Oh twitter. It’s like you’ve never even met me.

in Random Crap

I put off getting the new twitter for as long as possible but today they switched me over for good and now I’m so distracted by all the other shit on the screen that I can’t focus, and twitter is all “FOLLOW THE MCRIB” and “LOOK AT THESE LISTS YOU’RE ON” and now I have ADD.  Thanks, twitter. Also, the new twitter has a suggestions page and I was flattered to see that I’m on it except that for some reasons I’m in the “Family” section.  It’s like me, Parenting Magazine and Sesame Street.  Also, I did finally look at all these lists I’m on and apparently they’re lists real people use to keep all the people they’re following seperated.  I’m on lists named “YOU ARE MY SPIRIT ANIMAL”, “WOULD HELP HIDE A BODY”, “THE SHORT BUS TO HELL”, “LIKELY TO CARRY NEEDLES FOR NO REASON”, and “YOU ARE ABDUCTED NOW.  I’M KEEPING YOU IN MY CELLAR”.  If I’m being honest though, these are all more accurate than “Family”.

Also, this post isn’t funny at all.  I just need to write something to distract me because my arthritis is trying to destroy me.  Tonight I’m going to chew off my own arm.

Please distract me with your horrific family secrets or weirdest phobias or videos of hedgehogs taking baths.

331 thoughts on “Oh twitter. It’s like you’ve never even met me.”

Read comments below or add one.

  1. The new Twitter is suggesting I follow Joan Rivers and Danny DeVito.

    I’m sorry but that’s as close to a weird phobia or hedgehog taking a bath as I can get.

  2. I got nothing. But would it make you laugh if I told you my dog barks at his ass if he releases an audible fart? Or that the other day, I had a jelly donut, covered in powdered sugar, at work, and that it was on a napkin. And later, I had to blow my nose, and I forgetfully grabbed that napkin, blew my nose, and then spent the rest of the morning walking around the office looking like I like the nose candy?

  3. I am constantly convinced I’m pregnant and not aware of it. I take a lot of pregnancy tests for this reason. I so don’t want to be one of those women who shows up in the ER with “appendicitis” and leaves with a baby.

    Also? My father wore leather pants to his own wedding. It was pretty horrific. You’ll just have to take my word for it.

  5. Happy to oblige. 🙂 Okay not trying to promote my blog, but my post tonight was a list of hilarious responses I got to my personal ad 3 years ago. You’ll laugh, I promise. 🙂

  8. Once, at a family funeral for a stillborn baby, My aunt took photos with the baby. And not like creepy, southern Gothic, we-photograph-the-dead-for-remembrance photographs; she threw up gang signs ironically. Also she changed dead baby’s outfit. And there was a buffet in the cemetery. True story.

  9. Weirdest phobia I have I am afraid of bellybuttons, mine and others. I saw the bloody stump of my baby sister’s and that traumatised me for life

  11. Here’s something to distract you.

    My uncle is known as Uncle Rico [not to his face]. Have you seen Napoleon Dynamite? He’s 45 and acts like a 24 year old, convinced he’s living in his glory days. When he crosses his arms he pushes out his muscles and looks at them. Seriously.

    He’s married to Panda, the most dazed looking person I’ve ever met.

    I hate my family.

    Here is a video of a hedgehog taking a bath. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4XzqJipYoE

    Apparently this hedgehog eating a carrot is cute too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nw-IAYxu5uo

    I just felt bad for the little guy.

  15. sorry your arthritis is acting up. some of my customers at the organic shop i work at have had some success with turmeric. you can buy it in capsules if you don’t want to eat it. that’s all i got. oh and it’s hot and windy in australia in case you were curious.

  16. Everytime I see your chalupa post I keep thinking it says chupacabra but then I think No Taco Bell but with Gravy!

  17. Dear bloggess,

    Chewing your own arm off is a total cop out. Quite frankly I think someone is just trying to get out of work and get some sympathy. For an actual challenge, try eating your own head. Surely this will distract you sufficiently.

    P.s you are the funniest person I’ve never met.

    N.

  18. I am terrified of space travel, and deep sea fish. Have you seen angler fish? Don’t look them up now because they honestly look like they would chew on your face just for the lols. Not cool, angler fish.

  19. I am terrified of snow. I can’t stand to be where there danger of snow falling, because OMG SNOW, deadly snow. The idea of being trapped somewhere it is all cold and white and then the power goes out and you have to just sit there and freeze to death freaks me the hell out like nothing else. I have killed a rattlesnake in my own yard. I have fought 3 muggers and won. I have been in a cage with a bear. And SNOW is the thing I am terrified of.

  21. Well, my phobia isn’t that weird… but I do sort of have an issue with public speaking and so I once climbed out a ladies room window moments before a presentation. It was pretty silly really because my keys and purse were back in the meeting room and so once I had sprinted down the road triumphantly and my heart rate has returned to normal I realized I had to go back. And when I was trying to nonchalantly walk back into the building (because, you know, it’s pretty typical to excuse yourself for a moment to go to the ladies room and then DISAPPEAR only to be seen minutes later sprinting down the road with no coat) I noticed all the people from the meeting room were all clustered by the window looking at me and talking animatedly.

    I panicked more than normal that day because I had been asked at the last minute to talk about something I knew nothing about (and it wasn’t my role to know anything about it) and just before it was my turn to talk a PR type person came in and announced they would be broadcasting my talk to some other branches around, “if I didn’t mind.”

    I minded.

  22. Someone in my family has worn the same clip in her hair for 17 years. I mean, she takes it out to wash her hair and stuff, but when she fixes her hair….the clip is always in there. This person may or may not be me.

  23. The most distracting part of the new Twitter for me is the “Similar to you” section, which seems to alternate between confounding and insulting.

    Apparently on any given day I’m similar to; Conan O’Brien’s freckles, Nathan Fillian, Wil Wheaton, and a local stripper…

    It boggles the mind.

  24. 1) I’m totally afraid of birds because my mom made me watch The Birds with her…multiple times…and we went to Bodega Bay a lot.

    2) I’m totally afraid of demons fucking with me. But i keep watching all these Ghost Hunters episodes etc… The other night i was sitting in my living room, home alone, and something flew out of the kitchen and landed by where i was sitting. I was completely convinced that demons were throwing things at me, and i sat there for 30 minutes crying and praying. (side note, i totally don’t pray…ever) Then i got enough balls to try and look for it. Turns out the very expired carton of milk i had told the husband to throw out was sitting on the counter and the pressure caused the bottle cap to go flying.

    Stupid husband.

    3) I can’t look in mirrors or windows at night….unless i have to…or am driving. Totally convinced something / someone will be staring back at me.

    4) I was reading an article on yahoo and they said that all of the major fast food places get their hamburgers from the same company and its really the same shit they use for dog food, like hooves and assholes and eyeballs. And that its piped into some machine and then bleached with ammonia to try and make it edible enough for human consumption. So NOW i can’t bring myself to eat any hamburgers which really sucks ass because i want a fucking cheeseburger from McDonald’s. FUCKING YAHOO.

  25. Aw man.

    My videos of hedgehogs are all on my OTHER computer.

    DAMNIT.

    What if I told you that once my dog started throwing up and threw up an entire baby porcupine? Still whole.

    That’s pretty distracting. And by distracting I mean gross.

    And you can probably get your own visuals from that…ENJOY!

    HAPPY FRIDAY! 😛

  26. I watched all 5.5 minutes of this expecting some sort of bat-shit-crazy behavior on the part of the hedgehog, but I was sorely disappointed. Compared to my pet rats who are pooping, leaping balls of furry fury during bath time, I would say that this animal does not hate baths at all.

  27. Wait one goddamn minute–I’m supposed to distract you from *your* arthritis?? That’s why I follow you: *My* arthritis. *My* arm. (Swear-to-god I’m not making this up.)

    At three in the morning when I can’t sleep, I’m reading *you* to take my mind off my pain: I’m not supposed to be distracting you (see the 1935 You’re More Famous Than Me Accord). Christ on a cracker–am I living in some kind of O Henry story?

    Just sayin’.

  28. If you need help reattaching your chewed off arm, I’ve got needles (sewing, not hypodermic) and a metric shit ton of embroidery floss in every color. We could sew it back on and cover the scars with a stitched on likeness of St. James Garfield or something.

  29. My kid made me promise to quit smoking for New Years. Well, not so much made me as cried at me.

    So I dutifully didn’t smoke on January 2d, and have been dutifully not smoking since, despite the fact that after almost 30 years of smoking, I have no idea what to do with myself when I’m not smoking (it turns out I have to sleep occasionally, and I really shouldn’t go more than twelve hours or so without eating, at least on work days – who knew?).

    I also thought I was doing pretty well on the psychotic break front. I’m sure there’s some other reason she’s decided to spend the weekend at her grandmother’s.

    My husband looked a little wistful when he heard.

  30. I’m so new to Twitter that I’m not sure if I’m on the new Twitter or not.

    And my dog’s are gassy. And in the same room with me. Of course, because I wouldn’t have smelled them otherwise. But if they were in another room? Or on a completely different floor and I could still smell them? That would be super gas. And I would be unable to type because of the retching.

    Feel better. Or prank call people.

  33. In my family, we had sheep thieves, and I hate rats and once when I was 12-13 I read Salem’s lot and made crosses out of pencils and tape and blessed them with the version on the Lord’s prayer from the book and hung them on all the windows and doors in my house. Trailer, actually.

  35. I was totally normal until I read this post, and now I’ve discovered an astounding number of things that I should be terrified of. Thanks a lot Bloggess. And commenters. And new twitter.

    I’ve been led astray by new twitter. This is a new low in my relationship with social media.

  36. After reading a comment about angler fish, it reminded me of their (really disturbing) reproductive process. Male anglers are waaay smaller than female anglers. First the male bites the females body, then becomes fused to the female. You’d think that there would be some kind of genetic exchange and then the male would wander off to find another female to impregnate, but no, that’s not the case. Instead, he is absorbed into the females body. Literally absorbed. Like he’s not even there anymore – well, his balls are, nothing else. She then makes babies with his DNA whenever she feels like it. To top it off, one female can have multiple males attached to her.

    And you thought black widows were bad.

  37. Today I fell asleep on the floor with half of my body in a cardboard box. It is the first time in 6 years that I have fallen asleep without taking what are probably illegal doses of ambien. This might not be distracting for you, but I needed to share my accomplishment with someone. Here’s a video that you’ve probably already seen, but it is still amazing! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gspaoaecNAg

    Feel better!

    Whitney

  38. I am scared of balloons popping. I am okay with balloons just floating around but if someone is holding the balloon and making that squeaking noise? Terror like none other. And also I am afraid of being alone in an elevator. Somehow just the presence of another person means the elevator is less likely to plummet and kill me.

    One time I rode in the backseat of a car with a dead baby. This was back in the day when the funeral home would let you transport a body yourself.

  39. Colleen’s comment reminds me of all of the the irrational things I have done to get out of obligations due to crippling anxiety. I will not admit to my age at the time of or how recent any of these events were.

    1. Used hand soap to fake pink eye…fooled the urgent care doc, too.
    2 and 3. Inflicted abrasions on my person to fake a sprained wrist and a fall from a bicycle on different occasions.
    4. Tossed my keys in my car and locked the door so that I would have to call someone to bring me an extra set of keys.
    5. Released the air from one of my vehicle’s tires (used this twice).

    Wow, that was supposed to be a funny list, but it seems kind of creepy when I just put it out there like that. I can laugh about it, so that counts for something, right?

  40. This should distract you for a moment…
    In 2010 my family learned that I was molested through a conversation I had with my step-brother.
    Unfortunately, they all decided that I told them in order to ruin their lives.
    I have spent the last three weeks of December receiving emails and messages from my step-sister saying that I was trying to ‘ruin her life, and I would regret it.’ Merry christmas! And to top it off when I didn’t respond to her email she sent me a msg on facebook to let me know she was going to, ‘make it her mission in life to make sure that my life was ruined.’. Happy New Year! What did I learn from this? Sometimes your instincts are correct and their was a reason I had never told my family the truth, because they quite literally couldn’t handle the truth.

  41. New Twitter drove me to learn Tweetdeck.

    And holy hell if it’s not a thousand times more wonderful. Seriously. Best decision I made that day.

    I don’t have a video of a hedgehog, but I do have a video of myself wearing a mullet, lip synching to Taylor Swift. Will that do?

  42. Well this isn’t a phobia or a secret or a hedgehog but I think it is distractingly random. So I’m looking at this article headlined “Sleep loss burns calories at both ends” (http://www.futurity.org/health-medicine/sleep-loss-burns-calories-at-both-ends/) and I look at the stock photo at the top of the article and I think, “I know why she’s burning calories” (http://www.beautifulagony.com/public/main.php , NSFW). In conclusion, the internet has broken my brain so that I immediately see a simple headshot at a particular angle as porn.

  44. Well, I just wasted some time typing out a post about how when I was ten someone told me this scary story and it creeps me ten years later but then I got all scared posting it and now I’m convinced that if I post it, I’m going to go and condemn more people to the life of fear I lead based on this damn story. It’s like the fucking Ring. I’m saving ya’ll by *not* posting the story because if I did, you’d probably die. You’re welcome.

    Also, I should probably stop taking Tylenol PM to try and combat my sleep issues. Clearly it’s not working. But it’s better than Nyquil because when I was fifteen, I took the adult dosage of Nyquil while I was sick and I got totally high. I kept saying “row-add” instead of “road” and I was petrified of the Big Bad Wolf because his theme song (who’s afraid of the big bad wolf, the big bad wolf) kept playing over and over in my head. I started crying. I was terrified of that damn imaginary wolf. At fifteen. Me and cold medicine do not mix.

  45. Wow guys. Soorry to be such a huge fucking downer. Bloggess you should totallly delete my comment because it is really really depressing.

  46. I’m really fucking terrified of birds. I’m pretty sure my dad sitting down my 7 year old self to watch The Birds had something to do with it.
    So last time I visited my family, I went to Starbucks with my mom and was standing in line waiting to order and some guy came in and stood behind me. I heard a rustling noise. The dude had TWO PARROTS on his arm and was standing two feel away from me. So I freaked my shit out and screamed “OH MY GOD YOU HAVE BIRDS ON YOUR ARM” (yeah, I’m sure he was aware), the birds freaked out, and flapped their huge scary wings and started knocking shit over, causing a big crazy Starbucks scene. And the guy gave me a dirty look like I was the one who’d snuck up on someone with two huge parrots on my arm and scared the shit out of them.

  47. When I lived by myself I would just randomly dance around a lot, but I can’t dance at all really. This is why I will never go to a club. Recently while staying with my mother and sister my sister made fun of me almost constantly because I forgot to stop the dancing when other people were around. Then I made my sister watch A Bit of Fry and Laurie, which is the most awesome television show ever; it’s a British sketch comedy show from the late 80s and early 90s starring Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry and it always makes me laugh hysterically for seemingly no reason at all. Anyway, there is a sketch where Stephen Fry dancersizes as a quantity surveyor and my sister was like, “This must be where you learned your dance moves!” And I think it is, because around the time I watched that show is when I started doing the dancing, I think. So that’s my dark secret, that I learned my dance moves from Stephen Fry trying to act ridiculous. My gay college ballet teacher would be so proud.

  48. My horrible family secret is that my grandma gave a child up for adoption many, many years ago and then kept it a secret FOREVER until she … stopped keeping it a secret all of the sudden. Then, they were reuinted. Hooray! Only now we’ve spent some time with woman and, well, she’s kind of a wench and none of us like her and the whole thing is kind of awkward really.

  49. Dear Melissa,

    What makes you think I’ve taken note of Irrational thing No. 1 & 4… in case I ever need it. I’d use No. 5 also, but I have a phobia about tires and air and so that one won’t work.

    Dear Jenny,

    Ever consider putting in a message forum on your site? We’d love it. I suppose that would cost something because there would be lots of us there… somebody should get on that…

  50. Thanks to the original BBC production of “The Singing Detective” I am terrified of moving scarecrows on TV and in movies. I have no problem with them in real life, only in fictional 2-demensional entertainment. I really wish I was joking but they fucking freak me out. It’s so bad that when I was watching an episode of Doctor Who about three years ago in which the aliens animated scarecrows to be their evil henchmen I had to stop the episode, turn on all the lights in the room, get my teddy bear, AND make my roommate sit with me on the couch until the episode was done.

    This is my only true phobia and no one believes me when I tell them because it’s so ridiculous.

  51. A clarification: I don’t have phobias of “tires” AND “air”. Just FILLING tires with air. Can’t the tires blow up and kill you, or something like that?

  52. Oh, come follow me on twitter. I’ll sort you out right and proper. I tweet about baby shit. And mice. It’s phenomenal. I’ll make you so sick to your stomach that you’ll be completely in the moment.

    @lovinangels

  53. One last thing. I want Jenny to send me her arm because I think it would be cute to use it as a cookbook stand. A bloody arm stump might be just the thing to get annoying guests out of the kitchen because I am always frazzled trying to follow the book and not burn things.

  54. When I was in 7th grade I told my mom I needed glasses. She thought I was just saying that because she had glasses and she thought I wanted to be like her (oh, ha! ha ha!) so she didn’t believe me. I kept not being able to see in class and making my teachers adjust the overhead projector (oh man, remember those?) to the point where I could see it but of course nobody else in the class could. It got so that my French teacher asked me if I’d like her to write a letter to my mom, suggesting that my mom take me to a damn optometrist. Though I’ve been assured the letter was very nice and polite, I like to pretend it said all kinds of mean things like accusing my mom of child cruelty. Well she finally believed me then and took me to get my eyes checked at the doctor said something like, “Holy crap, your eyes suck, how are you even still walking straight?!?”

    Yeah, I bring that story out every single time my mother doesn’t believe me about some shit. I’m a grown-ass woman.

  57. 1. Family secret: My grandfather is his own cousin. Also, he has one of those grownup-pretending-to-be-a-baby-for-sex fetishes. I learned about this fetish via my dad (his son), after my grandfather had been – wait for it – arrested by homeland security for having child prons on his computer. I wish I was joking.
    2. Phobia: Nothing too out-of-the-oridnary, sadly. Maybe this is something I should work on. New Year’s resolution 2011: Find something wacky to be afraid of.
    3. http://www.humorsharing.com/public/files/posts/images/612/hedgehog-bath_008.jpg

    Feel better! Or, alternately, put your gnawed arm on display for the internet!

  59. A few days ago, while I was teaching my students about the word ‘phobic’ (as in hydrophobic), I told them the fear for long words.

    Ready?

    Hippopotomonstrosequippedaliophobia.

    Related, the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth is arachibutyrophobia.

    Don’t bother looking this shit up because I’m a terrible speller when it comes to all this Latin and Greek, but the look on their faced when I spat out that phobia… like I had shot up a kitten full of heroine right in front of them. Shocked and a little appalled but mostly wanting me to repeat it out of morbid curiosity.

  60. Weird phobia I have, but it’s a bit hard to explain.

    So, you’re having a bubble bath. Awesome. But when you lie back, all the bubbles behind you go ‘squish’ and get pushed up onto your shoulders etc. Make sense? Okay.

    THAT FREAKS ME OUT. I don’t know why, it just does.

    Whenever I have a bubble bath I spend a good 5 minutes clearing the water behind my back of bubbles before I can lie back.

    I’m such a weirdo.

    Also, jellyfish. FUCK THAT.

  61. If you chewed your back off we could nickname you Chewbacka. So you might want to do that instead.

    Also, not expecting your readers to do something perverted with your chewed off arm is really, uh, optimistic of you. You should probably just keep your arm.

  62. weird phobia?

    a weather guy named Byron Miranda. He scares the fuck out of me. He looks like a ventriloquist dummy that would eat your brain after he paralyzed you with that stuff that keeps you awake but numb so you have to watch the whole thing happen.

    Now I’m gonna have fucking nightmares.

  64. Okay, I have this terrible phobia that some blogger chick is going to ask me about my wacky personal phobias so she can later blackmail me with this information after I become the next ‘golden voice’ to be discovered along the road.

  66. I’m in no mood for *or.* This is an *and* kind of night.

    1. Family Secret: I was doing a job in Baltimore and was on the phone with my mother one night. She asked where I was, then replied “Oh, Baltimore. That’s where your dead twin aunts are buried.” And I said “…What dead twin aunts?” And she said “Oh, did I forget to mention them?”
    2. Weird Phobia: I’m afraid of really, really big things. Like planet big. The only reason I don’t live in constant fear of the Earth is because I’m too close to see it all. But every full moon I look up at it with great distrust.
    3. Funny Animal Video: Have a baby monkey riding a pig, with accompanying theme song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_sfnQDr1-o

  67. I hate the new Twitter. My other acct is there & I never use it anymore. It’s like Facebook on crack. TOO MANY ANNOYANCES. What the hell is wrong with simple, really??
    I’m sorry your arthritis hurts. I would never put you in my “Keep her in my cellar” list…or my family list, but I would definitely put you in my “Tweeps who make me feel normal” list. Highest compliment. 😉

    dahlila xo

  68. Oh god, I missed the question. . .
    My step brother is afraid of tomatoes. His daughter is afraid of weird textures of food. That’s all I’ve got.

  69. Without new Twitter I never woulda known I probably wasn’t a zombie (list I’m on, thanks) and I never woulda been suggested to follow some modern drunk Jesus dude (he rocks) I love me some new twitter!

  70. I’m scared of eating seafood. Not because I’m afraid I’ll get sick or because I’m allergic, but because the ocean is so freaking ridiculously dirty that the idea of putting that shit in my mouth makes me want to punch a child. I mean really: so many people/creatures/oil companies leave their excrement in the ocean and then EVERYONE expects me to eat it. Everyone is like, oh have the SHIT COVERED LOBSTER. And I’m like, no thanks, I like my feces to stay in the mother f’ing toilet where it BELONGS.

    Best phobia ever? Maybe.

    Also, I’m really sorry if you can never look at crab the same way again…but there’s a reason they named an STD after something that came out of the nasty, dirty, plastic filled ocean.

    xoxo

  72. In case you missed it, here is a video of Josh Groban playing piano as he sings Kanye West’s tweets. It’s hilarious

  73. Sorry for arthritis relapse. I’m fighting similar sitch, except mine is osteo not rheumatoid. Still hurts like hell tho. I need more steroids! Plus had a tooth implanted today. Yuck. Nothing kinky to report; compared to this lot, my crazy family is almost sane. If you send me your arm, I will take very good care of it and will it to Hailey when the time comes. Best I can do. Feel better.

  74. ps: here’s a really brilliant story for you.

    Setting: Wedding
    Characters: Mother of the Bride, Mother of the Groom
    Scene: Tossing rice

    Mother of the bride: What kind of rice are you using?
    Mother of the groom: Uncle Ben’s
    Mother of the bride: Oh, MJB is so much better.
    Mother of the groom: For throwing?

    True story. What I want to know is why they each brought their own rice to throw…wtf family?

  75. Fucking. hell.
    the new twitter confuses the living shit out of me, also. Anyone else see Zooey Deschanel’s tweet about twitter being run by some sort of super genius, who also happens to be a tweenager? and a justin bieber fan? That would explain the trending topics. always.
    I used to be *convinced* that someone was going to break into my house at night and kidnap me. No joke. I wouldn’t sleep in a room with windows because *that* is how kidnappers get in according to CSI and 20/20. This was when I was 8, y’all. I shouldn’t have even been watching either show. What the fuck where my parents thinking? That’s also were I learned most of what I know about giving head and sexual fetishes. Great things to learn at age 8, yea?
    BTW, Furries kinda creep me out.
    OHHHH!!!! and I had a friend who was scared of cotton balls. no joke, wouldn’t touch them. God, I had fun with that one. I won’t even tell you some of the places I’d hide cotton balls just for him to discover and *have* to remove.
    That reads dirtier than it sounded in my head…

  76. My dad used to trap mink, muskrats, and beaver when I was a kid. He’d fish them out of their frozen grave, and bring them home to thaw by our wood stove. (It was like Laura Fucking Ingalls for me growing up. Not that I’m old…we were just poor.) Once thawed and dry, their fur would be so soft. I couldn’t resist. I would hold and caress their lifeless bodies. My parents would catch me and yell, “PUT THAT DOWN! THAT’S A DEAD RODENT!” And, I would cry. Because they were my friends.

    It’s true. I have pictures.

  77. My weirdest phobia/fear – Grandpa Munster. Even now in my 40’s I can not watch that show. When he comes on, I cover my eyes. Oh and Natasha & Boris from the old Rocky and Bullwinkle show ( you’re young..you may have to Google) I knew they would come to the foot of my bed and eat my feet at night.
    It’s never been confirmed, but I think my mother dropped acid when she was pregnant with me.

  79. I can’t think of much to say on my own, but funny videos are in abundant supply. Hope these bring a few laughs!

    I know the holidays are over, and you may have linked to one of them on Twitter yourself, but these are just too adorable not to post:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcwNlfKoDmY

    Hilarious comedian Steve Hughes on the difference between gay and straight men (NSFW):

    I still giggle every time I watch this–Cat vs. Printer, the Translation (some language):

    Another one you’ve probably seen, but then again, I assume that I learned about a lot of the awesome stuff from you–Jane Austen Fight Club:

    A musician’s funny rant about how Pachelbel’s Canon ruined his life:

    And my absolute favorite ever, because it’s as ridiculous and delightful as it sounds–a Star Trek TOS fanvid to Ke$ha’s Tik Tok:

  80. Sorry your arthritis is playing up. Hope by now you’ve managed to fall asleep. In case you’re still up, I would like to introduce you to the wonder that is Dramatic Eagle! http://bit.ly/atVMwO

    Also, new twitter is asking me to follow people I already follow – not particularly helpful! New twitter is an idiot!

    Hope you feel better soon.

    Akos

  81. I’m scared of flocks or swarms of things. Some things make sense like a whole hoard of bees crawling all over each other because they sting. Or a nest of snakes slithering around each other because they’re snakes and ew. But also if there is a large grouping of birds because there are so many of them and they should be flying into each other but they’re not and they are quite possibly planning a mass attack. I went into a butterfly house at the zoo once and while everyone else was so amazed by how beautiful all of the butterflies were and trying to get them to land on their arms, I was a ball of anxiety because THERE WERE SO MANY OF THEM UNDULATING IN A LARGE GROUP ALL OVER ME!

    Also, I’m scared of the dark.

  83. Dibs on “Short Bus to Hell” for a band name. Can’t believe nobody’s claimed it yet. Also, Jenny, leave wyngrrrl’s post up. We can handle it, and I for one welcome our dysfunctional-family overlords.

  84. I once had a dream that my parents turned into vampires and I had to kill them with an axe, so now I’m a little afraid of my parents and sleep with an axe under my pillow whenever I visit. Not very comfortable but very comforting. Have I shared too much? 😉

  85. I have a fear of being the victim of a demonic possession while running at night. To add to this fear, I have pretty poor night vision (and day vision for that matter), so I don’t see objects/people/animals when running at night until I’m pretty much right by them. This means that I have been startled by many cows and horses while running. Tonight I was startled by a duck.

    You know, “Tonight I was startled by a duck” might be a great way to start a novel. Feel free to use that.

  86. My Weird Phobia: Strange bathrooms. Even worse? Strange bathtubs! (Bathtubs seldom introduce themselves anymore. The world has become so rude.) When I travel I have perfected the flip-flop, no-touch, curtain-open shower method to minimize the sheer horror of enclosing myself in a porcelain monster hell-bent on devouring my toes and covering me with creepy crawlies. Sure, the floor looks like a community theatre’s depiction of Noah’s flood when I’m done…that’s what towels are for! Paving the tile with a towel carpet has the added benefit of keeping my toes safe from the Lukewarm Water Beast that lurks in bathroom puddles after showers. You know him: he’s the one that growls every time you flush the toilet and disturb his slumber.

    I may have deep-seated issues.

  87. I think that’s the first time I’ve ever seen the word “undulating” in a comment.
    I found out that my lifelong phobias of clowns and chickens is shared with Stephen King. Google it if you don’t believe me.
    Deep dark family secret? My Stepford-Wife mother starves herself and takes anti-psychotics, then puts on a smile for driving her Escalade to preside over the local PTA.
    Hedgehogs? I don’t know. But I know a chinchilla can die if you get it wet. That seems like poor planning on evolution’s part.

  89. My phobia, wooden spoons. Popsicle sticks. Tongue depressers. Even thinking about touching one makes my fingers start to itch. Thinking about putting one anywhere near my mouth makes my tongue start to feel fuzzy and my jaw start to tingle. Even my ears start ringing…all just thinking about touching or eating anything from a wooden object.

  90. My weirdest fear: unflushed toilets. No shit.
    It’s kind of complicated as to how this came about..ever heard of a fish called candiru? Yeah, they’re these ribbon-like fish that can swim *upstream*…They’ve been known to swim right up a man’s urethra and attach themselves inside with their sharp little umbrela mouths and can only be removed surgically.
    Sorry guys. Just don’t pee in rivers. You’ll be fine.
    Anyway, so I figure, if there’s a fish that can do that, there’s probably bacteria or something that can do it too. And while they say that urine is completely sterile, I’m not entirely convinced.
    Yep, I’m weird.

  91. I just learned today that my mom is afraid of riding in elevators alone (or with single men). Not because she is afraid she will plummet to her death, but because if she is alone she feels there is a very strong chance that a murderous man (or evil spirit) might see her there alone and decide to kill her. Seriously! Me, I’m much more afraid of the plummeting to my death option. If we didn’t look so much alike, I might have to make a case for being adopted.

  92. I think I own the freakish phobias. And I know that my cumulative family members own the scary/crazy/secretive. A sample…

    Fears include, but are not limited to: slinkies, faces shaking back and forth really fast in movies so that they blur (in particular, those in horror movies. My favourite ones.), putting my face in water, crossing the street when the light is red (even if it’s a traffic ghosttown, cuz I WILL be run over and killed and no one will know to notify my daughter and she’ll be an orphan, left at preschool or somewhere), dead spiders, pictures of spiders, okay anything to do with spiders, Gremlins, taking baths in a tub that had not been washed prior to said bathing, open doors and drawers, raw meat, food bacteria, skunks, squirrels, looking in mirrors in the dark, sleeping without my back against a wall, things touching my face.

    True story: When I watched The Ring with my ex, we were stoned. And right after it explained the whole premise of the video/phone call bit and showed the video, our phone rang. I cried and refused to answer it.

    Family weirdness – again, not all-inclusive: I have at least four (rumoured, five) siblings and three of them have a different mother or father than I do, my uncle used to store his feces in mayo jars in my grandparents’ basement, my mother apparently put me in a dryer when I was a baby and turned it on because she was having a flashback, my father once tried to commit suicide by jumping off of a bridge but tripped when trying to climb the rail and broke his arm, my grandmother was a Valium-addict who gave my mother an early form of ritalin as a child so my mom would see walls breathing and thought demons were coming for her, my grandfather was diagnosed as bipolar at 74, my father was photographed for a Christian rock band’s album cover because he was a bearded waif like Jesus apparently was, my grandfather’s family was apparently of Nazi descent and they emmigrated to escape prosecution and hid successfully by changing only one letter in their last name, I found out two years ago that I’m half native and I’m the whitest person ever, every person in my family who has had their IQ tested has scored above 145, and at my father’s funeral I found out that the son of the woman I’d always known as my babysitter and family friend was my half-brother.

    Fun fact: I’m the most normal, well-adjusted person in my ENTIRE family and we’re straight out of a VC Andrews novel.

  93. It’s 3:00AM Saturday in North Georgia. I just finished reading 75 “comment” and I feel more NORMAL than I ever have in my life……thanks you guys!

  95. OH, fear – balloons. Evil fucking devices. I want to punch the horrible people that make those balloon shapes out of long thin balloons.

    Funny video – BBC one – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRA9bJomWB0
    Everybody and there mother posted this on facebook, but I crack up no matter how many times I watch it

  96. I had NO IDEA you were into hedgehog porn… but somehow, I’m not surprised.

    I don’t know if this blog is old internet news or whatever, but I recently found it and love it and it makes me laugh so very much: http://mimismartypants.com/

  97. Fears? Oh I’ve got’em. Can’t look out windows after dark because I just KNOW some evil thing is staring back at me. That’s the same reason I can’t be in rooms with uncovered windows. Siders. As soon as I see one I feel thousands of them crawling all over me and if I kill one I just know there’s a giant mother/queen spider hovering waiting to eat me. One not so irrational, someone breakinginto my home and going after my kids (which would, of course guarantee them a quick death. Afraid of ghosts & I just know there’s one hanging around my house….ok that sound could’ve been somethong walking around my room. My hubby tells me all the little noises I hear are just the neighbors (live in a townhome/condo complex so it’s entirely possible).
    I can’t sleep when my hubby is deployed. I will stay up all. Damn. Night. But who else is going to keep spiders from crawling on me in my sleep? (Another fear).

    I’m sorry about your arthritis and I hope all of your readers comments have helped.

  98. Wanted to add I love reading your blog. I don’t know what I would read if I didn’t have it!

  99. I’m terrified of peanut butter. I can eat it as long as it in no way touches my skin. If it does somehow touch my skin, I will cry and scrub my skin with cold water because the hot water makes the peanut butter smell. Also, when I was little, I would not let any part of my body leave the boundary off my mattress at night because I was convinced an evil alligator lived under my bed. My family secret is that my grandpa divorced my grandma the married her best friend. Then divorced her and married my grandma again. When I told my cousins this I got in SO much trouble!

  101. I suppose you could edit that, in your mind, to read The Family ala the Jersey family that never lets you out once you “join.”

    Or you could imagine that it’s Manson’s Family which would probably fit right into those awesome categories of “WOULD HELP HIDE A BODY” and “YOU ARE ABDUCTED NOW. I’M KEEPING YOU IN MY CELLAR.”

    On a related note, I think my New Year’s Resolution is to make it onto the list “YOU ARE MY SPIRIT ANIMAL.”

  102. Holy shit! These comments were supposed to be cathartic in some way for you, Jenny! I had to take a break from reading after the first dozen because I horked my coffee onto the desk, nearly pissed my pants (okay maybe I did tinkle a bit), and scared my dog! Thanks!

    Sorry your arthritis is being ridiculous! If it’s any consolation, I am fairly certain that I contracted some weird strain of tuberculosis-swine flu-pneumonia, while at my friendly neighborhood Walgreen’s earlier.

    AND…this lady invaded my personal space so badly, I didn’t know if she wanted to give me a pap smear or make me a part of The Human Centipede!

    AND…I found hair care products made from PLACENTA! I.shit.you.not!

  104. Twitter claims that my tweets are similar to a “phone sex provider who will do whatever it takes to pleasure you”.

    Since I never wrote anything about phones or sex I’m slightly worried. Or maybe that’s the universe’s way to tell me that I should change my job.
    Maybe I’m more of a phone sex provider than a photographer and just never knew?
    But than I’d need to change my plans in becoming a cult leader like the fortune cookie told me to be. Or do you think I could be both?
    unding my cult via phone sex?
    Damn you, twitter! You just made my life even more difficult!

    Sorry to hear about your arthritis. I hope it gets better soon!

  105. I have an unreasonable fear of the Planters Peanuts character. My younger sister and I were chased around a grocery store once by a man dressed in that costume.

  106. The new twitter is always suggesting I follow people who locked their twitters in order NOT to be followed by weirdos who can use the #FF hashtag to give them more stalkers to worry about when they specifically predetermined their feeds not to listen to weirdos and stalkers who can abduct them or not even bother with that before murdering their entire families.

    Now who’s the worst stalker here? The stalker who follows the suggestion or the stalker ableist who pushes you over and over to follow and stalk a person who doesn’t want to be stalked and murdered in their beds? Who’s to blame if I’m just being a good twitter user and using the things they shove in my hands? We’re all a big twitter family…

  107. well shit, my dad’s a gay Republican-Rush Limbaugh-listening crazypants. that must count as a family embarrassment.
    (not the gay part, half of my family’s gay… the Rush. mostly the Rush. some Republicans i can respect, like my mom. but not my dad, who argues everything with i say with “well you’re just ignorant,” “you don’t even know,” “you’re stupid.”)

  108. I am nowhere near as amusing as most of your commenters, but I will tell you two things: 1. I used to see patients in a psychoanalytic institute (long story), and one of them had R.A. pretty bad, and she had tried everything and the only thing that worked for her at all was smoking pot. I’m not advising, I’m just saying.
    2. Last night I had an extremely vivid dream about a friend coming over and making me a lovely quesadilla in the middle of the night. Do you know if quesadillas symbolize anything, or was I just hungry? And why the middle of the night?
    3. (bonus) Also, my grandfather left my grandmother in his 60s when I was 10 and ran off to Paraguary with his Spanish teacher, with whom he had two kids. So I have an aunt and an uncle who are ten years younger than me. They like to email me and ask me if I’m behaving myself.

  109. Last night I glance at Facebook before I begin my slog home and my Brother has posted a police bulletin warning that the bomb squad is one block from my home and has shut down the road.
    I get to my mom’s and check the pictures posted to see that while my house is clearly within the blast radius, they are allowing people to approach from the South, so if I go around I can get there.

    I am so hungry that I just know that if I have to go home through rush hour traffic the long way through the lookiloos, I shall have to gnaw off my own arm just to survive (we seem to have been on the same wavelength there O Blogggess) but then I have a dilemma. I’m left handed, but the car is set up so that it would be really awkward to reach the radio, the gear shift, and do that mom thing where you come to a sudden stop so you put your arm out to save the passenger’s head from hitting the dashboard even though that is a throwback to the 70s when seat belts were considered a luxury and a nuisance and it never would actually do anything useful. So I’m looking at each arm, trying to decide which one!

    Then my grown son calls to find out what’s up with the bomb squad, and after a brief explanation I see that Heart is trying to call on the other line so I hang up on him or else leave him hanging because I still don’t know how call waiting works, but then the phone call is a collect call from McNeil Island prison and do I know I have to set up an account in order to talk to this prisoner and press 4 to do something….WTF?

    So I hang up on that because I know my son isn’t in jail and I can’t think of anyone else I would accept a collect call from prison for and there is Heart on call waiting just like I thought he was.

    Heart tells me that he got home just fine, but then he was already south of home, so he didn’t have to get through the traffic and I tell him about the arm dilemma and he says I should go for the right arm because I drive an automatic and can use a claw to reach the radio.

    A claw? You think insurance is going to pay for a prosthetic for a self-inflicted injury like that? I don’t think so!

    so Heart says all I have to do is go on Oprah with my story and everyone would look under their seat and they would all get the latest in prosthetic advancements in case they wanted to gnaw off their right arms too.

    At this point though, my mom has tried to kill me by making me up croissants with havarti cheese and some small sliver of turkey meat and since I’m in gnaw off my arm mode she makes me 4 of them. The cholesterol is now racing to my heart even though I could only eat 2 of the sandwiches but I am definitely too full to gnaw off my own arm.

    Heart says he can’t believe I’m going to disappoint all those poor people with only one arm that Oprah was going to invite to the show and how were they going to reach their radios and put their arms across the passenger side in the mom move?

    So I resolved to start driving down to Oprah’s studio and figured if I didn’t stop for food I could still gnaw on my arm a bit along the way, but then I had to get my five year old to bed and who was going to deal with the nightmares he would have from watching mama gnaw of her own arm.

    Traffic was cleared and we got home just fine.

    True story! Hope it distracted you!
    http://www.thenewstribune.com/2011/01/08/1493514/cache-of-weapons-found.html

  110. My weird phobia has always been of Humpty Dumpty. I had a reoccurring nightmare when I was a child that he showed up in my room for a sleepover with a toothbrush and then just fell to pieces right on my carpet. Look at these pictures and tell me this dude isn’t scary….

    http://www.3dtotal.com/
    getgaller…n&id=3596/

    http://www.sterlingtimes.org/
    memorable_images22.htm

  113. Best I can do is I have a really weird fear of popping open biscuit cans, my hubs doesn’t like doing it either though we actually started handing them to our 8 year old daughter so they could pop in her hand. We figure she’s young and less likely to have a random heart attack from the damn thing popping in her hands.
    Also bills, terrify me. They don’t have to be big ones, or overdue or anything just getting them in the mail scares the begeezus out of me. Not a clue why.

  114. After you chew the arm off, take it to the taxidermists. Just think of the dozens of ways you could have it mounted: defiant, giving gang signs, lewd, spiritual (“live long & prosper”), scary, etc. Hang it up next to James Garfield, take pictures of it with your other hand and make more greeting cards. Maybe the taxidermist could make it flexible instead of stiff so you could pose it for seasonal photos or to reflect your mood that day…Victor could just check it in the morning and know whether it’s safe to get with 30 feet of you.

    Happy to help out.

  115. My weirdest phobia is seeing nail clippings on the ground and accidentally stepping into a pile of them. DISGUSTING. Also, I seriously would go ape sh*t if that happened.

    The new Twitter is simply an improved marketing platform for people you “should follow”. Kind of annoying.

  116. Hilarious family secret which came out a few years ago about my cousins (let’s call them Frik and Frak). Frik, the younger boy was a bedwetter. Like at first it was the normal, he’s really young and recently potty-trained, but that phase went on way too long. He and his older brother Frak shared a room both at their mom’s house and at their dad’s. Frik’s bedwetting went on forever – they took him to specialists and the whole family, both sets of parents plus step-siblings were on this constant crazy schedule of not letting him drink anything after 6 pm and getting him up in the middle of the to use the bathroom. The poor kid hated himself and he never even got to go to a sleepover. This lasted until he was in 8th grade.

    So when Frik and Frak’s step-sister was potty-training her son, their mom started to recount the horrors of Frik’s childhood. At which point Frak (now 35 years old) pipes up and says, “Frik was never a bedwetter, I don’t know why you guys believe that. Whenever he made me mad I’d wait for him to fall asleep and then pour a glass of water in his bed.”

  117. I have so many phobias, but no fucking way am I writing them down because then they’re going to be used against me. I saw The Witches of Eastwick, you know.

    I’m sorry you don’t feel well.

  118. Sooo.. didn’t understand the new Twitter.. and was going to ignore all these other things around my tweets until you said something about how distracting it is… Great.. well I found out one cool thing that has made my day, I’m listed under “Celebrity” that is the ONLY list I’m on. I have 39 followers lol.
    One of them thinks I am some sort of Hollywood girl cuz the other people on that list: Rihanna, Katy Perry, Kim Kardashian, John Cusack, The Bella Twins.. for real.. this list already seemed a little weird with John Cusack sneaking in there with the freaking Bella Twins.. I don’t even know who they are but I think they’re hot porn star type girls..

    so why the hell am I on there too?
    I’m not flattered anymore.. I’m scared.

    I was gonna tell you about my weird phobia but there are some really freaking weird people who follow you and have written about their phobias and well.. I feel amazing. So what?! If I don’t like my head being touched. Like at all.. ever.. or my neck or face. These people are afraid of freaking shellfish and bubbles and freaking weird crap.. I am just uncomfortable when any hand goes into the air and I think it’s directed towards my head. Whatevs.. I just politely (read: scream and yell at and threaten bodily harm to) the people who are approaching me in the manner in which I do not prefer. I used to violently twist my body to get away from these motions I thought were headed towards me… Like if I had a crumb in my hair (and I often do apparently) then I would shift my head backwards as the seemingly benign hand comes to rescue me from my crumby self. NO THANK YOU !

    I mean if I have to suffer through it at times, and I do because being 26 with 6 siblings and a boyfriend means you do have to at times let people touch above your shoulders… I tend to breathe in like a Claustrophobic who just had to hold her breath for 10 minutes, or close my eyes. That’s nothing compared to the people who don’t like *birds* and * large planets*. I mean for real people.

    You all are crazy. And I… am a Celebrity.
    hahaha

    have a great day.
    @BrookieBrooke2

  119. Hi! My dark family secrets are that I have a cousin-in-law who was on the lam from the feds for running a meth lab. I believe she was caught, but I’m not totally sure because no one talks about it. Also I have another cousin (this one a blood relative) on the other side of the family who *I know* went to prison for assault with a deadly weapon. It’s not all bad, though. I have a great great grandfather who was a US senator. Back in 1900 or so. He was involved in the discussion about the Spanish-American war. Interestingly, he was a total WASP, but his first and middle names were Hernando DeSoto. They called him H.D. This was in Mississippi.

    For your entertainment, I suppose. I think our next dog may be called Hernando. That’s a good dog name, right? Hope you feel better. I’m sorry about the arthritis. <3 (Oh, and eff twitter. I do. Wait, what?)

  120. Ok. How about stories about my lack of phobias? When I was a child, pretty much the only things I feared were worms and snakes. I wasn’t afraid of the dark, or clowns, or monsters under the bed, or thunder and lightening, or any animal, or pretty much anything. For example, I typically slept on my stomach with my hand dangling down to the floor (something that TOTALLY freaks out most of my friends). It never occurred to me that there might be a monster hiding under the bed waiting to grab me. And I read Grimms Fairy Tales – the real ones with murder and cannibalism and everything.

    As an adult I discovered how odd that all was and so I asked my mom if I was remembering correctly (like maybe I was really afraid of everything but blocked it out of my memory) and she verified that I really was pretty fearless.

  121. I’ve never commented before, but I wanted to be really cheesey for a moment and tell you that you’re a source of inspiration for me. I also deal with daily chronic pain so reading your blog gives me hope. Hope that one day despite pain I can kick as much serious ass as you do.

    For your distraction, I give you little girl singing a cover of Home – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L64c5vT3NBw&feature=player_embedded

    Report on bear in a lady’s backyard – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5C2gihnEkE

    And a little late, but Basil Mariceux’s Christmas song – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hcVleGxx40

    Feel better.

  122. Frogs’ eggs.

    My brother but a giant jar of them on our dresser and I retched at the sight of them. After two nights of staring at the amorphous clear jelly with tiny dark specks in the semi-dark, waiting for the little fuckers to explode into life and swarm all over, I threw them out the window, smashing them on the driveway below. I caught hell for it from the ‘rents, but what price serenity, y’know?

  123. okay, here’s my biggest issue with the new twitter… it keeps “SUGGESTING” that i follow lordvoldermort.
    um.
    seriously?
    i know i can get kinda crabby…. but in like a dark magic sort of way?
    i don’t think so.

    my dr. keeps calling me, asking me when i’m going to come in and have the RA testing done that she wants. i’m good at avoiding things though, it’s a perk of being short…

  124. I harbor an intense fear of yard birds (I grew up on a farm so this wasn’t convenient), snakes (not a weird phobia), clowns (again, this is a normal phobia) and Michael Bolton (obviously). My friend’s 8 year old daughter tried to make me walk into a chicken coop with her to collect eggs and I was all “But there are CHICKENS in there.” and then she started using this weird form of peer pressure on me and and I was like “NO! YOU CAN’T MAKE ME DO IT!!!!!”. Then I pushed her down and ran away. Okay, I really didn’t push her, but I did slowly back up until she could no longer see me.
    My family doesn’t have any dark secrets…. Just a bunch of drinking Catholic Breeders. What could go wrong there?
    Twitter (the old one) hated me and I could only see anything about twice a month (the screen was just blank and it would say ERRORS ON PAGE). I finally deleted my profile- which was fine because it was just one more thing to aid me in ignoring my children, which I am trying not to do (as much this year).

  125. Miss Jenny, after painting over 100K little sticky faces over 30 years I feel your pain, literally. I have had pain bad enough that I couldn’t move my right arm more than a few inches and just sat around crying. Just when I thought I was going to have to get one of the those big ass cortisone shots that they give you in the shoulder with a knitting needle and make you speak in tongues they hurt so bad, I saw an ad for acupuncture. It was a miracle for me. I left her office pain free and able to lift my arm over my head. It was bizarre.

    Get yourself to Austin and find a good acupuncturist. It will change your life. Sorry I have no hedgehog video for you at this juncture; but I’ll keep my eyes peeled.

  126. i don’t like my belly button being touched. when we were little, my mom told my brother and me that our arms, legs, and head were all attached at our belly button. whatever, we totally believed her. i’m now 30 years old and i still can’t let anyone touch my belly button. i don’t even like to. i had a boyfriend in high school who thought it was funny and went to touch it. i fucking decked him in the jaw. dick.

    my family is like a soap opera. alcoholism, affairs, depression, suicide attempts, abuse, strippers for stepmothers, and children that you find out aren’t actually yours four years after they are born. i know. we’re like a middle-class version of jerry springer. i say ‘middle class’ because none of us live in trailers, have intimate relations with family members, or are missing teeth. well, my dad lost a few in a drunk driving accident i think, but he has implants. and i broke one when i was 9 but i have a fake one. so they’re not REALLY missing.

  127. wyngrrrl, hang in there and spend time with a supportive friend. Your denying family members are doing their own thing to deal with earning unpleasant knowledge–with no amount of grace, I might say–but it doesn’t have to affect your own choices and behavior, even if it hurts your feelings. Take care of yourself. Be around people who take care of you. That’s all you have to do; you don’t have to assist your family members in acceptance or whatever.

    Jenny, your commenters are so amazing. Look at how many people want to suction pain off you, however they can. And the stories I’m reading about anxiety in particular are so helpful to me. This blog is like the best party I’ve ever been to, but without having to wear Spanx.

  128. I don’t want a new girlfriend because then I would have to stop sleeping clutching the jammie bottoms that my ex left.

    Oh wait … that’s for postsecret. Nevermind.

  129. I am a grown ass adult and I still am afraid of something being in my closet or under my bed (but only at night though. We all know creepy things are afraid of the day time). I won’t sleep with the closet door open, and I do a weird maneuver where I almost jump off my bed at night and then bolt when I have to go to the bathroom. My husband thinks it is ludicrous… what *could possibly* be under the bed. But sometimes I think a better question is, “What bad thing WOULDN’T WANT a cool hiding spot like under my bed?”

    Also, I have a phobia of Gary Busey. His pictures always make me scream a little. I have Busey nightmares. Please don’t send your arm to Gary Busey.

  130. –>For three days the new Twitter kept telling me I was similar to “The Bloggess.” I was both flattered and a little scared at the same time.
    @debthaxton

  132. Hey hey hey, next blog post/contest suggestion for you:

    If I chew up my arm and send it to you, what would you do with it?

    ENTERTAINING? You bet! And thinking about all the things your hand could be doing instead of bothering you you can say to your hand that’s giving you trouble: Vengeance is a bitch, hand.

  133. I have a phobia for WHITE MILK.

    Ok you pervs out there that are giggling right now, this is serious. This is debilitating for instance my teeth are really bad for lack of calcium. Show some compassion wouldn’t you?!

  134. Oh, I so wish I had a video of a hedgehog taking a bath! But in all seriousness, if I did, I wouldn’t be here reading your blog. I’d be watching the hedgehog taking a bath video. Hedgehogs are the cutest animal likely to stab your finger off ever.

  135. A mushroom walks into a bar. The bartender looks at the mushroom and says you’re going to have to leave. we don’t serve your kind here. The mushroom turns to the bartender and says well why not? I’m a fun guy.

  136. RA is a fucking bitch, it is. Cancer and AIDS yeah yeah, but it feels like they don’t do enough research for actual treatments that don’t kill you for RA or treatments that might work for fibromylagia, my handicap of nonchoice.

  137. I have a really intense fear of pool drains. My grandma made me watch 20/20 when i was about 5 and they were all like ” here’s abby, she sat on a pool drain and it suck 2 feet of her intestines out of her BUTT.” And it was story after story about all of these kids my age getting their intestines sucked out. How fucked up is THAT?? so from that day on I was absolutely terrified of pool drains. My asshole grandpa thought it was the funniest thing ever and used to drag me over the pool drains and push me under. I was going to send you a terrifying video about pool drains but I figured that would be mean… this one is much more fun http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqQZZnlJbic
    Hope you feel better soon!

  138. I’m not sure it qualifies as a phobia, per say, but I’m always worried that when I have smelly poops, the smell lingers in my clothing afterwards and other people can smell it on me. I’ve spent years trying to rationalize with myself in my head, that it’s just not true. Over the holidays when the whole fam was together, I SMELLED IT ON MY SISTER. Now I’m having trouble controlling the paranoia about the eau de poop smell I may be carrying with me. At work, I take an extra long bathroom break with the hopes that walking around a bit will help dissipate the stench before going back to close quarters with other people. You know how back in the day, men would wear a jacket and cap when they were smoking so the smell wouldn’t get into their clothes? Can someone please invent something like that for pooping? Preferably disposable (and eco friendly compostable!!), so you’re not carrying around something that smells like poop all the time in your purse =/

  139. Ever since I saw Gremlins the first time I’m convinced they’ve been waiting for me under my bed to grab my legs when I turn the lights off. So I always hit the light switch and run and jump on the bed from a distance of like three feet. My husband totally knows why I do this too. He still loves me 🙂

  140. I like the “WOULD HELP HIDE A BODY” list. It reminds me of the time I described my little brother as the guy I’d trust to help hide the body because he’d think of all the ways we could get caught and make sure our asses were covered and then keep his mouth shut about it til on his deathbed when he’d rat me out and literally die laughing. Then I realized he’d also be the one most likely to kill me, hide the body and get away with it for those same reasons. I was disturbed by that thought, but the people I was describing my brother to thought it was very funny.

    The moral: When people know you are on “WOULD HELP HIDE A BODY” lists, you get better birthday presents.

  141. I like your lists. I should make one up and put you on it. “People to call if I come across a zombie.” You and Dingo would be on that list.
    But Twitter can be so off. It told me to follow Betty Crocker. Betty Crocker? As if I bake? WTF? It should have told me directions to the nearest bakery.

  142. I have to smell everthing first before I use it…like knives and cutting boards because of onions. Also I have to lick my fingers before they touch wooden things like wooden spoons, popscicle sticks and most especially those little wooden spatulas that come with italian ices. Those gross me out and I litterally have to lick my fingers after every scoop.

  143. Stairs. I’m fucking crazy terrified of stairs. Being on them, falling down them, you never know if someone or something is lurking just out of sight ready to pounce on you. My cat did that once, meaning to be playful I suppose, and I just about wet myself. Stairs are dark, their walls close in on you, and it’s too quiet on stairs.I need an elevator in my house. I wonder if my landlord would agree…..

  144. OH I also have a cousin who apparently was never really potty trained and I think was wearing diapers up to around 8 years old. Do they even make diapers for 8 year olds?

  145. holy crap!! I have the same problem with bubbles in a bubble bath! Except that well, I don’t want to “kill” the bubbles and remove them from their friends by laying back, which is why I spend time moving them to the front of the bathtub before laying back. And as for a phobia of absurd proportions, I am terrified of ANTS. I’m kind of sort of ok with MAYBE one or two hanging out near me, but if I see a bunch of them (like if someone dropped some food on the sidewalk), I literally do the heebie jeebie dance, no matter how many people are around. I think my neighbors believe me to have tourettes of the body. Yeah. Also? I’m terrified of walking on grates. Which makes walking in the city very difficult, because there are people out, and I hate slow walkers, so I try to pass them, but can’t step on grates or anything that might be NOT sidewalk. Yeah.

    Oh, and for more shins and giggles, I made my new year’s resolution: to get over my trichotillomania. DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW HARD THIS IS?!?!?! Yeesh. But, I do enjoy the thought of being able to use mascara, and not needing an eyebrow pencil.

  146. I can make lists on twitter??! I just started using it…excuse me while I go play with my twitter…hehe, that sounds dirty…and fun…

  147. Fears:
    Swimming with dolphins. They could bump me in the water and cause me to drown.
    Horned owls.
    Bees and other flying insects. And all other non-flying insects, too. And spiders.
    Butterflies/moths. Just…yuck. Freaking things have stems for mouths. EW!
    I’m also afraid of going into my parents’ basement alone. It’s a stone basement just like the one in the Blair Witch Project. I’m convinced that I’ll go down there some day and some dude will be standing in the corner with his back to me and I’ll get a blow to the head and be murdered.

    This isn’t really a secret, more of an example of weird OCD behavior: I sort my M&Ms by color and eat them in order from smallest number to largest number. If there’s a tie, I eat the ones of the color I like the least. Usually yellow. For some reason there are always a lot of yellow M&Ms. I also eat my french fries in order by length, shortest first. And, I have to eat them in pairs for some reason. Probably because I like even numbers.

  148. I just joined twitter, sort of. I don’t notice the difference, but I’ll take your word for it. It sucks and there’s too much going on! Down with twitter, up with gravy!

    You should try to start another trend. The #moregravyin2011 was too overshadowed by other people’s #2011 trends and shit like that. You need to wait until the air is still and blast twitter with something awesome… Like #somethingawesome. I don’t know. That sounds like a horrible idea now that I think of it…

  149. I have a phobia of mailmen.
    its a recent phobia too, because the other day I was sitting out in front of my friend’s house waiting for her to finish doing whatever she was doing and come back in to the car and this disgruntled mailman gave me the evil eye and now I have a phobia of ALL mailmen.

    Deer also freak me out like NO other.

  150. Phobia?

    I’m afraid of styes. See, I had a stye on my lower eyelid that turned into a periorbital cellulitis. So I had an eye that was swollen for like a week and oozed puss constantly. It looked like someone punched me. A week of antibiotics cleared it up – kinda. See then I had a persistant cyst that lasted for 7 months from it. Occasionally it would get infected, leaving me to deal with oozing from my eye, but most of the time I just had a little bump that would ooze if I squeezed it. Awesome. I did eventually get rid of it, but it just means that every time I go to the bathroom I take my glasses off and check if I have any styes developing. I can’t help it.

    Here’s 27 seconds of distraction. It’s weird and stupid, but made me laugh. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyMXYE_50Ts

  151. But I sent you a message on Twitter about how James Garfield’s brother was on TV so it’s good for that. I haven’t put you on any lists because, well, I’m not that organized.

    I have a phobia of library sensors. Those things by the door that go off if the haven’t deactivated the anti-theft sensor in the books. I am afraid of them going off and people looking at me so I will sometimes hold all the books out in front of me and test it before I walk through.

    Also, I have an ancestor everyone called Goat-boy. Because he looked like a goat. Why yes, we are from Kentucky. Yes, the appetizers at a cousin’s wedding were squeezy cheese on crackers but the cheese was fresh from the can!

  152. I told my son that if he unscrewed his belly button his butt would fall off (I read that little gem on the internet of course). I then tackled him and pretended to unscrew his belly button. He sat on the floor holding his bum for a solid fifteen minutes. He kept asking me if I was joking and I’d say I don’t know, why don’t you stand up and see? Only I can’t re-attach it if it does fall off, ‘cuz the belly button only UNSCREWS, it doesn’t re-screw. He finally stood up reallly slowly, holding onto his butt and would take one hand off at a time, to test his buttcheeks. I am still laughing about that.

    Also I am seriously terrified of those automatic spray scent things. I don’t know why, they just freak me out.

  153. Poor thing. I’ve got the RA in my spine so I can sympathize when it comes to flare-ups. I can however offer salvation from pain and suffering, and its just one word that makes everything better…OPIUM. And its non-denominational. Nobody gets nailed to a tree for believing in it and it actually helps with pain. I use vicodin myself. I also try to remember the worst pain I’ve ever suffered to gain some perspective. Like three back to back migraines or the time my man sack got caught in the springs of an army cot and I stood up suddenly when we started taking rocket fire. Good times…..More palliatives little grrl. Go down drooling and smiling if you gotta go. Best wishes, O.

  154. If you chew off your own arm and send it to one of us…of COURSE we’re going to use it for something perverted. That’s who we are. Can I have your Elbow? Don’t tell me you weren’t planning to chew it off that high. If that arm doesn’t have elbow I’m sending it back!

  155. Since there was a sort of corpse theme in process above, I once saw a two and a half ton truck filled with dead bodies (human) and a soldier reclining on the top of the pile smoking a ciggy as it drove down the highway. That sort of reset my reality criteria. Strange days those, O.

  157. Something else to distract you. This is quite a few years old, so you might have seen it. If “crazy acid throwing woman” rings a bell, then you have. It never fails to make me laugh, but in a weird way.

  159. I have a phobia of moths and butterflies.

    When I was a teenager, I went to a butterfly & moth preserve in Costa Rica. The tour guide was telling us about this black moth (which has gray markings on its wings that resemble skulls) and the superstitions surrounding it. The story goes that if this moth flies in your house at night, someone will die.

    Awesome.

    There’s a similar moth in Hawaii but the myth goes that if it flies in your car while you’re driving at night, you’ll die in a car accident.

    WELL OF COURSE YOU WILL! Because you’re flapping your hands around in the air, trying to get the moth to fly back out the window, and you’re not paying attention to where you’re going so you WRECK YOUR CAR AND DIE!

    Plus, moths (and butterflies) flap at you and it totally makes my skin crawl. Yuck!

  161. I’m afraid of evil dead kids. You know, you see them in movies all the time. I’m afraid a kid I know will turn into an actual evil dead kid. And then he’ll shuffle up to me while I’m trying to sleep and look all evil and dead but say “Auntie Wendy, I love you so much” in that sweet voice evil dead kids use so you won’t shoot them. But I’m no fool. It’d go like “Auntie Wend…BLAM” and that would be the end of the evil dead kid. But then it would inevitably turn out that that kid was just sleepwalking, which is part of the reason sleepwalking kids terrify me. So maybe my biggest fear is that I will accidentally shoot a sleepwalking alive kid. And that’s why I make my fiance get up if any kid staying with us wakes up. Also why I don’t own a gun.

  162. Okay- now I’m actually going to go and update to the new Twitter. I secretly am trying to get ADD. I find I ruminate too much…

  164. I’m terrified of aliens. D: Not just any kind of aliens though…mainly the roswell-type with the giant, soul-stealing black eyes. Just thinking about them kind of makes me want to cry a little. I used to be sort of interested in them and would read/watch all kinds of things about unsolved and paranormal mysteries. When my grandmother was still alive, my family would go visit her in Mansfield, TX and she lived right across the street from a big, empty field. One night I watched something about abductions and I think that’s when the fear started. After all, I was in the perfect location. At some point, I noticed a small bump underneath the skin behind my left ear and I freaked out thinking I had some kind of implant and that they were tracking me. I would sleep with the blankets halfway over my head because apparently I thought the aliens’ technology was not advanced enough to detect the device through blankets. Yeah…

    Perfect. Now I sound like a crazy person. Good job, Chantel. -_- Anyway, I don’t think that anymore (and the bump magically disappeared), but the fuckers still scare the crap out of me.

  165. Ok, first-time commenter here, so I have to say I love your posts. They’ve brightened many a bad day, so hopefully this might at least distract you for a moment.

    One of my many skeletons: I have a “relative” who was once known as the Wiener-schnitzel Bandit. He then dyed his hair orange and married a Peruvian woman who spoke no English. And then added me on Facebook.

    Phobias: I am terrified of open doors. I am convinced that if I lay down to sleep near an open door, any demons in the nearby vicinity will sense it and peer menacingly at me through the crack, and then may or may not possess me. Escalators, as well. I cannot see an escalator without breaking out in tears. Finally, when I was a kid, my best friend and I watched Jaws in her parents’ room late at night. Afterward, I could not get off their bed or even get close to the edge. I was convinced that Jaws was waiting under there to slice the tendons in my ankles and then eat me while waving his flippers in a very “Fuck you, science! I’m a mutant shark and I can breathe air if I damn well please!” kind of way.

    You can’t make this up.

  167. Uh, I never gave my hedgehog a bath the entire time I had it. I’m feeling worried about that. Do you think it died of filth? I once lived in a house that had mushrooms growing from the floor. I would cut them down and bleach the floor, but the mushrooms always grew back. Right now I have a phobia of my own face. My husband says it isn’t haunted, but I don’t know…

  168. speaking of chewing your arm off, the left side of my left hand has been “asleep” since Wednesday and I’m starting to think this trapped nerve or whatever wont get un-trapped. Also a few years ago I read an article about twins that were in to body modification and one twin had his arm surgically removed and placed on to his twins side.

  169. If you chew off yer arm and send it to me, *count* on it being used pervertedly…

    Me, I’m fibromyalgiac — and I’ve often considered taking my own legs off at the knees.

    Perhaps we should organize a ‘limb exchange’ of arthritis and fibromyalgia sufferers.

    Or get Dr. Frankenstein’s cell phone number and see what kind of deal we can make…

    (P.S. — I have you on lists entitled “High Bypass Turbofanning” and “Beermugs & Shotglasses” — no reason…)

  170. also on the subject film “127 hours”, guy gets trapped and has to amputate his arm with a dull knife, true story.

  171. oh and just watched last king of Scotland last night where one of the Presidents wifes as punishment for betraying him has her legs and arms cut off and arms put where legs should be and vice versa. Or that’s what it looks like.

  172. I am extremely afraid of things that fly. I will literally scream and run if a butterfly gets within 2 feet of me. I walk in giant squiggly lines and circles in parking lots to avoid birds. If I’m in a car and I see a bird flying nearby I will close my eyes, even if I’m the one driving. And just last night there was a moth flying near our door and I accidentally made my husband think that someone was in our yard attacking me because I screamed at him to hurry up and get in the house.

    I don’t know if this counts as a horrific family secret but my half-sister is married to my mother’s half-brother which makes him my uncle/brother-in-law and she is now my sister/aunt. Surprisingly there is nothing incest at all about their relationship because my sister and I have different mothers. And my half-brother was adopted by my great aunt so he is now legally my cousin but biologically my half-brother. And my father got his second wife and his second wife’s sister pregnant exactly 1 month apart. And then my father married my best friend’s sister so my best friend is my aunt by marriage and now I have a brother who is only 2 years older than my son.

    Was that confusing and distracting enough?
    I’m going to go pretend I am a completely normal human being with a completely normal family now.

  173. Lessons this post’s comments taught me:
    1. Your readers are hilarious.
    2. There’s a thin line between bathing a groundhog and trapping one in a sink full of sudsy water and laughing while you record their desperate attempts to escape.
    3. There were only two lessons.

  174. This octopus can shape-shift. It’s terrifying. The image at 1:17 will haunt your nightmares. (Warning: the description of a “furry turkey with human legs” is NOT as funny as it sounds.)

  175. Jenny – screw the hedgehogs, you need to watch this:

    Oh, and I totally understand the new Twitter being like crack for someone with ADD.

    ~EdT.

  176. Let’s see…where to begin?
    I have had a lot of phobias similar to many commenters, but most of mine disappeared when i got help for depression….but i still hate clowns and rats with a passion.

    True stories:
    1. when i was away at college, i came home for a weekend and my family had moved without telling me.

    2. growing up, we had no knob on our bathroom door and it was easy to get locked in and difficult to get out. one summer’s day i was sunbathing in my bikini (teenager), went in to use the loo and got locked in. When no one answered my cries for help, i tried to go out the window. the washing machine was ‘neath said window. I was halfway out (bottom half) when the window slammed shut on my back, my arms flailed and i accidently turned the washing machine on the spin cycle. my mother then entered the bathroom and asked why i had to constantly embarrass her in the neighborhood (apparently people were looking at my legs hanging outside the window, but no one was helping me)

    3. perhaps #2 was the cause of #1….

  177. I wanted to see what lists I’d made it onto but the most entertaining ones were “couldbesisterwives” and “gives-good-blog”. I was a little hurt – I would TOTALLY help hide a body, you guys. Then I got distracted by the fact that under “Similar to you”, Twitter listed…you. As in, it thinks I’m similar to The Bloggess.

    Lamentably, not even fucking close, Twitter.

  178. Oh! Phobias. Zombies. I have had nightmares about zombies and the Zombie Apocalypse for YEARS. I’m actually a little mortified that now they’re “popular”, because it makes me look like a bandwagon jumper, when in fact I’m really just opposed – like, on a cellular level – to being eaten by shambling corpses.

  180. Honey, you are more funny than you think. And yes, I just called you honey. As for distractions, go check out my Christmas post about me almost beating down a hooker at a church on Christmas Eve. Or don’t and just come up with it in your own mind off of what I just said. 😉 Also, I want to be on some of those lists you are on. I just get put on lists of “People I Stalk” and “Writer”. I need more fun friends like yours.

  181. I have a fear that I will be kidnapped and kept sedated by heroin and then after I am released I will become a junkie. I have an irrational fear of heroin. Like I really hated your kitten heroin jokes. Heroin isn’t a fucking joke man! I know, I need therapy.

  182. Hmm family secret. Ok, a CERTAIN female family member once told me that her husband loved to have sex with her hairy armpits.

    Phobia? The horrible buzzer noise at the beginning of any scary carnival ride when your cart bumps the door open. I CANNOT STAND IT. I have to block my ears and close my eyes until I am inside. I am otherwise totally fearless. I say this in all confidence, as I once had to hunt down a Goliath tarantula that got out of its (rock covered!) cage. It looked like the scene in Aliens where Ripley and that little girl were trapped in the room with the facehugger. And yes, the bird eating tarantula DOES move that fast, but it bites with big nasty fangs instead of mouth raping you. I’m not sure which is worse, being slashed with fangs or a mouth rape, but it still doesn’t make sense that the alien comes out of your chest because honestly by then you’d be shitting the little fucker out and I dunno about you, but I’d rather a large painful alien baby poop than a chest cracking anyday. Doesn’t that make you feel silly about being scared of facehuggers, now that I’ve destroyed that movie premise with my digestive logic?

    Your arm should be used as a backscratcher. Make sure that when it stiffens up, it does so in a suitably bent fingered fashion or it won’t be as good for me. Also, it will unexpectedly come to life and give super wedgies while scratching.

  183. Today is my birthday and I wanted a laugh, so I clicked your blog. Now I am sad because all I can think about is you chewing your arm. I don’t think I can stop the image in my head, even when i close my eyes.

    Oh, great. I just found out I am going to see Gulliver’s Travels for *my Birthday* with the kids. Now I will be thinking of your bloody arm with a GIANT Jack Black in front of me.

    I need to convince the *fam* to go to the fancy movie theater in town where they sell wine. lots of wine.

  184. I just wrote a long post with a selection of my dark family secrets but reading through it is just not gonna make anyone’s day. Let’s just youtube kittens instead.

  185. My dog has started following me and my mom whenever we try to go to the bathroom. Seriously, one of us’ll try to go to the toilet and he’ll just follow us in and sit down. The bathroom’s too small to body shove him out, and he’s too big for us to pick him up. It’s just us though–my dad and brother do not get this honor. And it started after we got home from Christmas family visits. The working theory is he thinks the bathroom is some kind of TARDIS, and doesn’t want to get left behind. Again.

    That’s a semi-family secret. With a dog. YOU’RE WELCOME.

  186. Ahhh see the kitten heroine joke made me laugh… mainly ’cause it popped into my head seconds before I say it popped in your head and now I’m all phobic about the possibility of turning into you and lately I’ve been looking at taxidermied animal heads gettin’ all “I think I should buy a moose head” to put over my fireplace but for some crazy reason the thought of your gnawed off arm displayed over my fireplace is more exciting and I think I’m afraid of you.

    Sorry your arm hurts. I have a bad hip.

    I use you to numb my pain. It costs less than heroine. And I don’t like kittens.

  187. I’m not exactly phobic but I can’t stand to touch chalk. It makes my skin crawl and I will scream and run like a 50s housewife that’s seen a mouse if someone throws it at me (this happens a lot, my family thinks it’s funny) or I accidentally touch it. It’s like nails on a chalkboard, except on my skin instead of my ears. Chalk is evil.

    (Also, I have a cousin who is also my half sister. (And I’m not even making that up just to make you feel better, but I kinda wish I was.))

  188. I am so sorry about the arthritis. If I were smarter I’d give you a cure or some way to block all the symptoms, and it would involve rainbows and pixie dust and unicorn shit. But I’m not so you will have to suffer. You do have all my sympathy, as if that will help. My husband has rheumatoid arthritis and it sucks for him. I’m betting yours sucks, too. Hey, maybe James Garfield The Miracle Boar could come up with something — I’m sure he has access to unicorn shit, etc.

  189. I never gave a hedgehog a bath…but in Iraq we would put them in coolers and play with them at night. They are cute little fellers, by my God, they pee & poop all over the minute you touch them – worse than toads, even.

  190. Of course all the lists want your coolness associated with it. One of the ones I like being on is Dwight’s broccoli. 😀
    As for the arm, what’s the sense in having your blessed arm if I can’t do anything perverted? It’s like it wouldn’t be living up to its potential or something.

    Distractions? I’m plum out of sugges…–squirrel!!!!

  191. I’m pretty sure you’re distracted by now….I was, I think I’ve been here an hour?
    Hope you haven’t had to chew off your arm…I’d be so wary of sending to any of this lot lol
    hmm phobias……..I have this weird thing where if a police car is pulling up like looking for an address, I immediately thinks its mine.Nooo ,not because I have hydro , acache of weapons or illgotten gains or too many cats ….I have that fear of bad news, if theres 2 policeppls in the car I am useless until they find the right address.

    family secrets? hmm my sister married our first cousin? my hubby is descended from circus ppl?
    my daughter is a Tgirl, but thats no secret.

    Seriously hope the meds are kicking in.RA sucks.I’m on pred at moment trying to get ESR down so I can get repeat script for humira. how can esr go UP while on pred???

  192. I do not have a video of a hedgehog taking a bath, but I have a horrific family secret about one.
    We have a satanic hedgehog living under our shed. Actually that’s just my horrific secret, but when it eventually bites my dad’s little toe off it will be a family secret.
    8D

  193. Weird phobia? What, like having a phobia about the fuzzy skin on apricots – ack! Just thinking about it makes me shiver, but I soooo love apricot jam.

    I saw James Garfield singing in a tv ad today, but I totally forgot what he was selling. I’ll have to stay glued to the tv until it comes around again so I can post it here. Thanks, Jenny.

  194. I don’t have any weird phobias (I mean, I’m terrified of birds, but I think that’s normal- they fly at your face and take things out of your hands and poop on you to purposefully ruin your day, they’re horrible little dinosaur-like creatures and I wish they’d never evolved and instead just let T-rex stick around to roam because Trex strikes me as being not so bad compared to a sea gull), BUT my dog hid a rubber toy we didn’t know about, ate almost the whole thing today, and just pooped about 1/2 a pound of rubber. Not an exaggeration. Then after coming back inside, she unearthed ANOTHER rubber toy that we didn’t know she’d hidden and proceeded to chow down on that before I caught her. Now I have a slight phobia that her rubber toys are reproducing, but it’s more likely that birds intentionally hid them in our house to screw with me. I hate birds.

  195. Okay, you know those giant wind turbines that they have at wind farms? I am terrified of those. First of all, they can’t be safe and I imagine that a blade will totally come flying off and slice my car in half every time I drive past. Second of all, they’re just not right. There’s like hundreds of them all together, looking like some sort of creepy robot squadron and to be honest, I’m just waiting for the day that they all come to life and start killing people and I’ll have to say I TOLD YOU SO to every single person that has mocked my wind turbine phobia.

  196. Have I mentioned how much I adore you all? I’m in so much pain and I can’t stand to walk and the blood-vessels in my eyes are bursting and I kind of want to just give up but then you make me laugh or cry or realize that this will pass. Thank you. Honestly, I’m not myself enough to be witty but you made a difference to me.

  197. Not distracting, but possibly helpful:
    My family has an arthritis-like joint disorder that’s all weird and wonky, and my mom’s orthopedic surgeon (read:real doc, not quack) suggested tanning. Sounds ridiculous, but it’s such a large amount of heat that he said put on some sunscreen and, especially when it’s weather related pain, head to a tanning booth. Works like a charm. Also, when I need a funny that’s not from here, I try DamnYouAutoCorrect. Hope today was better:)

  199. I just discovered the lists on Twitter. People have some weird ass, crazy ways of labeling them and it’s very entertaining! New to your blog and can’t wait to read more!

  200. Okay, so I breed ducks, which means I get to play with a lot of ducklings. The things about ducklings is I think they can hypnotise you. I seem to spend an awful lot of time watching the ducklings and not doing anything else. Just watching them run. And trust me, running ducklings are hilarious, it’s like watching a person run in flippers. They trip over and flip and everything.

    Arthritis is the pits. My joints are all fucked up too and I’m pretty sure my wrist and ankle are arthritic – which would be okay, if the arthritis would at least stop them dislocating. Unfortunately Murphy hates me.

  201. Hey, if it makes you feel any better, I have dystonia (a movement disorder) in my left hand and foot. They both clench constantly. Sometimes it’s painful. It’s driving me crazy, to the point where I’d like to chop my hand off. Except my phantom hand would probably keep clenching anyway.

    Aren’t afflictions fun?

    Anyway, your lists were great. I think you’re hilarious. Arthritis notwithstanding.

  202. I am going to add a new list JUST for you…..and whomever else chews off their appendages, and wants to be added to the list of……
    “Don’t Make me Chew Off ANOTHER appendage”

  203. OK, I’ll see your RA and raise you kidney failure, bipolar 1, anxiety disorder and psychotic features. And if we were playing for more than m&ms I would totally toss in a fistful of medication that may or may not be goofballs.
    Because that’s just how I roll. Yo.

  205. I have a weird phobia and family secret all rolled into one! My grandma’s house has a ghost that she named Charlie. I have always been scared to go in her basement, although he has made weird appearances all over the house. When I was a kid, Grandma and I were there alone and doors started slamming in the basement! Opening and closing really loud. Super scary. One time, her dog got up and stood in the hallway, hair on end, growling at nothing we could see. When I was a kid and would stay the night, my shoes would always be in different places when I woke up. Now we stay with her whenever we’re in town and I’m hoping no one tells my 3 year old about Charlie, because I want at least one of us to get a good night’s sleep over there!

  206. Hate newtwitter too!

    And that wasn’t a funny post? Damn- you can bring it even when you dont mean to!

  207. Things I am sick of…Stupid Fibro and RA drug commercials showing women walking around, gardening and smiling. I want a fucking commercial that shows us as we really are…sitting on our couches or beds wearing the same pajamas we’ve been wearing all week, hair all fucked up because holding a brush is bullshit when you have arthritis.

    I have Fibro and have just been diagnosed with RA as well. It’s bullshit.

    I hope like hell you feel better soon. You deserve a constant demerol drip with a margarita chaser…

  208. not funny at all, but a serious question: have you tried embrel? serious shit athritis drug that my mom uses – she has arthur, as we call it, in every joint. wretched disease. ain’t gonna kill you but makes you feel like you’re gonna die. Embrel worked really well for her – until they realized it was causing melanomas. Which it does in only like 2% of the people who take it. Now she takes…prednazone, I think.
    Anyway. Arthur sucks and so you have no reason whatsoever to try and be funny. Pack yourself in heating pads and fluffy slippers and dream of heroin-tripping kittens. Or chalupas.

  209. How about a bear begging, otters, and deer along the blue ridge parkway. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kBDrNu_SKg I made the video 3 years ago.
    I still like the old twitter. I went to check it and it was on the new twitter, but there is a tab to go back to the old twitter on the top still. I clicked it and it looked like the old Twitter.

  210. My family laughs at my fears. I’m scared of potty snakes and bridges. Seriously. Snakes can totally come up a potty and bite you in the butt. That’s why I slam the lid down, then flush and run. Cuz they are more likely to come up when flushing. And I know that bridges are strong, and I live in a border town in Michigan so I drive over tons of bridges every day. But really big ones freak me out to the point I feel like puking or passing out. Which sucks cuz I’m the onewho is normally driving. So watch my twittter for when I’m going to Canada and avoid the bridge JUST IN CASE! Wait. If I pass out then plunge over the side, my worst fear will have come true. CRAP! Now I’m freaking out even more and I’m just sitting in my living room.

  211. It’s not a phobia, but I absolutely cannot touch sandwashed silk. It sends me into seizure-like spasms of disgustedness. I hate the feeling of it. My family used to think it was funny to innocently lure me into touching it just to watch me jump around twitching in the store. Ha. Ha.

    I was trying to find an entertaining chinchilla youtube video but apparently there aren’t any. That I found. In my five minutes of looking. So I found a heartwarming story about ducklings.

    Strangely, following further links through the youtube+duckling-verse, you find a video about a mom breastfeeding her child who is 8. I think. That’s what the video is named. I was too scared to open it.

    I hope your pain is better. I was on muscle relaxants this week because of back spasms set off by falling on the ice twice. But I mostly just wanted to sit still and play video games, not gnaw any body parts off.

  212. Went to the movies yesterday. One of the trailers (?) shown before the movie was for The Beaver, a new movie with Mel Gibson and Jodie Foster. Gibson has personal problems and speaks through his Beaver hand-puppet.
    I’m still speechless.

  213. Back from Jack Black movie. Gulliver’s Travels.

    It sucked.

    I was glad to have your bloody arm to think about and humor myself with witty comments I was going to make on this post (all of which I have forgotten).

    Life sucks and arthritis at your age is re-dick-u-lous.

    re-dick… that actually sounds fun.

    Hope you feel better, Jen.

  214. So, im going to distract you by explaining how i have the worst freaking luck in the world

    its a long story but ill give you the short version.
    me and this guy had a thing for about a year. but it was all drama filled and long distance so i called it quits….well lately ive been struggling with keeping my mind off him. he has a girlfriend and im not trying to split them up or anything but he is constantly on my mind and its been really rough because he was my best friend and i really like him. we barely talk at all anymore and he has been in town for about a month for the holidays. i know this seems like its going nowhere but just hold on.. so i had a dream about him last night and today i was finally like screw this im tired of being miserable so i told him that i was cutting him out of my life so i could move on. i deleted his number and took him off my facebook and skype. well i cried and cried and then about an hour later i heard ,who i thought was my brother, get home and i walk into my living room and guess who is standing in my doorway??? yes, the damn guy im trying to cut out of my life…well he dosnt see me but i run back to my room and im freaking out cause the guy i just told i was practically in love with and vowed to never see again is spending the night at my house…YAY!!! so now im held up in my room, afraid to leave and have to confront him. i ran into the kitchen while he was using the restroom and got enough food and drink for the night …im a pathetic chicken and my life sucks…..

    oh, and i am afraid of SPEAKING IN PUBLIC. i will sing, dance, and any other random thing but i cannot speak with out freaking out. also, im terrified of THE DARK. i start seeing things and feeling things and its just a mess. and ELEVATORS! i have to hold on to someone else if im forced to use one..i NEVER get on them if im alone. I live in a constant fear of BREAKING BONES…if i play sports ill start freaking out that im going to break something. and FEET if you touch me with your foot i will punch you in whatever part of your body is closest and then go take a shower.

  216. Damn, that sucks. I don’t have arthritis, so I can’t commiserate. But I cant tell you that I have a serious goose problem in my yard. They bathe, though I’m sure it’s not as cute as when a hedgehog does it, and they run, but nothing like ducklings, and really they just shit everywhere. And eat my grass.

    But sometimes, on a good day. A really good day. I run them out of the yard and use a shovel to fling their shit right back at them. I’ve yet to hit one with my barrage of flying poop, but my day will come. Hopefully on a cold day when it’s hard and lands with a defining ploop. And on that day, I will let you know of my success in hopes of sparing your limbs.

  218. I totally have the arthritis, too and it sucks donkey balls.
    My family story is this: My father worked for the state department of corrections (think the prison mentioned in Dog Day Afternoon… he was there!) and slept his way through the local maximum security prison, the medium security one in the maximum security’s back yard, and the women’s facility (yup, he “met” Amy Fisher the Long Island Lolita). Slept his way through. And then, one day, he left my mom for the inmate he’d been screwing. She got paroled, moved to a warmer place, and he went with her. Sadly, the warmer place wasn’t hell.

  219. I’m afraid that spiders or other bugs will crawl into my mouth as I sleep. (That doesn’t really happen, right?) I could protect myself by covering up my mouth with my blanket, but I can’t do that because my other phobia of being suffocated by my blanket. Phobia 2 wins. I risk bugs partying down my esophagus while I sleep because if I don’t suffocate, I wake up in the morning.

    Related story: When I was a kid, I was drinking through a straw and felt something weird. It wasn’t liquid…and it was moving! I spit out a mouthful of milk and looked down. It was an earwig. (Aaaaaaaahhh!!! I still shudder when I think about it.)

    Also related: Waking up in bed one night and seeing a spider on my comforter, crawling towards my head. (I often fell asleep while reading, and would wake up in the middle of the night to turn the light off.)

  220. I was in bed last night, watching T.V and eating a sandwich. Because that shit is heaven. And I don’t pull my blinds down, because really, what have I got to be afraid of? WELL, I’ll tell you what!

    So, there I am, eating my sandwich, like nobody’s business. I’m watching Sudden Impact, because Clint Eastwood is badass. Then out of nowhere, from the darkness, this loud bang comes from window. I can suddenly hear this shrill kind of hissing… I look down sandwich in hand ready to fight back whatever is trying to get into my room.

    Turns out, this TOTALLY possessed possum decides it wants my sandwich! AND THE MOTHERFUCKER doesn’t go away. It keeps bumping my window and hissing! And my lamp light reflects its eyes, so now I know its definitely possessed!

    I started hissing back. It seemed logical, and after about five minutes, the possum stopped hissing, sat outside my window, glared into my soul… Then left. Never in my life have I felt so vulnerable than that moment.

    I KID YOU NOT. This whole story is true. Except maybe the possessed bit. But I’m like 99.9% sure that the possum was in fact possessed. Of course i’m going to get holy water in case the demon thing returns.

  221. I’M A SPIRIT ANIMAL TOOOO!
    We should totes get matching t-shirts, because we are obviously soul mates.
    /creepy comment

  222. wyngrrrl..been there. Am there. You can email me at drhoctor2 at gmail.com
    I’m NOT afraid of snakes, spider, bats or children.
    I am afraid of everything else.

    My family secret is the fact that my grandmother lived with my grandfather for ten years before marriage. But, she hung her framed marriage certificate in the hall where everyone could check the dates ? My family is bad at secrets.

  223. Dear bloggess,

    First off all hi from Turkey. Also, as a male reader, my props go to Victor.. For his perseverance etc 🙂

    And for your current issue, the arthritis, there are software out there to which you dictate and they type those to the computer.* Much like Stephen Hawking’s chair. This way, you will also taste the feel of being a genius, only you will be more evil than him I suppose. I think this would be the cheapest way to become an evil genius. Your arthritis would heal more easily and we could read more or your stuff..

    Also you could use Hailey to the same thing. It would be cheaper but she could have arthritis much sooner than you. That wouldn’t be responsible parenting, now would it?

    * By the way one of such software has “dragon” in its name just to make it even cooler.. And no I am no advertiser, just a regular reader.

  225. Twittter is probably the devil…or maybe the son of the devil. I really don’t know…it’s one of those. Devil….son of the devil…what’s the difference? Not much when you’re so drunk on alcohol and geeneric bendryl when you move eyes everything seems to say. Wheeee this is fun! Swaying your head back and forth is fun whikle writing comments!!! What I was a sayiin g? Oooohhh….Twitter so th edevil oh yeah ypou bet! ~Says head back and forth some back, stupid grin on her face~

  226. I thought Twitter was for people who are too ADD for Facebook. Or people with word/status diarrhea syndrom like myself.

    I’m too ADD for Twitter so I quit that and now I have a tumblr so I can look at pretty pictures. Except I’m too lazy and ADD to work out how to use it properly, so you should come spam me with whatever it is tumblr people do to each other in the absence of poking. (My thingy is my name thingy here)

    I got offended by the people Twitter reckoned I was similar to. I mean, really? Maybe I don’t WANT to be like Oprah*.

    *I quite Twitter over ten minutes ago, so I can’t actually remember who I was — FUCKyeahnakedwomen! Too intense for me to follow :/ And I have been attached to a vagina since birth.

  227. Hey girl, sorry your being attacked by the AssholeArthritis not cool. What a dick. I got no hedgehogs make love in the water, all I can give you is my friend ship disclaimer ( a video http://www.beingpeachy.com/2010/12/20/moronic-monday-friendship-disclaimer )
    I have a post about the word flaccid that has penis pie charts- http://thepeachy1.blogspot.com/2011/01/funny-how-brain-works.html
    or and then of course I had a couple inventions on Thursday and Friday. Since you live in the south too, you might get door to door meat salesmen which is just insane, but I found an effective way to deal with them even though Lloyd is sure I will go to prison over this http://thepeachy1.blogspot.com/2011/01/i-am-so-glad-you-showed-up.html

    I hope that gives you some distraction. If not, the research for the term flaccid will send you into yak mode, if you have safe search turned off and click imagines. just saying. Yeah it’s like stabbing your eye so you don’t remember the arthritis for a moment, but it’s all I got.

  228. To Cris Lawson: I’m a huge Alien spaz, so I feel it necessary to correct your digestive error. The facehugger does not implant the embryo in the stomach, but instead uses the trachea to access the lungs, which is where the bugger is implanted. In the first film, it was made clear that the facehugger was keeping its victim alive by breathing for it. Also, the stomach is below the rib cage, while the lungs are not. So, unless the baby alien tried to crawl back up the esophagus, there’s no way it would burst through the chest cavity.

    Besides being a completely hopeless dork and science geek (which I embrace with pleasure), I’m terrified of my own alarm clock sound. I wake up before it goes off just so I won’t hear it. And whenever I hear it on tv or in movies (and it’s used rather frequently), I spaz out-just like I do with ants. Hm. Maybe I need more meds… or a new alarm clock… 😀

  229. IF you do end up chewing your arm off, you should totally see if you could get it made into one of those crazy robot claw like arms, then you can use your fake arm to reach things up high with your real arm. Also? You could put it inside your coat and when people shake your hand just let it fall off. Really, when you think about it, a preserved dead arm is way funnier than a real live arm.

  230. Family secrets? Let’s say there’s a certain married couple in my family called Jack & Jill-Jill is from the Southeast USA and moved to Namibia to be with her husband Jack, who is an Afrikaner. One morning Jill gets this call from her husband:

    Jack: “I just hit a leopard!”
    Jill: “Seriously!?”
    Jack: “Well I think so-it was big with orange fur & spots & it took off my front head lamp.”
    Jill: “What do you mean ‘I think so’-didn’t you pick it up?”
    Jack: “What? Why would I pick it up?”
    Jill (again, from Southern USA): “Those are the rules-you hit it, so it’s yours! Dude go pick that shit up! We can stuff it or something!”
    Jack: “But it was like 10km’s back…”
    Jill: “GO PICK IT UP!”

    So Jack, being familiar with the word “stabby”, goes back to pick it up and try to identify it.

    Jack: “It’s a tiger bush cat!” (the literal English translation of the Afrikaans name for a serval cat)
    Jill: “There’s no tigers in Africa. And tigers don’t live in shrubs anyway.”

    This argument goes on until Jack sends a photo of the animal & it is properly been identified as ‘not a leopard’, but still flipping awesome & totally worth taxiderming. Especially since they already massive spur-wing goose (~20lb bird) that’s stuffed in their living room & they think the cat will look especially nice in a crouching/attack position behind this massive goose with a plaque saying “Go big or go home”.

    So they drop it off at the taxidermist who freaks out because apparently the serval cat is protected & even having the thing in the freezer is illegal. They also learn that picking up dead animals from the side of the road, even if you hit them, is also illegal (which Jill disputes & demanded to be shown the law in print to prove this). Eventually though, they negotiate with the guy & show him that they hit the cat, so it’s not like they poached it & he agrees to do the work if they buy some overpriced steaks from him (in Africa it’s not uncommon for the taxidermist to have a butchery on the side. I’m not asking questions.). So Jack & Jill buy t-bone steaks of some kind of meat & now are waiting for the guy to finish the work (it’ll probably be in a year or so). Last week they found out they must also get a permit to own it, even if it’s stuffed, so they’re working on trading chickens (I kid you not) in order to get the permit. These two really make family reunions more exciting.

    As for phobias-I have a friend who’s terrified of buttons. Like she freaks out if you wear one of those navy pea coats with the big buttons on them or anything like that within a 10ft radius of her. Last year we took her to see Coraline in 3-D & she freaked out so bad in a theater full of children we were asked to leave. Totally worth it.

  233. I’m sorry to hear about your am. I’ve got massive arthritis and joint issues in my back (had surgery last year which didn’t completely work. Now I’m trying an experimental thing called prolotherapy and platelet rich plasma therapy. It involves about 20 to 30 injections into my spine every 6 weeks. It’s not covered by insurance. It costs about $800 a pop. Funny? Not really. Bet the doc is laughing all the way to the bank tho.)

    On the other hand I *own* a hedgehog. She hates baths and does nothing but crap and piss herself in the water when I try to scrape off her little “poop boots” with a toothbrush. Hedgehogs run about 3 to 8 miles a night on their little wheels. And crap and piss themselves the entire time. And continue to run through it. Hence the need for a bath.

    I don’t have any video of this I’m afraid, but I might be able to dig some up of her running through the house in her giant pink hampster ball.

  234. Jenny, I feel so bad that you are in such pain. I really wish I had some crazy family secrets to distract you with, but my family is pretty boring really. However, thanks to my dad, I do have a ridiculously large repertoire of really stupid jokes, if that would help.

    Here’s my favorite…
    Did you hear about the dyslexic agnostic who had insomnia?
    He sat up all night wondering if there really is a Dog.

  236. @Sandra : Regarding the field of mathematics, there are three types of people: those who get it and those who don’t.

  237. I have a paralyzing fear of rodents. Once I scared one to death just by screaming. It was under the chair. The exterminator moved the chair and it ran out. I screamed so much and it dropped dead. The exterminator said “Good God, you scared it to death.” He said I gave it a heart attack. I was six months pregnant. The next day I was having contractions and ended up in the special care maternity unit for a week with early labor. Thankfully they kept the baby in with shots and sent me home with pills and bed rest. The doctor had asked if anything traumatic happened. When I said I saw a mouse, he said “No, that wouldn’t do it.” Ha. I can’t even look at one on tv or in a book without screaming. I could probably make a lot of money by marketing myself as the green exterminator who kills mice in a humane manner. No poison or chemicals, and no snap or glue traps. I can simply stand in a room and scream until I give the mouse a heart attack.

  238. I’m afraid of heights but have wanted to take a hot air balloon ride. Does that make me a masochist?

  239. A little humor for you.

    Baptizing the Bear

    A Priest, a Pentecostal preacher and a Rabbi all served as chaplains to the students of The University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa.

    They would get together two or three times a week for coffee and to talk shop. One day, someone made the comment that preachingto people isn’t really all that hard. A real challenge would be to preach to a bear.

    One thing led to another and they decided to conduct an experiment. They would take a trip to the Smokey Mountains to go find a bear, preach to it and convert it.

    One week later they reassembled to discuss the results of their trip.

    Father Flannery, who has his arm in a sling, is on crutches, and has various bandages on his body and limbs, spoke first.

    ‘I went into the woods to find me a bear. And when I found him I began to read to him from the Catechism.

    Well, that bear wanted nothing to do with me and began to slap me around. So, I quickly grabbed my Holy Water, sprinkled him and, Holy Mary Mother of God, he became as gentle as a lamb.

    The bishop is coming out next week to give him first communion and confirmation.’

    Reverend Billy Bob spoke next. He was in a wheelchair, with an arm and both legs in casts, and an IV drip. In his best fire and brimstone oratory he exclaimed, ‘WELL brothers, you KNOW that WE don’t sprinkle!

    I went out and I FOUND me a bear.

    And then I began to read to my bear from God’s HOLY WORD!

    But that bear wanted nothing to do with me. So I took HOLD of him and we began to wrassle. We wrassled down one hill, UP another and DOWN another until we came to a creek.

    So right quick-like, I DUNKED him and BAPTIZED his furry soul. And just like you said, he became as gentle as a lamb. We spent the rest of the day praising Jesus.’

    They both looked down at the rabbi, who was lying in a hospital bed.

    He was in really bad shape. He was in a body cast and had multiple lines running in and out of him

    His colleagues looked at him and waited for him to relate his experience, looking up at the two men he said, ‘Looking back on it, circumcision may not have been the best way to start.

  240. This video never gets old: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXGhjOwvnNQ
    I tried to dance like him once and nearly pulled my back (I’m 25).

    Anywho, phobias: I had a nightmare about six years ago starring Mel Gibson. He was my estranged husband who was out to kill my babies because I was harboring a folgers can full of Jesus’s ashes. He needed the can to strengthen his crazy powers. He was very violent and scary, and he could light houses on fire and move cars with his mind. After this dream I couldn’t watch anything that involved Mel Gibson and everyone was all, “That’s irrational!” But now, it turns out he really is a violent nut job, and my fear is validated! So Ha!

    More recently, I had a nightmare with Paul Giamati. As a result, I’m afraid he is going to try and bite off my fingers. Also, he might have a weird sex fetish (not related to fingers). I guess we’ll find out in a few years. Meanwhile, I suggest people wear gloves around him.

    Hope you feel better soon!!!

  241. Stairs. I’m sort of afraid of stairs. As i get older (which seems to be happening faster & faster), as I walk down a flight of stairs I have these flashes of falling and tumbling to the bottom and all I can think is “SHIT THIS IS GONNA HURT” and so then I double-grab at the railing, which often makes me stumble and then I almost DO fall down the stairs. I constantly tell my kids to be careful on the stairs as they go bounding down the subway steps, like little urban mountain goats. I remember being that sure-footed but now? Now it’s sloooow going.
    Hope your arthritis attack is on the wane…

  242. You should have some cake to feel better. Most doctors don’t want you to know this, but joint pain in people with RA is greatly diminished if you’re obese. It’s true. So go eat some cake. And maybe some ice cream. And pizza too. It’ll be good for you.

  243. Family secrets – My grant uncle invented Ski Ball. I think. maybe. Probably. I mean who would make that up?

  244. First, this is the best comment thread I have ever read.

    Phobias: I was/slightly still am petrified of cars without drivers. That is, moving cars that are going without any visible driver. I once saw a car with really tinted windows driving toward me with nobody at the wheel and I would have screamed except I was too terrified to move a muscle. Turned out it was just a really tiny old person. There is no reason or cause for this fear and I’ve never heard of anyone else with it. Next, I was/am terrified of that drain part in the side of the pool. Not the one at the bottom that actually CAN hurt you, like one of the previous commenters (totally rational), but the one on the side where you hang on. I grew up CONVINCED that Shamu was going to come out of that little gap in the side and would eat me. I still hate swimming alone because the image of a giant Shamu in the pool with me is just too much to bear.

    Not phobias, but sensory issue that is also weird: I HATE the sound of people scratching their nails on fabric. ESPECIALLY long nails on nylons. Makes me want to throw up. Also, there is no way in hell you can scratch that itch using your nails through denim. I mean, I’m just saying. If you ACTUALLY wanted to scratch your itch, you would be much better off pinching the fabric and rubbing the FABRIC against the itch, not your nails, which are totally negated by the fabric. However, nails on a chalkboard are apparently just fine for me!

    Family secrets: My great-grandfather was a bootlegger (we think), and probably also my grandfather, who then opened a legit liquor business, then one of my cousins started working for the alcohol regulation board in CA, and his brother works for a liquor distributor. My other uncle lives a block from a winery, in wine country. My brother just drinks a lot. We likes our booze. Then we also had a “secret” relative who had some sort of mental illness, was institutionalized, but also managed to have a baby who was “secretly” adopted, who grew up in contact with my dad’s family, even though no one ever really talked about how exactly she was related (first cousin, I think?). Then her mom died in a fire in the institution that she apparently set. OK, that was sadder than weird, sorry. But now everyone knows and is happy! There also were twins named Rosemary and Maryrose somewhere in the tree. I think that’s just cruel. And on the in-law side, my husband’s brother is dating their first cousin. Christmas was weird, but I must say, it did streamline gift giving! No “external” significant others!

  245. Once I did that web thing where you upload your picture and it spits out your celebrity look-alike. All my friends were matched with beautiful, successful celebrities. I was matched with David Schwimmer. I mean, SERIOUSLY?! Ross from Friends?! Really?! This did absolutely nothing for the self-esteem of a young single mother or two. I started drinking a lot more after that. Also, now I hate David Schwimmer for no other reason than I was insulted and I want him to feel my pain.

  246. I am always so goddamn late to these parties. I need to get a smartphone and some kind of newfangled alert whenever you post, otherwise I am comment 1,298,376,761.

    Twitter on its own sucks balls. But I suck so much at Twitter, that I essentially suck Twitter’s balls. I hate posters that totally flood your page with their stupid shit and retweets. I also am brutal because I log in every few days and post about three or four tweets within 10 minutes, then leave again.

    So… yeah… don’t lose too much blood sawing off that arm of yours. That could be dangerous!

  247. really hate the new twitter too… though so far I’m still able to use it – hope it doesn’t end up being a case of tearing it from my cold dead laptop.

  248. So if you give us your arm can we save it it our deep freeze to use in the zombie apocalypse? And if we do, what if you become a zombie, will it start trying to kill us, or does it not work that way.

    Sorry, I’m just beginning to take it seriously and don’t know diddly squat about these things.

  249. OMG. Phobias, where to start… OK, how about snorkeling. There’s just something about being told to stick your face in the water and then BREATHE. Plus the whole not-being-able-to-see-what’s-behind-you, or to the side of you. And did you know most shark attacks occur in 3 feet of water? That’s like the shallow end.

    My hedgehog Ophelia never enjoyed taking a bath. In fact, from the time she was about 6 months old until the time she died at around 8 years old she convinced me that she didn’t need a bath. So I’m afraid I can’t show you any video confirmation. However, she did spit all over herself on a regular basis. I do have pictures of that, if you’re interested.

    OK, this is not a hedgehog, but it IS in Russian: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cf06WJQ4FnE

    PS the term for hedgehogs spitting all over themselves is “anointing.” True definition.

  250. Twitter is a great tool, one should just ‘learn’ to use it. For instance, use TweetDeck and set it to notify you about anything once an hour. Problem solved.

  251. Weird phobia – I don’t know how weird this is, because I have to think every freaking person who saw Star Trek II: the Wrath of Khan has it. For months after I saw that movie, whenever water would run into my ear canal when I was showering, I would freak out. I developed a horror at the idea that psychic slugs would slide into my ear and take over my brain. Yes, I’m a geek. I’m ok with that.

    My mom has RA and it’s awful. She was on methotrexate for a long time – but what really worked well for her was Remicade. It’s an IV treatment that she’d get every six weeks or so. It really did wonders for keeping down her inflammation. She didn’t get it until she’d had RA for over 30 years though, so I don’t think it helped too much to avoid additional joint damage, but maybe it could be an option for you if your insurance will cover it.

  252. When we don’t want to do something we say, “I’d rather chew off my right arm…and beat myself over the head with it.” But in reality, with only one arm that might be tough to do. So, we switched to, “Rather stab myself in the eye with a rusty fish hook…with some leftover bait goo on it.”

    You might want to take 1000 mg of cinnamon (comes in pills). It might do the trick for your arthritis. It’s helped me and my hubster.

    New Twitter=FAIL or FAIL WHALE

  253. My brother’s second wife, the opera singer, was afraid of seahorses. She wouldn’t go in souvenir stores near the beach.
    There’s a distance healer who coincidentally lives not far from you if you want him to work on your arthritis pain. He could do it over the phone. Email me if you need the help. By the way, I’m serious about this. But most people I tell don’t believe me, they’d rather have the pain I guess.
    I hope you feel better soon!

  254. I cannot sleep with my closet door open, I’m afraid something will come out of there and get me. Not very helpful when trying to convince your kid they don’t have monsters in their closet.
    I also have a fear of saliva, not mine, but others peoples. I can’t stand watching people kiss, or drool , and if someone licks me I go balistic.
    As for family weirdness… my mother in law was dating two brothers in high school. She eventually married one of them (my father inlaw) after my in laws divorced my father in law married his brothers ex wife.

  255. Today, Trivial Pursuit told me that if you inject liquid gold into your veins, it cures arthritis. No joke. I immediately thought of you.

  256. I’m terrified of pantyhose. I mean they cover the feet and the butt. They’re like nets for collecting stank.

  257. When I was ten or eleven, my family decided to take a road trip from Texas to Canada. It was a fourteen day trip with my mom, dad, brother, grandma and me.

    Somewhere near Washington, D.C., we stopped to each lunch at a McDonald’s. The Happy Meal toy was one of those plastic buckets decorated with ghouls and goblins you could use as a trick or treat pail. An hour later, I had to piss. Real bad. I asked my mom to find a restroom and pull over, but she didn’t want to get even further behind, so she told me to pee in the bucket I had just gotten from McDonald’s. In the car.

    Later, when we finally pulled into a rest stop, my mom wanted to know if I still wanted the bucket. She offered to wash it out and told me it would be as good as new.

    Whatever. I’m already looking at nursing home brochures.

  258. For quite a while, I had a strange phobia of Terrance Howard (yes, the actor), thanks to the creepy roll he had in a nightmare I had. Ironically, the dream led to a family secret of sorts. Anyway, I dreamed Terrance Howard was trying to put his finger in my mouth, and it freaked me out to no end. I literally woke up shaking and terrified. I didn’t want my boyfriend (now husband) to think I was weird, so I just snuggled up next to him to try and feel safe. After that dream, I could not see, hear or even think about Terrance Howard without nearly having a panic attack. I thought the dream had been triggered by that horrible scene in Crash where the cop cops a feel up the wife’s dress. I found it really disturbing. Anyway, I didn’t want to tell anyone about my new found fear, so I just made excuses about why I didn’t want to watch this movie or that if he was in it.

    After months of this weird phobia of Terrance Howard, I finally had some weird kind of breakthrough that I was harboring repressed memories. Turns out our babysitter’s husband was a dirty old man that once tried to cop a feel on my mom. She told us about it as adults and followed up with the conversation she had with the babysitter and her whole family about the bodily harm they’d come to if they ever did anything to me or my sister. (Silly me, I’d have never left my kids alone with these people.) The babysitter’s husband never did anything blatantly sexual to me, but I remember several less blatant inappropriate behaviors — like trying to put his finger in my mouth! (Gag.)

    I’m not afraid of Terrance Howard anymore. I guess he really did me a big favor by helping me remember — Thanks, Terrance! There for a few months though I was convinced he was one freaky motherf#ck3r.

    You seem to have the hedgehog video covered, but that’s nothing to hubby and I trying to give our dachshund a bath! I’ll record it next time to give you a laugh the next time you need a distraction. I’m sorry you are hurting. I went through all the tests for rheumatoid arthritis after I’d had severe joint pain for over a year. None of the docs could figure it out. Some quack rheumatologist (sp?) wanted to put me on malaria medicine to see if it would help, but I opted out of that experiment. Turns out I had Lyme disease — and had been infected for almost a year! I have permanent damage from it. Right now, my right elbow and forearm hurt so bad it feels like my arm’s on fire and my right hand is going cold. No more typing for me.

    Good night and feel better soon!

  259. I’m horribly afraid of fish. Not big fish, just ones smaller than my hand or so, mainly. It’s something about the way they move, I think. The thought of how a limp, dead small fish would feel in my hand freaks me out.
    Also, I am not normally afraid of bugs, but I just found one roaming about my knitting needles that made my skin crawl. I almost cried. Luckily, all my shrieking brought the foreign guy from down the hall in to kill it, but, at one point, it was on MY BED*, so I’m going to be uncomfortable in bed for, oh, the rest of my life.
    *Apparently, this does not in fact make it a “bedbug”.
    (Wikipedia says it was a silverfish, which are named for their “fish-like movements”, so, uh, those fears are probably related, then.)
    So, yeah, that’s all. Will think “feel better” vibes at you as hard as I can, but, forgive me, I’ll be a little distracted by all the scratching and worrying over BUGS in my BED.

  260. I am a new reader as of yesterday and I am following you on twitter. It looks like you need distraction, but this is crap for what you are going through now at the hospital !! Thinking of you !! 🙂

  261. I just listened to the voice memos I leave myself.

    One of them is just the sound of a beating heart and the other starts out with: “I hear a voice. A ringing.”

    I’m pretty sure that I’m the horrific family secret.

  262. I don’t have arthritis … I have Tinnitis. It’s a constant, high pitched ringing in my ears. At this moment, I’m looking for a nice bridge from which to hurl myself. Ring-dingy-ding until I splat in front of a semi. They say alcohol makes it worse … I’m testing that theory. I figure if I slug down enough of this shit, I won’t give a happy rats ass how loud the ringing gets… I’ll be too distracted by the spinning. I think it’ll work for arthritis, too. I really do.

  263. Newish reader, first comment! I have to thank you for this post, because I am getting a lot of validation, and I stopped reading at around comment 80 so I could write this. I also do the thing with the bubbles in the bathtub (Diana, #6)!! I thought I was the only one in the universe who hates bubbles going up my back!! I’m also terrified to put air in tires (they’ll explode just like the raft my grandpa filled with air-machine air when I was a kid). I also have a grasshopper phobia. I know there’s more, I just can’t think of them right now.
    And, you should TOTALLY have a forum for your site. That would rock.

  264. I am 30 weeks pregnant with the most staggering hip pain ever, so can empathize with you. Oh, and now my knees are going too, and my ankles keep popping. Apparently being double jointed makes you crazy loose when the pregnancy hormones hit, especially with baby #2. Wheelchair/special parking pass loose.
    I climb stairs haunted by the image of my baby falling out because I bent the wrong way.

  265. Oh, Oh, I’ve got a horrific family secret! okay, here goes:
    last year, right before Christmas, I found out one of my nieces, we’ll call her niece A, was sleeping with her sister’s husband, (the sister is niece B) for the past 4 years! Husband of niece A slept with someone else in my family (don’t know who), niece B slept with someone she went to Italy with, and husband of niece B had a threesome with niece A and A’s husband.
    I’m out of hedgehog photos so that will have to do for now.

  266. Well, what can I add to the wonderful plethora of entertainment that has already been strewn at your feet? I’ve been busy laying around like a lox, being a cat pillow whilst recovering from my gall bladder surgery. But I did remember this rather amusing video of my screenwriter friend Todd’s monologue that someone added visuals to, it’s the voice of Television:

    enjoy!

  267. Not a hedgehog; but I adore this. It makes me want to smuggle one illegally. But I have a three year old who lets me do this to him as well. Kids are really like pets the first few years of life minus the leaving-them-in-cages-when-you-leave-the-house-thing.

  270. My sister has two cats. The “athletic one” (her take) is Violet. The “intellectually challenged one” (my take) is June. A couple weeks ago, I was a little blue about something. My sister said, “If it makes you feel any better, today June got her claw stuck in Violet’s butthole. They were both very startled.”

    Oddly enough, it DID make me feel better. Hope it does the same for you.

  271. I have an irrational fear of that creepy ass angler fish in Finding Nemo. They live like way down, but they freak me the f out.

    Also, my uncle divorced his wife and took her young niece back to Michigan with him and they had 2 kids together. When they broke up she started dating his nephew and they also have a child together. And then for a period of time they all lived together.

  272. I also HATE the sound of the edge of cardboard scrapping on more cardboard. And at work i have to wear a cloth glove and inspect parts. If the glove catches on something on the part the sound literally makes me sick. Well maybe not physically, but I think I could actually puke from it. I have to stop what I am doing and beat my ears, lol.

  274. Weird phobia: Dolls with Teeth (thanks, Barbarella!)… most shameful makes-me-feel-like-a-Nazi phobia: Large groups of “little people.” I KNOW IT’S WRONG. I’M WORKING ON IT. Sheesh.

  275. Shipping buoys. All of them, although I find the larger, steel, barnacle encrusted, all-it-needs-is-a-bell-and-some-siren-song ones more.

    A friend of mine bought two Kayaks with him when he moved here to the middle east.

    “Let’s go paddling” he shouted with somewhat gay abandon… So we did, and fished a little. THEN he decided it would be great to paddle the mile or so off shore to “that shipping buoy out there”. With some reluctance I agreed.

    The small buoy got WAY big the closer we got to it.

    Creeped hell out of me, with the rocking, serrated, shell covered, chain running out of site into the depths, thing it had going on.

    It’s still out there. rocking… silent.

    I’m creeping myself out now.

  276. twitter is sucking the life out of me. it’s twack for sure.
    as of distractions, wrote a bullshit fictional post about how much I love my hsb. sort of, you know, when I don’t want to stab him in the eye with a candycane. Asswipe called and emotionally said, “I just read your blog!” Aw, for chrissake, it’s fiction jackass!

    hope your hurts heal.

  277. My daughter had a toy fox terrier that would try to chew her leg off everytime we leashed her. Apparently she thought it would free her.

    Family Secret: Not so secret, but my son is a pill-addict (well, recovering, or trying to…) and I still think it’s funny to laugh at drug jokes. I at least don’t laugh at that shit in front of him. That *may* be construed as somewhat insensitive. I blame myself though because I got pregnant in high school and his dad is a total douche and he inherited those genes, of course, so I should’ve picked better genetics to get knocked up by. But I am/was a good Mom, so I don’t actually feel guilty because I know I did my best. Maybe that’s the secret? I don’t feel guilty for the way my child turned out.

    Phobias: Cruise Ships, The Ocean, The Things That Live in The Ocean and Las Vegas.

  278. Please don’t chew your arm off…save that for a coyote morning. Get rid of it too early, and the option is gone.
    As for hideous family secrets, two of my ancestors stole a ship from the Spanish Armada long ago. Or so the family legend goes. It may be that they just got into some Spanish Fly, in which case the story would be much different, and might have led to their own coyote morning. Who knows?

  279. Horrific family secret? When I was 27, I found out that I have an older half-brother who I’ve never met. (Still haven’t met the guy. I’m almost 35 now.) Apparently it was one of my dad’s MANY youthful indiscretions, but only one (that we know of) resulted in a child.

    The irony? My dad is the guy who is so super-religious and conservative that when he found out I wasn’t a virgin – when I was 22 years old, mind you – he cried and then didn’t speak to me for MONTHS. True story.

    So yeah, there’s that. Also? Hope you feel better soon.

  280. That really sucks to be in so much pain! I’m sorry.

    All I can think of to distract you is that I am giving away a really pretty ring on my site today at noon. If you hurry you could be the winner…

    that way at least your hand would be all glammed up when you chew it off???

    I’m sorry I am lacking in the hedgehog video department.

  281. Phobia: Sharing. Saliva.

    I would never be able to kiss someone again if I thought about the fact that people swap spit when they kiss…. gag! My co-worker just said something about sharing spoons collecting saliva at the bottom… I literally ran away from her cubicle. I don’t share food and especially not drinks. I feel queasy just writing about this.

  282. I really dislike the new twitter. I’d been avoiding switching over to it as well. Same goes for the new facebook.. My friend has a weird phobia of balloons. Not balloons popping or deflated, just inflated balloons. It makes him want to throw up being in the same room as one and often he cannot attend parties or joyous events.

    ~J

  283. My great great aunt was an aerialist in the P.T. Barnum Circus in the 1920’s. She twirled in the air while hanging from a ring – WITH HER TEETH. Yeah. That happened. For real.

    Also, this woman is the most successful person in the family. According to my Granny. Almost 100 years later we have all sorts of college-educated professionals, but it’s the twirler with great chompers that we’re all proud of.

  284. Oh, and on the other side of the family, my Aunt Bobbie was Tammy Faye Bakker’s stylist back when Jim was first getting started. She’s the one who taught Tammy Faye that your hair and make-up need to be “more dramatic” when you’re on TV or else you look flat and washed out.

    Can you imagine what this woman looks like at family Christmas parties?

  285. I almost peed my pants when I saw that you were on the “THE SHORT BUS TO HELL” list. To be honest, I would take that as a compliment! 🙂

  286. I’m rather late to the party but I have to share my favorite deep dark family secret.

    This is a bit of familial lore related by my late paternal grandmother.* She was born in 1905 so these events would have taken place in about 1911 or 1912, when medicine was still on the primitive side and rural folk didn’t bother with a doctor much anyway.

    Anyway, it happened that one of my grandmother’s great-aunts died, and in the tradition of the time her body was laid out at the house to allow the relatives to pay their respects. Normally you’d have to worry about the body beginning to decompose, but it was the middle of winter in Nebraska so they just put her in an unheated enclosed porch. For three days.

    When they finally went to bury her, the body was still warm.

    And…they buried her anyway.

    At this point I said, “Um, grandma…?” And she looked sort of embarrassed and said, “Well, apparently nobody liked her very much.”

    Huh.

    *She related it when she was still alive, you understand.

  288. I think it’s weird that my 3yo daughter is obsessed with pretty much everything, the strangest being whether or not she’s going to throw up. She does NOT want to throw up. Talks about it all the time. Huge fear. But then I talked to my mom about it and she reminded me that when I was her age (and a tad older) I would scream bloody murder if there was a fuzzy in the bathtub. I was afraid of fuzzies. To this day, I spray down the bathtub with our detachable shower head before filling the tub. Ah…like anally-obsessive Mother, like anally-obsessive Daughter.

  289. I have a phobia about styrofoam.
    I don’t want it near me and I can’t even touch the stuff. Every time I hear styrofoam squeak, my hair stands on end and I can’t function. It’s not the sound that gets me but the fact that if styrofoam is squeaking it’s having sex with another styrofoam there by creating a baby styrofoam.

  291. Ever since I first saw Karate Kid, I’ve been afraid of getting hit in the face with a door, especially when approaching the kind that don’t latch. Opening a latched door makes at least a little sound that warns you that door could swing open. I try to always approach the other kind from the side so that I’m not in the path of a door that may get karate kicked open. Sometimes I forget and directly to the door. Once safely on the other side I marvel that my carelessness has never resulted in a bloody nose.

  293. I can’t believe no one’s mentioned this – or am I the only one? Walking on snow. Oh em gee. When I think about it, the arches of my feet start to feel funny and it makes me want to push really hard on them to make it stop. I don’t even like to hear other people walk on snow. For some reason it reminds me of cotton balls, which also freak me out. Ew. Why do people use cotton balls anyway? They are completely pointless. I can’t stop thinking about walking on snow now and my neck feels all tingly and I keep shivering. My coworkers probably think I’m possessed. Or having an orgasm.

    Weird family secret – When I was about 10 I pulled out all my upper eyelashes. I realized 17 years later that doing that is an actual medical problem, but at the time I was so embarrassed that I told my family I had used this shitty mascara my grandparents had given me for Christmas… you know, the kind that came in a 100 pack value assortment of makeup… and that it had made my eyelashes fall out. They told all my friends’ parents not to let their kids use cheap mascara. And then called my grandparents and freaked out on them. A year later I told them the truth. The best part was that I had a boyfriend at the time and when we were all on the playground during recess, he was asked if he would still want to be with me even though I didn’t have any eyelashes. He said he would. Once my eyelashes grew back (scarily fast by the way) I broke up with hi m and started dating a different kid, who I then kissed. I’m a jerk.

  294. I’m not really phobic about anything, but clowns, spiders, little people, and most bodily fluids creep me out. I won’t go on a cruise because I read a book in which one of the employees was a rapist (on an interesting side note, he had a disorder that resulted in him being very tall but having an obscenely tiny penis) and murderer. Oh, and rogue waves. And I don’t want to go on a shore excursion and get kidnapped and sold into sex slavery. I also won’t look through peepholes in doors because of another book in which someone was shot through the eye. And sometimes I freak out thinking of all the ways someone could get into my house without setting off the alarm, then rape and torture me before killing me and framing my husband for my murder (I just think of all the horrible torture scenes from books I’ve read and piece it all together until I can’t breath.) Maybe I should just stop reading.

    As for my family, this should keep you busy for a while. My mom’s parents divorced when Mom was seven, and she and her oldest sister stayed with their mother and the two youngest went with her father; she never saw her dad again and didn’t see her two siblings until she was 35. Her mom had another kid and gave him to her sister, then went on to have two more; that’s seven kids by four different men. Oh, and she was a prostitute. Of the four kids she kept, one got knocked up at 16 (my mom), one is a druggie hooker, and the youngest has been to prison twice for drugs; we keep waiting for his third strike to send him up permanently. Speaking of the youngest, he came to visit us (in our trailer park, of course) when he was 14; I made him a birthday card and he raped me. I was four. I didn’t tell anyone in my family because I didn’t want Mom to think less of her brother and didn’t want either of my parents to go to prison for killing him.
    On my dad’s side, his mom was moonshine runner and led cops on a four county chase, according to family lore; she could be a lot of fun. His dad was a drunk (like father like son) who later found Jesus and became a preacher – one of those judgmental, hypocritical kinds of preacher. My dad’s family is really close, which is why I didn’t tell anyone that my cousin molested me every night for a whole summer when I was nine. I even photographed his wedding a few years ago, for free, cause we’re family. Yup.

    I’d keep going, but Jerry Springer isn’t here and I’m pretty sure I’m contractually obligated to his show. In fact, I should just stop typing. Seriously.

  295. It’s not a complete phobia, more of a social anxiety, but I don’t like using telephones. I am a receptioninst at a huge doctor’s office so am on the telephone constantly (right now I am on hold as I type). I can stand it most days as long as I have a reason for calling, but some days it is really tough to pick up the receiver. I have to convice myself in my head that I have to call people. As for just calling friends and family for no real reason, just to chat, that doesn’t happen. I don’t know that I have lost friends because of it, but it does make it difficult to keep in touch. Some of my really good friends and family know that I don’t like phones. Mostly I am just really thankful that texting and Facebook are acceptible forms of communication for most occasions!

    That wasn’t funny, but it made me feel better to say it! Hope you feel better soon, we have lots of patients with RA and it sounds like it sucks. 🙁 Take loads of drugs and wasting time online, or watch trippy movies, those are the best things that keep my mind off pain.

  296. I am volunteering to be your official blog typist. I’ll type so you don’t have to. You call me, talk randomly about whatever you wanna blog, I type, you save your arms/hands. You can pay me in hysterical phone calls and blog posts. IT’S A REWARDING CYCLE, EVERYONE WINS. PS. I have a genetic disorder that means 89% of the time I RANDOMLY SWITCH INTO ALL CAPS. CAN’T BE HELPED.

  297. I don’t know if you STILL need distracting, but I am really scared right now, so I’m going to tell you why. Maybe it will make me feel better.

    My biggest phobia (right now) is my guest room bathtub. I’m afraid to look behind the shower curtain. Mainly because the last time I looked behind it (usually, I check behind there periodically to make sure there are no murderers lying in wait) (I wish I were joking) there were two giant spiders dead in the bathtub. And I can’t remember if I actually REMOVED the spiders or if I just tried to trick my husband into doing it for me by leaving the shower curtain open… And if I did the latter, which is more likely, I don’t know if he actually took the bait or just closed the shower curtain without spotting the spiders. So now I am afraid to open the shower curtain lest I find that there are MORE dead spiders… Or, worse, ALIVE spiders.

    It’s not that I am afraid of spiders, per se. I have no trouble squishing and flushing the ones I come across in normal places. But the thought of a Spider Death Trap in my guest bathroom just pushes me over the edge.

    I never thought that “bathtub spider death trap” would trump “murderers,” but such is life.

    Here’s hoping the arthritis pain has lessened.

  298. I stopped at Taco Bell on my way home from work and I asked the guy in the little box, “Just the hell is a chalupa?” There was dead silence and then, “I’m not sure.” I got a chicken burrito, because obviously me and the guy at Taco Bell are clueless in Seattle.

  301. If it helps in distracting you at all, tonight was the first time I tried to eat a kosher pizza bagel. Let me ruin the surprise for you: it was so disgusting, my stomach is trying to climb its way out of my throat to bitch-slap me with my own lower intestines for having eaten it. I say this so that I could warn you to keep a seat ready for me at the ER when I walk in carrying my digestive tract, and doctors are all, “HOLY SHIT! THAT WOMAN IS CARRYING HER DIGESTIVE TRACT!!” and I can be all, “FUCK YOU, CRAPPY KOSHER FOOD!!” and then the camera will pan away dramatically above my head while I shake my fists at the universe. Then security will have to ask the cameramen to leave because, you know, wtf is a camera doing in an ER?

    Also, don’t fill in all the answers in the Highlights Magazine before I get there; I love that shit.

    FEEL BETTER!!!

  304. After reading many of the comments about phobias I suddenly realized something – I think my phobias have disappeared. Sure, some things make me feel a bit squeamish or uncomfortable but I wouldn’t classify them as phobias anymore. A couple of years ago I had to have an MRI and had a smallish anxiety attack. When I heard the voice of God (it might have been the technician) offer to pull me out to let me calm down I squeaked out, “No! Don’t pull me out because you’ll only stick me back in and we’ll have to start this all over again! Let’s just get this over with!!” So, um, yea me? When I was young I was terrified of all things lurking in the dark. Oh, and sharks were waiting to get me in the bathtub and under my bed. I was also terrified of the basement of the house I grew up in. I still would be I bet. I even have horrifying dreams about it to this day. I know what you’re thinking – Ah ha! PHOBIA! But it’s not a phobia if there really is an evil spirit down there. It’s just common sense.

    I recently was asked if I would want to live on Mars. I’m not sure if that was a hypothetical question or if they were really offering. Anyway I said I would LOVE to live on Mars except that someone (probably the Martians) would inevitably poison the ventilation system and we would all turn into zombies.

    My family’s big dark secret is still too secret to be told to anyone else. I’m only getting bits and pieces over the last couple of years and one day I will put it all together and have an absolutely horrifying story to tell all of you.

  307. Weird phobia: I’m scared of people trying to cut my eyes with a sheet of paper. Is not like that happens all the time, but someone once told me that it was a kind of torture and I haven’t been able to get it out of my mind ever since. That was at least 13 years ago. My dear friends know of this phobia, so of course they try to get sheets of paper as close to my eyes as often as they can, it amuses them to see me covering my eyes for minutes after that and shaking in fear. Good times.

  308. Being twitless myself, this is new and interesting. It did make me immediately think of a few group names that are probably more honest than the ones people use when organizing their lame-o lists.

    CELEBS I WISH I WAS
    CELEBS THAT WOULDN’T CROSS THE STREET TO SPIT ON ME
    CELEBS I WISH WOULD SPIT ON ME
    CELEBS I PRETEND TO BE WHEN WORKING MY ANAL BEADS

  309. Coming in VERY late to this but when I was 10, I developed a deep fear of chrysanthemums. The flowers. I was allowed to watch the Tales of the Darkside movie which featured an ancient mummy, controlled by Steve Buscemi, that attacked Julianne Moore and stuffed her torso with chrysanthemums before wrapping her in duct tape, like a punk, lo fi mummy. Looking back on it, I’m a little surprised I didn’t develop a strong fear of Steve Buscemi.

    Also, I have a persistent phobia that I’m going to find a dead body in a public toilet one day. I’m just going to push open the stall door and, boom, there he is. Dead guy in a suit. Trousers done up, dong safely hidden, just sittin’ on the toilet lid. Dead. Had it for as long as I can remember. Boyfriend is trying to cure me of it by convincing me there might be a monkey in a top hat BEHIND the dead guy, whenever I find him. It’s… kind of working.

  311. So, this probably won’t make sense to anyone who isn’t from DFW, but I had an insane phobia of Mr. Peppermint. I’m also petrified of being train tracks because when I was about seven, I walked in on a movie my stepmother was watching about a little girl who was playing by the tracks and had her legs severed by a passing train. That was sort of an inconvenient phobia when I moved to Chicago and had to take the train every day.

    Other weird phobias – clowns (though I don’t see how that’s not a universal fear). Oh, fish swimming into my body I used to go skinny dipping in natural springs around Fredericksburg, Texas quite a bit in my late teens & early 20s and there were these tiny little minnows that would try to eat the dead skin off your toes, and I was PETRIFIED that they would try to well, swim AHEM into me. Also connected, I’m freaked out by sinkholes. Like, afraid I’ll be swallowed up in one.

    http://twitter.com/#!/april_anita

  312. About the only thing I’m phobic of is going numb.

    Okay, I know that sounds weird (like that makes me unusual in some way on THIS website??), but bear with me. When I was 12, I had six of my adult teeth essentially give up waiting for my baby teeth to ever fall out, so they decided to burst through the gum line up above my existing teeth. When I smiled, I basically was showing three rows of teeth, which was kind of cool and also sharklike. Which is awesome if you’re trying to masquerade as a great white, but not so awesome if you want a date that isn’t some strange alien species bent on turning most of the planet into Soylent Green.

    My best friend affectionately nicknamed me “Fang Face” for this delicate phase of my adolescence. (I love ya, babe, but fuck you for that.) Anyhoo … the dentists conferred and decided that I should evict the six slacker baby teeth pulled out to make room for the new teeth that were waiting around for the space.

    No one bothered telling me during all of this that our local dentist apparently went to the Orin Scrivello school of tooth extraction.

    In my case, however, instead of actually waiting for the Novocaine to take effect (he decided it was “taking too long”), he double and then triple dosed me with it. I had a total of TEN shots in my mouth.

    Did I mention that I’m allergic to Novocaine??

    I didn’t know that either at the time.

    Now, dentists will tell you that Novocaine is supposed to numb you for three or four hours. Generally, it numbs your face, or just the area of your mouth that they are working on, right?? Now, picture being 12 years old, never having had any serious dental work done before (not even a cavity filled), and having some whack-job dentist jack you up on 10 shots of Novocaine. Now picture going numb from the top of your head to the middle of your chest … all the way around your body. I actually had trouble breathing, because my throat muscles went numb and I couldn’t manage secretions (i.e. saliva & mucous) that naturally occur in the body. I was choking on them, not to mention drooling like it was feeding time at Pavlov’s house.

    As if THAT wasn’t bad enough, I’m waiting for the four hours to be up, so my life can return to some semblance of normality. Okay … so four hours passes by. No feeling resumes.

    Six hours pass … then eight hours … ten … by the time I hit twelve hours post-surgery, I still had not regained feeling. At this point, I was utterly convinced that something had gone horribly wrong, and i wasn’t going to get feeling back, ever. I couldn’t even tell my parents what was wrong (assuming they even noticed my panic), because I couldn’t talk at ALL. I couldn’t eat anything, couldn’t drink, and (like I said before) could barely breathe.

    My Dad, meanwhile, decided in his infinite wisdom that this would be the PERFECT time to take me to his mistress’s house, so I could meet her kids (read as: keep them busy for awhile, so he could get in some illicit snuggle time with their sad excuse for a mother). Utterly disregarding the fact that this was an illicit affair, and I had NO desire whatsoever to actually meet this bimbo, he dragged me along. After all … what could I say?? So, in we go … him overcome with amorous thoughts and me trailing along behind like a sad puppy, oozing tears and leaving a trail of drool behind me like some kind of ass-backwards snail. Yeah. That was a fucking GREAT day, let me tell you.

    Ever since then, I have been terrified to go numb. I don’t even like having my foot fall asleep. I’d go to therapy to deal with it, but … well … fear of going numb isn’t exactly something that one can be DESENSITIZED to!!!

    In any case … here is a video of a hedgehog getting a bath. Infinitely cuter than being a human snail.
    http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=hedgehog+swimming&aq=2

  313. So, my husband got a job in another state but am staying in my current city until my contract expires in a couple of weeks. The thing is I am afraid of sleeping alone. My brain refuses to believe the 3 locks that separate me from the outside world would stop someone from getting in but for some reason it believes that sewing scissors would help me to defend myself so I sleep with sewing scissors next to my pillow. I know that’s rather innocent for this site but hey, anything to cheer you up 🙂
    Also, I am convinced that I am your only reader from Slovakia. Now you can go and google where the hell that is just for the fun of it 😀

  314. Oh Jenny — I’m so sorry about your sucky pain. I’m sure youre taking all of the right stuff to help you through it, but I say just go smoke a fattie out on the porch. Or in the tub. Really, anywhere will do. Except maybe in your daughter’s bedroom or something. But only if she’s there. Because you can use a fan if she isn’t and she’ll never know the difference. And it’s much better than getting loaded every night like my ex who had RA used to do. It was really sad. Because then besides suffering from arthritis since he was a kid, he was a raging drunk. Crappy combination of afflictions.

    But anyway, back to me. I have several weird phobias to distract you with: one is passing tractor trailers in the rain. I panic. It’s not pretty. But they splash a crapload of stuff on your windshield so you are blinded and could potentially go off the road and die a fiery death! I think that’s a pretty rational fear. Also, I am postive that one of my kids is going to fall out of the car while I am driving on the highway. I have had many a mental freakout over the thought, and have had to pull over to chill out. Cod help me if they opened a window, because the sound of the window opening, like the rushing air, would make me almost throw up – it sounded like the door opening. Also I am irrationally afraid of swimming in the dark (did you ever read that short story by Stephen King about the oil slick??!!), and irrationally afraid of shark attacks. I am positive I got attacked by a shark in Mexico when I was 16. I didn’t have the wounds to prove it, but I KNOW it happened. I am rationally afraid of the book American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis and the picture of the guy on the cover. I had to hide that book from myself because it scared me so much. Freaking insane, sick book. Not in a good way either. I beg you not to attempt to read it.

    As long as you aren’t sick of reading this, I have a shitload of horrific family secrets. But not as cool as all of the other horrific family secrets that are being shared out here by your awesome readers! We’ve got your basic raging alcoholics, sexual abusers and their victims, escaped prisoners of war, stoners, thiefs… but one of the best is the fact that we have a real live armed bank robber!! He was fakely armed, but ended up robbing like 16 banks over the course of two years or so, and got caught after robbing a bank right before picking up his teenaged daughter from a basketball game. Pretty traumatizing actually. But he got a really light sentence because he had a ton of public support, even from the manager of the local bank that he robbed. He was a very well-liked bank robber.

    I hopehopehope you feel better soon Jenny!!! If I were really religious I would say a prayer for you. Maybe I will go to church for the first time in ages to light a candle for you, because I think you are the coolest blogger/girl/friend that I’ve never met out there (I didn’t mean GIRLFRIEND girl friend. Not that I wouldn’t totally go there, but. Yeah.). (And I have to tell you, going to church is another one of my dumb fears!)

  315. I’m only leaving this comment, because I noticed that the number of comments was 314, which, if you add a period, is freakin’ pi, and my OCD has these huge effing problems with pi. It does not like the number combination 314, and god help me if I look up and the time is 3:14, I have to practically maim myself to make it all right, but it’s okay because all of the clocks in my house are on milliatary time, except at work, the clocks are half and half and I’m always working around three.

    infact, today, I was off at 3:15, but when I went to check what time it was so I didn’t sign out too early, the clock said 3:14, so I started to do my pinching ritual to make it alright again, and my coworker saw and now thinks I’m insane…

    Which you do to, but what’s okay. Sorry for the crappy comment.

  316. I have a fear of hole… I know that sounds weir. But there’s this picture on the internet of this girs arms that has holes all over the place with these weird brown thing sticking out… That sounds totally gross… Sorry for ruining everyones day…

  317. when you talk about arthritis all I can think about is the scene in the Sound of Music where Julie Andrews sits on a pine cone and goes “ooh, ha ha rheumatism!”. Oh yes, Julie Andrews, rheumatism just sounds so pleasant, much like rain drops on roses.

  318. SUCK IT BITCHES! I’m comment #318! HOLLA!!!!!!! Jealous much? Also you asked over a week ago for us to post our weirdo tendencies….so I’ve got a couple OCD’s of mine I’d like to share – but only a couple – I don’t want you thinkin I’m all NUTSO or anything – here goes:
    1.) I CANNOT TOUCH RAW CHICKEN!!!!!! I use latex gloves…and if I don’t have any gloves? I use a fork to hold down the chicken and cut it up without touching it.
    2.) When I eat chips? I kinda like to line them up and eat the smallest broken bits first and work my way up to the whole folded over ones and save the flat perfectly formed ones for last. Why, you ask? Because, in my humble opinion…those chips who made it through the packaging and shipping process and made it out “alive” deserve my respect…so I devour them last.

    You’re not feeling all that crazy NOW, are you? You are welcome. I love you – I really do…you can ask ANYONE!~ Love, Carm

  319. Ha! I love those lists, but I wish you weren’t feeling all shitty. I am late to the comment game so I hope it is better by now. Sadly though, if I shared a family secret with you I would have to add you to yet another disturbingly hilarious list.

  320. I’m afraid of spiders. We have a lot of big ones in Australia. One day when I met my then boyfriend’s friends for the first time a big brown hairy one crawled up my trouser leg. I screamed like a banshee for someone to help me and when they just stood and stared at the crazy lady instead of helping, I was forced to help myself. I yoinked my trousers down and accidentally caught my knickers as well and then stood there naked from the waist down screaming. My boyfriend is now my husband. Apparently a public psychotic break is endearing 🙂

  321. I have a hard time believing that none of the list that you’re on have anything to do with Wolverines. Or Zombies.

    I read my brother’s facebook status just now and I immediately thought of you….
    *via my brother “I choose my outfit with great care every day because if today is the day I become a zombie, these are the clothes I’ll be wearing forever.”

  323. I have a fear of wanking in public toilets. So I don’t do it. But then they say you should face your fears. What do you think?

    Is that distracting enough? 😉

    Arthritis sucks

  324. On a serious note Jenny, I think EFT could really help you with your arthritis. As nutty as it looks and sounds, it works WONDERS, as I’m happy to personally attest. I’ll drop this message onto a couple of posts so you can be sure to find it. I hate to think of you in that much pain…

    http://www.eftuniverse.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2784:relieving-arthritis-by-tapping-on-generational-heredity-issues&catid=14:pain-management&Itemid=2393

  325. jenny – i suffer from PA (similar to RA – exactly similar) and i think you should give remicade a shag. email me if you want to bitch, moan or ask questions. i’ve been there.

  326. I had a hedgehog for a while named Mr. Fluffy. He developed hedgehog MS and did try to chew his arm off. Sadly, we had to send him to pet heaven because he wouldn’t leave it alone even after it was amputated. Sorry, no videos but I DO have a picture. I can’t seem to figured out how to attach it, however. Not doing so good here with the distraction bit.

    On another note, I find you hilarious and am thankful that my best friend had tagged me on one of your blogs. I’ve been laughing ever since.

  327. I have such a fear of snakes that I cringe even when they’re on the TV.

    I also dislike the new Twitter immensely. I prefer TweetDeck so I don’t have to deal with the site at all.

  328. Okay, so I’ve seen a lot of ‘plummeting to your death in an elevator’ stories, but I actually have a slightly plausible reason for mine!

    Well, my friends and I go to Conventions a lot (Sci-Fi, Anime, etc.), and STUPID FUCKING BORED AS HELL CON-GOERS decide to just ride the elevators up and down all the damn day because I guess they have nothing else to do AT A CON; so when we try to go up to our rooms at the end of the day, as soon as you get into the elevator, IT. DIPS. Like a whole three fucking INCHES dips, even if my skinny as Hell friend who weighs all of 90 lbs. soaking wet gets on it it dips. AND IT TERRIFIES THE LIVING FUCK OUT OF ME. I sweat and fidget and whimper quietly to myself until it finally gets to our floor and then I fly out of the elevator so fast it’s like it was on fire.

    I always promise myself I won’t put myself through it the next Con we go to, but then we get put on the like 5678904323 floor and I just can’t walk up all those un-airconditioned stairs in a heavy costume in the middle of a Dallas summer. I just can’t.

    Also? Dogs. Scare the ever-living HELL out of me. I hear a pomeranian bark from three blocks away and I sprint for my car. I am a wimp. It is me. But I have been chased by really big dogs on two seperate occasions, so I think I’m a little justified. Although my friends keep telling me I’m just a big baby, so maybe it’s just me.

    Hope I helped distract you at the very least, though I know I’m a whole year behind the times! (:

  329. Better late than never. Fear of Rubber bands…. the actual rubber kind. I HATE, my older brother had a rubber band gun that he hid from my parents growing up, and would constantly shoot me. Painful, and RUDE! Now I would throw an innocent baby in front of me if someone DARE “cock” back a rubber band in my presence. I now work for a company that ~REQUIRES~ me to touch those god-awful things multiple times a day. Lets just say it has been a tramatizing 1 1/2 weeks! I order office supplies around here now, I might switch us over to twist ties! (fingers crossed no one notices)

  331. So I’ve read all of your recent blog posts and book about 13 times and so now I go through and comb through for old posts I may have missed in the past, because what are you supposed to do at a desk job really?
    But I’ve stumbled across this one and almost smacked myself for not seeing it before.
    It’s good, real good.
    My family has the secret that I have an aunt named Ida Mae DuMais (except DuMais is pronounced like DOO-MAY) So basically her name sounds like a bunch of weird syllables and one time when I was in high school she wrote this like “book” about our family history and sent it to me and although I LOVE to read and knowing family history (and deep dark horrible secrets) I couldn’t get past reading her name on the front of it over and over again out loud until it was one of those things where you say a word so many times it doesn’t even sound real.
    So basically I’d tell you ALL my family secrets here except I never got past the title page of our family history book.

    But say Ida Mae DuMais ten times fast… it’s a tongue twister and honestly tongue twister names are the best kind of family history.

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Hailey’s partner has only been playing guitar for 2 weeks but they decided to perform a song with Hailey for their family for their 18th birthday and I love them both so much.
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Flourish in Progress: (T)hug Life: Part hood. Part good.

Pregnancy Calendar at Alpha Mom: Amalah’s week-by-week guide to the miracle of pregnancy and all the various indignities that come with it.

The Mack Files: Digesting life in bite-sized pieces through the lens of clichés, quotes & “truisms”.  Often irreverent, always honest.

Barking at the Moon: If your dog is your furry child, you will laugh out loud at Tracy Beckerman’s book about her family & a one-dog wrecking ball named Riley.

Game Night Kit: All-in-one classic card game kits make the perfect gift, but you’ll want them for yourself, too! Lets skip book club tonight, drink wine & play games instead ~time together is magic!

Kieran’s Humor: Not suitable for children, the sensitive or those hoping to get into heaven.

Coolest American Stories 2023: If you want a book of unputdownable, unpretentious, full-length short stories, we got ya covered. Our 2022 volume went to a 3rd printing; readers are singing this volume’s praises, too.

Go Doc Yourself Podcast: When a good doc ends, the klatch begins… Join hosts, scientists, and friends, Erin McCourt and Erin McCartt in weekly documentary dissection.

Perfectionist Anonymous: Proudly serving unpolished working motherhood, with bipolar depression and hilarity on the side.

Active Voice Productions  made a cool little movie with a role they wanted The Bloggess for but instead got Bonnie Hunt. Seriously. That’s what happened.

Just Another Meat-Eating Dirtbag: A memoir: ‘A charming, often hilarious look at how love is actually the worst.’-Tom Hart, author of the NYT bestseller Rosalie Lighting

Scaredy Cat Travels: Traveling the world with the worst carry-on anxiety.

A Thousand Miles to Graceland by Kristen Mei Chase: The journey of a thousand miles begins with sequins and a beehive wig in this funny and tender novel about Mothers, daughters and the surprising power of Elvis.

Welcome to xanaru: A mostly funny blog about the quest for happiness through authenticity, Great Danes and indiscriminate swearing. Plus hand-painted, custom artwork on bags, jackets, backpacks & more.

The Feely Human Collective: A space for the big-hearted, the highly sensitive, the activists, meaning makers, and mental health advocates. A space to grow and grapple with the wonders of empathy, vulnerability, and emotional curiosity and be seen in all your beautiful wholeness.

Stix Yarn: We live in the beautiful mountains of Montana, sell gorgeous yarns and unique fabrics, and offer lots of opinions on the best ways to get the most out of said mountains, yarn, and fabric.

Quantum Possum: an inclusive, neurodivergence-affirming graphic novel taking readers on a wacky & frequently sidetracked adventure through Cosmic Bog, helping creatures in need and including everyone in the fun.

Acrylic Diva’s Online Painting Class: paint yourself happy from the comfort of your home. Stress free, easy art instruction with a seasoned professional artist. It’s the most fun you can have in your pajamas. Really.

Paris Writers: Join best-selling novelists Laurie Frankel, Ann Garvin, and Lauren Grodstein for a week of practical information – and inspiration! – in Paris this summer.

The Second: Colleen Burns Durda’s candid memoir about a suburban mom with a side hustle-she’s The Second Coming. Laugh, cry and learn how she copes with her bipolar diagnosis.

How the Hell Did I Not Know That?: Humorist Lucie Frost shares daily Instagram reels with learnings of the day—words, music, whatever–with plenty of laughs and all the curse words.

PillTimer: No ads, no tracking, no math; just simple, no-nonsense medicine tracking for iPhone and iPad.

Green Heart Guidance: Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., is an international psychic, intuitive and medium who helps people heal from physical, spiritual, emotional or sexual illnesses and traumas.

Thanks to Her: Finding Power and Inspiration in Your Family Photos Discover how American women (and your own relatives!) kicked ass between 1900-1950. Remember: Yes, she did … And so can you!

The Family Skeptical Podcast: We’re an atheist couple raising two children – we ask big questions, dissect weird parenting moments, and are jealous that our cats get so much sleep.