X-Entertainment.com X-Entertainment.com A Proud UGO Affiliate
My dying wish is for an owl/camel hybrid, which I call camowl.
« [Main Index] »

More Pie Stuff & The Scary Animal Poll.

Just made two additions to the Ninja Turtles Pudding Pies article -- a response from Hostess on the current whereabouts of the snacks, and a scan sent in from a reader showing the final version of the wrapper. It's the one up above. Only in the article, it's like an inch bigger. Worth a click?

While I'm here, let's start anudder poll. Which animal inspires the most fear inside you? Could be a bug, shark, wacky bird, whatever. No fake answers -- keep the "my hamster I SWEAR HE'S POSSESSESSSSD" responses to a mininum, or I'll give you a reason to be scared.

Hate to be typical, but I'm gonna have to stick with any hairy spider. I've spent enough time looking at the things to desensitive the fear (I don't get all icked out just by watching them), but one catches my eye completely by surprise and it's close to me, I spend six seconds as a short white Harlem Globetrotter. That's a pretty terrible way to get a "jumping" point across. Anyway, hairy spider. This was my main problem with Arachnophobia. Save for the Master Queen Spider, they were all relatively non-creepy. No hair, no nothing. Just a buncha legs. Wasn't scary enough. Actually, my real main problem was that little theme they played whenever John Goodman's exterminator character walked onscreen. It just bugged me. Get it? Bugged?

Those giant, elephant-eating centipedes would be a close second.

Name your animal fears. Bonus points if fear is based on a personal experience where you felt pain.

Posted by Matt on 06/12/2004. E-mail me!



Discussion Thread: 112 comments

Spiders.

Chestnuts roasted by Pete @ 06/14/2004 1:15 AM

Matt,
I just read in a previous blog that you’re bringing back whale pictures.

I sent you a picture of sexual baleen war whales and i am wondering if you still have the picture.

If you do still have it, I hope you put it up. If it’s to stupid/offensive though I understand.

Chestnuts roasted by tongpo2000 @ 06/14/2004 3:14 AM

Big ass Spider sscare me to death and I’m not ashamed to tell it. Kill ‘Em all!!!

Chestnuts roasted by Thijs (just try to pronounce that) @ 06/14/2004 6:06 AM

I am most scared of anything bigger than me, but I’m fairly terrified by spiders.

Once, when I was a little fellow, I was awake alone in my grandparents’ house, and decided to play my little harmonica. After about ten minutes, I suddenly felt a sharp pain on my tongue – this is because a spider had crawled out of the harmonica onto my tongue. A lot Listerine got cycled through my mouth that day.

Chestnuts roasted by Jack Blorton @ 06/14/2004 9:47 AM

Poisonous snakes, especially the Cobra and rattle snake.

Chestnuts roasted by J-Dog @ 06/14/2004 9:47 AM

Lampreys creep me the hell out. It’s their disturbing mouths… always open… full of razor-sharp teeth… ready to latch on and devour…

Gah!

Chestnuts roasted by sensei @ 06/14/2004 10:12 AM

First off, thank you Sean and Gabby… as a biology fan, thank you for clarifying the ‘animal/insect’ issue… last I checked, insect wasn’t it’s own kingdom. Plant, fungus, monera, protist, animal, and debatably virus are the kingdoms to choose from…

As for me, I guess I have a rational fear of most venomous animals. My irrational fears include the ‘bizarre’ beasts of the world… namely living-fossil water dwellers. Anglers, coelacanths, gar, jellies, basking sharks, horseshoe crabs, etc. etc.

I remember as a kid having a sticker/coloring book that had a drawing of a umbrella-mouth gulper eel… I remember to this day the sinking feeling in my stomach that comes with fear whenever I turned to that page.

Now, I have a fascination with these animals, but would never ever want to see one up close and personal.

Chestnuts roasted by Nachokhaki @ 06/14/2004 11:09 AM

Spiders absolutely! Click the Blah…blah to see a particularly creepy specimen. We saw it Saturday and I still haven’t fully recovered. He was easily as big as a silver dollar. Kinda’ hard to see in the web, but if you look close you can see its front legs. Aaaaaaaaahhhhhh!

Chestnuts roasted by Blah...blah @ 06/14/2004 12:38 PM

I’ll have to go with sharks on this one. I get the creeping horrors just reading a news article about a shark attack!

Chestnuts roasted by JPSloan @ 06/14/2004 12:48 PM

One day, many years ago, Ma, Little Brother, and I were coming back from a relative’s and we were going along the back roads when I spotted a Tarantula moseying across the road. "Hey! A tarantula!" Ma said, "Wanna catch it for a pet?" So, she backs up the car. "Tell me when I’m close." "Waitwaitwaitwait!" POP! End of spider.

Chestnuts roasted by kingklash @ 06/14/2004 12:51 PM

Yeah, I know it’s not original, but it’s definately spiders. Any kind…hairy or not…Especially those huge yellow and black garden spiders we get here in New England in the summer time…I think they are called Golden Orb Weavers or something. God, they are disgusting.

Chestnuts roasted by B-Dawg @ 06/14/2004 1:04 PM

Bugs, Spiders, Bees, Hornets, the works, hate em all, think its possible to put Raid in the big orange fuel tank on the space shuttle and just explode it in the atmosphere, killing all the bugs?

Chestnuts roasted by JoeCanuk @ 06/14/2004 1:04 PM

Definitely spiders. There’s Brown Recluses in a shed near my house. BR’s in Connecticut? Yep. They’re here. And the shed is filled with asbestos so my landlord’s don’t want to knock it down.

Chestnuts roasted by BaronVonHotPants @ 06/14/2004 1:31 PM

oh yea, one useless fact to scare the shit out of people who don’t like spiders…
The average American eats approximatly 4-6 spiders a year.
I would assume it’s durring sleep, unless there’s some kind of spider reseraunt I don’t know about.

Chestnuts roasted by brandon @ 06/14/2004 2:05 PM

I must appologize, I just reaseached my last statement, and found out I’ve been passing along an urban legend. I guess I’m more gulible than I thought, but hell that’s an even better useless fact, for when people bring up spider swallowing.

Chestnuts roasted by brandon @ 06/14/2004 2:21 PM

Matt, Roger beat you to the Hostess Cupcake Easy Bake Oven review.
http://www.i-mockery.com/minimocks/hostess/default.asp

Hagmoths are scary. http://len.schmid.com/photoshop_madness/bug5.jpg Not sure what one was doing in CT, though, since they usually live farther south. One fell out of a tree onto my front step, and I almost stepped on it, barefoot. See all those little hairs? They’re stingers.

Chestnuts roasted by trajeal @ 06/14/2004 2:46 PM

I’m going to leave the realm of scary and enter the realm of disgusting… Warning, anyone easily disgusted may want to skip this entry.

A few months ago, some feral creature did its business on my front porch. By doing so, it left behind a tapeworm. By the time I found the mess in the morning, the tapeworm had made decent progress in its effort to find a new host… it had "wriggled" about a foot in the direction of my front door…

That’s enough to make me ill… hope no one was eating lunch or dinner while reading this…

Chestnuts roasted by Nachokhaki @ 06/14/2004 3:01 PM

Guess I should warn ya, trajeal, that I saw Mothra headed in your direction!

flappity flappity flap flap.

Chestnuts roasted by kingklash @ 06/14/2004 3:06 PM

Ticks, man I hate those things, they’re just ugly and nasty!

Snakes, only cause I usually don’t notice them until I practically step on them, kind of freaks me out when I see a twig slither away.

Jellyfish, always afraid one is going to attach itself to me metroid style and I won’t have a freeze ray or rockets much less be able to transform into a ball and drop some bombs to get away.

Save me Samus! Then we go out for a hot date!

Chestnuts roasted by That Guy @ 06/14/2004 3:41 PM

Ticks are part of the spider family, just so you know.
spoon!

Chestnuts roasted by kingklash @ 06/14/2004 3:44 PM

I’m afraid of spiders…I actually pass out if they’re large enough. When I was fourteen I volunteered at a local science museum. I was in charge of the "Creepy Crawlies" exhibit (i.e. snakes, spiders, and bugs). We had this huge plexi glass "cage" where we kept David Boa and Monte Python (it was divided, of course). Someone thought it would be hilarious to drop our tarantulla ("Teensy")into David’s side.

I didn’t know this had been done.

I’m all giving my lecture and I reach into pick up David and Teensy, furious at being in the cage with the huge snake, scurries up the side and onto my arm.

Horrified at this unknown spider crawling up me I promptly pass out. My fellow coworkers were conserned that David would begin to wrap me up and constrict me (what, with him being a constricter and all) and so they were trying to get him back into the cage when I came to.

I, of course, was worried about the damn spider eating me.

Go figure.

Been terrified ever since. Not quite physical harm, but it was traumatic.

Chestnuts roasted by kathryn rainne @ 06/14/2004 4:22 PM

Spiders – without a doubt.

I was playing my favorite childhood game Hide and Go Seek and Destroy Tag in the dark one time – and in the course of the game, climbed out the 2nd story window onto the porch roof and shimmied down one of the poles of the porch to the ground.

Thinking highly of myself for this acrobatic feat (and throwing off the person who was it) I proceeded to sneak back indoors and into the TV room to watch videos and plan my next move. As I sat sprawled with my hands folded on my stomach I felt something hairy and wiggly moving under my fingers… Looked down and Holy Shit BIG HAIRY SPIDER!! Right on my body! I did one of those backpedaling superspeed brushing off maneuvers – I’m sure some of you know what I mean – and threw it off onto the floor. That hell spawned thing kept coming right for me! Finally my dad (who wasn’t involved in the game and would have shot me for climbing on the porch "You’ll break your neck, blah, blah.." heard my screams and sobbing and came in to smush it. I was probably 7 or 8 and I’ll never forget it. Makes me all squirmy and shivery just thinkin’ on that one.

Yech.

Chestnuts roasted by MaryFran (MF) @ 06/14/2004 4:29 PM

Was Mothra a hagmoth in its previous life? I think I’m going to avoid all Godzilla movies and any bright light sources that measure more than 25 feet in diameter. That should keep me safe.

Chestnuts roasted by trajeal @ 06/14/2004 4:56 PM

Gabby & Nachokhaki: Apparently derek doesn’t read. Or apparently wasps aren’t animals now. But at least some of us know.

Do we need anymore proof that science education is failing us?

And I suppose I should qualify my earlier statement–I don’t really fear any animals, I just have a healthy respect of what they are capable of, and try to behave towards them accordingly. Unlike a buddy of mine that also worked in the pet industry (from which I am thankfully free now). I have never known anybody that had been shocked by an electric eel, scraped by the spine of a freshwater stingray, stung by a potentially lethal scorpion, nearly bit by an alligator snapping turtle, and bitten by a pirhana (that led to tissue grafts, and an eternal source of mocking throughout the city, because word spread pretty damn fast). The worst part is that he knew better, but often tried to show off "a la" Crocodile Hunter (often with the aim of entering a girl’s pants) but you can imagine how impressive it is to see an idiot that should know better writhing in agony from an animal "incident". It’s so sad that I couldn’t even make this guy up.
Worst I ever had? Two deep cuts from a needlenose gar (AKA silver needlefish) that scraped me with its mouth open, and a few snake bites. Plus that damn parakeet. And I used to hand feed a moray eel, and came out none the worst for it.

Chestnuts roasted by Sean @ 06/14/2004 8:31 PM

I had to post again, just to hit the 100th post! WooHoo Me!

Chestnuts roasted by Sean @ 06/14/2004 8:31 PM

Add A New Comment!


This entry was posted on Saturday, June 12th, 2004 at 10:21 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.