’s right, almost doom.
they didn’t die. 
so now there’s 8 or 10 of these buggers walking, staggering, lurching, and blending into the floor.  shouldn’t they be dead?  i knocked the stuffing outta them! so in a very girl-like manner i took to bashing at the small army of legs with my broom of doom, and also in a very girl-like manner i yelled, “DIE!  WHY WON”T YOU JUST DIE?!”  

at this point my boss says, “jaimie, what’re you doing out there?”
“um, sweeping the floor….”
“well, what’s all that banging on the walls?”
“uhhhh the um, broom?”
“what?”
“uhhh the uh well, i’m taking my anger out on these uh, bugs.  it’s ummmmm er, theraputic y’know?”
i mean what’s more dorky? “uhhhhh anger management!” or telling your boss you were trying out faux-ninjitsu moves with a broom and taking on an “army” of fascist granddaddy long legs?  

so anyway it took me a lot longer to kill a swarm of those spiders than it should have.  and then afterwards i kinda had a paranoid thought of, “i wonder how they’ll get their revenge?”  and then i immediately thought, “you’re losing it. bugs don’t plot.”   and then it was something like, “of course they don’t plot, they scheme. wicked little…” and then it was back to, “snap out of it! bugs is stoopid.”  

then i sweep the floor and remember what it used to be like before the fascist bugs took over.
no wait, i went back to working really hard on something and forgot all about the spiders.  

about a week later…  

i’m running a little late to work one morning and seeing as how i have to open the place i’m really in a hurry.  there’s a lot to do when you open a place.  you gotta unlock the door, and turn off the alarm, and turn on all the lights and machines (and by machines i mean the radio) and well, gosh, talk about ‘sponsitility!  

so i’m late and i screech the jeep into a gravel churning halt and scramble out of the door and with a flick of the wrist i unlock the door, and charge over to the alarm. several digits later the alarm is satified and the shop is up and running.  *whew*  

ok, for those of you who know me.
i’m running late.  traffic is horrible but i don’t notice as i pull into a gas station and slowly pump the gas. i go in and pay for the gas and a rather large bucket of cola. still in my sleeplike stupor i drive the 20 mintutes to work with my stereo blasting a song i don’t even hear because i’m too busy trying to wipe the sleep from my eyes while balancing a huge caffeinated beverage and of course, steering a vehicle.  i pull into work and fall out of the jeep miraculously keeping the massive container of pop upright and spilling nary a drop.  pop, flannel shirt, lunch, and keys in hand i stumble to the door.  i put the key in the lock and twist and turn the pieces of metal several times before the thing actually unlocks.  i curse the almost breaking lock as is part of my morning ritual. 

out of the corner of my still-cloudy eye i notice a many-legged bug.  too late. i’m surrounded.   i’ve just opened the door so the alarm is screaming, i start to walk thru the door when i feel two pelts hit the back of my neck and start crawling. “BLOODY HELL!” i yell among other things.  i drop everything but the soda and swat at the back of my head as i make my way to the alarm.  the phone starts ringing.  i’m dancing a crazy “gotta bug on me!” dance towards the alarm i press the code and the alarm stops but the phone is still ringing.  i shimmy a “icky! icky! gack!” jig in the direction of the phone and set my drink down while contemplating jerking off my shirt to MAKE SURE no bugs are in there . i do one last full body shiver as i answer the phone while trying to sound like a normal person whose been hard at work for the past 20 minutes, “Sign shop!” i say ever so cheerfully.
“where have you been?” it’s my boss. “why do you sound out of breath? granddaddy longlegs? what? are you crying?”       

the moral of this story is this:
it doesn’t matter if grandaddy longlegs spiders are poisonous or not.  it’s the big picture you have to look at.
forget all that Jurassic Park III crap.  we all know that reptiles can think and hatch plans.  what we tend to forget however, is that bugs are just as wiley and devious as any creature.  they REMEMBER things!  they take things PERSONALLY!  and they CERTAINLY take REVENGE and dare i say, relish it?! and not only that, but they tend to adhere to a strict one-party dictatorship with a centralized governmental economic enterprise complete with racist nationalistic tendencies and a forcible suppression of opposition!
 NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!  

will this eightlegged fascist nightmare ever end?  

eh, as long as we have brooms, who cares?  

next week: Spain.  What’s that all about?  

jaimie “champagne wishes and caviar dreams” pickle  

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