Thursday, April 30th 2009

As April comes to a close I feel without the slightest bit of doubt that this will go down as the worst April in my spider-fearing memory. Not only was this month filled with spider sightings, but the density in which I've seen spiders recently makes me worry that the summer months will be two or three-fold what I'm seeing now.

I get the feeling you guys think this is a joke. This isn't funny. It's not funny that I have to check the ceiling two or three times while I'm in a room. It's not hilarious when my spider sense goes off and lo and behold there one is next to my foot. This is real life. They should show this shit on SpikeTV.

Which brings me to the actual post. This last week has been so saturated with spiders that they're calling it "The Week" ("they" aren't very creative). I'm gonna do things a little bit differently this time around because what we've got are spider sightings spread out over about 4 days, and I'm going to break them up into two groups.

Group 1: Alex's Apartment

Alexander Case is the bass player for my band, and also a good friend. This weekend the band and I decided to spend the night at his apartment in Indianapolis as it would save us time and gas for our show the next day in Illinois. Now I've stayed there before, and outside of the stupid dog that humps everything and slobbers on more, it's a nice pad. Or, it WAS a nice pad.

Early morning. BOOM. Spider on Annie's blanket.
Shower time. BOOM. Spider in the tub.
Early afternoon. BOOM. Spider on the wall.
Afternoon. BOOM. Spider on the wall part 2.

Now, you might think that's a lot of BOOMs. But John Madden and I both agree that it's the correct amount. Guys, that's FOUR spiders in about a six hour span. At that rate we're looking at 16 spiders a day, 112 spiders a week, 5840 spiders a year (5856 if it's a leap year), and 438,300 over the course of the average lifetime. Now I know that seems impossible, but anything is possible with god, and everything is creepy with spiders.


Group 2: Harmon St. Kitchen

There's a lot of controversy over the worst possible place to see a spider. My thought has always been while driving a car, but a lot of people say it's the kitchen. I've gotta say, after the past few days I'm looking to switch my opinion (something I only do once or twice a day). Two nights ago I was having a nice conversation with my roommate Michael in our kitchen when all of a sudden I saw his eyes light up as he looked towards the ceiling above me. It was like I was in a movie. Slow motion. His mouth started to form "spi-", then the camera cut to me. My head was shaking, my mouth clearly screaming "NOOOOOOO". It cuts back to him. "-der". All hell breaks loose. He kills the spider with my brand new box of pancake mix. Yuck.



To commemorate the death I made a batch of pancakes (with white chocolate chips). So good. I was sitting at the kitchen table eating them when I remembered the movie I watched earlier starring Michael and Stephen. I hated that movie. I looked up to the ceiling in remembrance and OH GOD ANOTHER ONE. The same exact kind too. Clear, long legs that they keep close to their body, and fast. I grabbed a box of Special K with red berries (GROSS) and smashed it. If you would've been standing in the next room it would've sounded like someone was PPKing (punt, pass and kicking) a box of cereal, such was the magnitude of my shaky arm.



So that brings us to tonight. With these sightings fresh in my mind, it was with a cautious heart and attentive mind that I approached my kitchen to get a grapefruit. By the way, I've gotta say I think I'm doing something wrong when it comes to eating grapefruits. 50% of the thing just ends up in a pulpy mess in the bottom of my bowl. My fears were confirmed when I saw a single-strand spider web going from the ceiling light to the top of the refrigerator. That spider was somewhere and I'll be damned if I was going to let it run free. I grabbed the Special K again and carefully made my way around the kitchen. My phone started to vibrate in my pocket and I about hit the ceiling. All of a sudden I spotted it in the top left corner. I slowly approached it, lunged at it with the cereal, and barely hit it! It fell to the floor! Oh my god!!!! Wait...it's lying still. OH MY GOD NO IT'S MOVING. Dead. Fucking dead. I dropped that box of cereal on the spider like Obama dropped his positive message of change on all the po' people in this great country of ours.



Three dead spiders in the kitchen. A fluke, or a sign of things to come? Only time will tell.

Daily Spider Count: 1
Weekly Spider Count: 3
Last Week's Spider Count: 4
Overall Feeling: Scared that I have 9 more nights in this house, glad that I only have 9 more nights in this house.

Monday, April 20th 2009

Taken from Wikipedia: Spiders (order Araneae) are air-breathing chelicerate arthropods that have eight legs, and chelicerae modified into fangs that inject venom.

What it should have said: Spiders (order WTF) are fire-breathing chelicerate arthropods that have eight legs with visible hair on them, eight eyeballs for no reason, and chelicerae modified into fangs that inject venom into any Stephen in the area.

Friday was like eating a club sandwich with moldy bread. This probably doesn’t mean anything to you, but let me explain. Any time I see or hear about having a chance to eat a club sandwich, I get stoked. They’re delicious, filling, and don’t make me feel sick. Now if you took that sandwich and put it on moldy bread, we’re looking at a whole different situation. What you have there is something amazing (meat-on-meat, lettuce, cheese, dressing, etc) surrounded by items of disgust (moldy bread). Now, how does that apply to my Friday night? It’s simple.

I love dancing. Because of this I decided to throw a dance party at my house. This dance party is something that is awesome. The only problem was that a spider approached me both before AND after the dance party, giving you a metaphorical moldy sandwich.

The first encounter was straight out of one my nightmares. I was cleaning the house, getting ready for guests. I live with people who don’t know how to put DVDs and video games away when they’re done using them, so I had a stack of discs that I was putting into cases. I was rummaging through a big bin of cases when I lifted up Madden ’03 (why do I still even have that?) only to find a spider moving all eight of it’s legs so fast that they made that little circle you see when the roadrunner is being chased by coyote. My roommate Austin was around so I made him kill it while I watched to make sure it was actually dead. This little nugget was squirming all over the cases and video game controllers and I wanted nothing to do with it. Here it is. Prepare to get goosebumps.



(That is NOT my hand)

So after that incident I was on edge, but the most excellent dance party that occurred shortly after took care of it. Little did I know that spiders like to dance as well. After all the guests had gone home I was hanging out with my friend Tulo in my kitchen. We were just standing around, reminiscing on how incredible we both are. I went to get something out of my fridge when lo and behold a spider was spotted RUNNING down the wall to the left of my fridge. Now, most of the time when I see spiders they are either just chillin' out or contained by some sort of bin (like the one we saw earlier). This one was full on sprinting and I had to act fast. There was no time for pictures as I picked something (no clue) out of the garbage and slammed it up against the wall. Guys, I seriously acted so fast that it could have been Michael Johnson (does anyone even remember him?) in spider form and I still would’ve slaughtered it. I know there’s no picture for this one, but you can ask Tulo and he will tell you it happened. If you think about it, it’s actually better than a picture because a picture can be photoshopped. The good word of Tulo can’t.

Daily Spider Count: 2
Weekly Spider Count: 2
Overall Feeling: Only one more month left in this hell hole