When it rains it pours

Journal: May 4th, 11:15 pm

"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent" - Issac Asimov

I've never been afraid of spiders. I guess I've never really had a reason to fear them. I've never really understood why so many people panic at the site of one. Its not like they can leap great distances onto you like a grasshopper, and you don't see many people with grasshopper phobias. I mean even if you were unfortunate enough to run into a spider web or have one crawl onto you, its only a very small chance that one would actually bite you. Geez, even if you were unlucky enough to actually be bitten, there's only a small percentage of spiders with strong enough venom to do you harm, unless you live in Australia or the Amazon (sorry about your luck if you do).

Now my father on the other hand is a bit of an arachnophobe. He doesn't scream, or panic or do anything too embarrassing, but he's usually quick to point the spider out and insist on someone else having to dispose of it.

Back when I was around 9 or 10 my parents rented a cottage somewhere north of Kingston. The cottage was situated right on the edge of a lake. I won't bore you with endless descriptions of the intrinsic beauty of the surroundings, but needless to say it was tranquil and for a 10yr old it was a biological wonderland. I can remember the first time I waded out into the water. It was cool and refreshing, a welcome relief from the humid day. I only had to walk out about 6 feet before the water was up to my chest. I had my scuba mask on and I dipped my head towards the water and remained still to see the fish that were too numerous to count. The fish seemed to be just as curious as I was because a few of them swum right up to me and started to almost nibble my skin like a sucker fish would do to the algae in an aquarium. It was one of the weirdest sensations I think I've ever felt. I remained still and watched the fish with fascination. I don't think I can ever remember seeing more fish in one spot at any given time. The fish were of varying sizes from little minnows right up to some pretty decent sized sunfish. There was even the occasional large perch that swam by.

In a fraction of a second every fish had darted away from me like a shockwave from an explosion. My younger brother Kevin had entered the water and spooked them. Within minutes I had explained to Kevin what I was doing and the two of us now stood still together, occasionally spooking the fish from the odd giggle.

Eventually we tired ourselves out and returned to solid ground to soak up some sun and explore the rocks along the bank of the lake. We stumbled upon all sorts of frogs and critters, but beneath the crevice on one rock in particular I found the mother of all spiders. It even made me jump. I had to be the size of a tarantula, although I was 10 at the time and objects have a habit of appearing intrinsically larger than they really are, although my account of its size is probably more accurate than that of my fathers which would probably put the spiders size of that of a hand width, with your fingers spread out.

Excited by our new found discovery we ran up to the cottage and proceeded to tell our father all about this monstrous spider down by the water. Unconvinced by our story (and completely unaware of the truth) my father humored us and came down to inspect our claim. I carefully shifted the rock to reveal the hiding spot of the spider. Both the spider and my father moved at an uncanny rate of speed. My father back up towards the cottage and the spider actually skimmed across the top of the water and out of site.

So where am I going with this whole spider thing anyways? Well today I was sitting down at my computer pluggin' away through the various junk mail in my hotmail account when I noticed this spider on the way in front of me. I stopped to watch it scamper around the wall with no apparent purpose or direction. Where was it going? What was it doing? Shouldn't it be somewhere making a web or eating a fly or something? Like I stated before, spiders don't scare me. I usually let them go about their business, but at the present moment this particular spider didn't appear to have any. I decided to ignore it and return to my surfing, but the dam thing kept walking around in my peripheral vision which was very distracting. I watched it a little while longer and the dam thing just stopped moving like it somehow knew it was being watched. So again I went back to surfing the web and within seconds it started to move again. Frustrated by the distraction and without any further thought I grabbed a pen and squished the spider and put an end to the annoyance that it had become. Just imagine the implications of being able to assert this kind of action in the workplace.

In the end I wish I had put a bit more thought into my course of action, because now I had spider guts splattered over my wall, as well as over the end of my pen, both of which now needed to be cleaned. With the cleaning taken care of I returned to my computer to resume my surfing. After I finished with my hotmail account I logged onto Ebay to see how my account was doing. I'd listed a few old Dungeons & Dragons books a few days ago and I was curious to see if they had been bid on yet. I leaned back in my chair for a quick stretch when I noticed another spider slowly lowering itself down from a delicate, almost invisible line of silk like a ghost recon soldier repelling from a chopper into enemy territory. It wasn't anywhere near to being over top of me but I didn't want to take the chance. Thinking before acting this time I opted for a Kleenex over the pen. A bit of pressure and a quick toss into the waste paper basket and I was back on the computer to notice that the bidding had begun on one of my books. A buck and a quarter and still 5 days of bidding left. A few more sales like this and I could retire somewhere warm, where I could pay someone else to have to deal with the inconvenience of murdering a spider and of the disposing of its squished corpse.

Is that what I've become, a murderer? Yet another senseless human being that has lost the appreciation or value for life, no matter how small of a scale it is on. Mythology tells me that rain is the consequence of killing a spider, which is fine by me since its already raining. I could get all philosophical and start wondering about the implications of my actions in the eyes of god, but some topics are better left to those that are more qualified than I am, and that actually believe in god.

Tired of the internet I retreated onto the couch to see what was new in the world of Star Trek re-runs. Ahhhhhh Star Trek, I never seem to get bored of watching Kirk making out with green alien women. The world was so much simpler back then, at least for the special effects people. These days if the director wants you to meet up with a huge 4 armed alien that looks a bit like Chewbacca, they'll have a whole crew of special effects people using everything from state of the art computer rendering, to obscure man-made polymers that can be made to emulate anything. Back in the days of Captain Kirk they probably had a few stage hands that would of responded "the best I can do is tape some of this fur onto an extra and maybe paint his skin brown".

For the love of Pete, yet another spider was approaching. This time it was crawling along the floor near my coffee table, but in my general direction. Out comes the Kleenex, squish, two points. Geez, that makes 3 days of rain.

I was starting to wonder where all these spiders were coming from. Was the word out that I was a spider killer? Was a spider lurking in the shadows when I snuffed the life out of the first spider on the wall?

"You killed Kenny. You bastard".

"Attention all spiders. Be on the lookout for a large lazy human. He's killed 3 spiders already and is considered to be armed and dangerous. If spotted do not approach him. Instead report his whereabouts and let the proper authorities deal with him."

Somewhere a spider homicide is pondering over my M.O. "The first victim was killed in haste with a pen. It was a crime committed in haste and in a reckless disregard for his surroundings, but he's starting to enjoy the act of killing now. He's much more methodical and relaxed. He's moved onto using a Kleenex as to avoid making a mess, leaving much less evidence for us to collect".

It was a long and grueling afternoon/evening, but at the end of it all the score was Bryan 6, Spiders 0.

Maybe I should start to consider building an arc.