Raiders of the Plastic Spoons

It happened one late morning at the secret, hidden home of the Blogfather. The apartment was empty save for the Bloggers SJ, M.R., and myself, Erachet - or so we thought.

It was while we were getting ready to leave that we noticed it - The Bug. It was big and black with long, furry, wriggling legs. Even worse - it was in Elianna's room! The polite thing to do, of course, was to kill the intruder at once but no one wanted to go near it. Finally, I had to face the thing myself ("HAHA! YU R MY BUG NAW" [the PT]) . I tried to squish it with a cardboard box from the garbage but, alas, it did not want to be squished. Once I finally did manage to squish it ("the bug has been squishinated by the girl!" [sic]) and throw it out, it was only mostly dead which, of course, means still slightly alive. What if other dangerous and grosser than gross enemies came to its aid?

This called for drastic action by present members of the Blog Squad. Bad4Shidduchim had hinted to us that there was something special and important about taping plastic spoons to the table and flinging jelly at the clean white walls. I believe her instructions were such:

Use for 22 plastic spoons:

Needed: masking tape, a table, 22 plastic spoons, jelly, a nice white wall

1. Position table about 15 feet from nice white wall
2. Tape edge of handle of spoons to table, the bowl side over air
3. fill bowl of spoons with jelly
4. press gently down on edges of jelly-filled bowls of spoons in rapid succession
5. admire squishy sound and colorful sight

For best results, use many flavors jelly in a pattern. Keep spoons close together. With practice, you can aim them to create patterns of your own design.

Note: only for practice in facilities which you will be evacuating immediately.

Well, we were evacuating the apartment rather immediately, so we figured a shield of this kind against enemies of the Arthropoda phylum would be very useful. Luckily, we came prepared. We took out our handy plastic spoons and immediately began taping them to the kitchen table. Observe:





Next, we got out the jelly:





And then - up went the shield:



And the Blog Squad saved the day once again! The home of the Blogfather is sufficiently protected against Arthropods.

Unless...Serach didn't wash the walls did she? Did she???

Uh oh.

HO NO!

It is that time of year again. The time when I sleep with my desk light on and don't like to close my eyes at night (which consequently means I'm not sleeping) and don't look in mirrors for too long.

What time of year is this, you may ask?

DRACULA TIME.

The same thing happened last spring! You might recall I had to read Dracula for my film and fiction class (OMG CREEPY. IT'S EXACTLY THE SAME TIME OF YEAR).

Now, the book itself is not too frightening, but when you've got images in your head of the Coppola movie (with Gary Oldman as Dracula - that's right, go ahead and ruin my image of Sirius Black!), well, it's pretty scary (except for when he's wearing those sunglasses. Those just make him look ridiculous). There's one scene in particular which freaked me out when I read it, freaked me out even more when I saw it in the movie, and is freaking me out again - the scene with the mirror. Here's what happens:

Jonathan Harker is looking in a mirror, shaving. Dracula comes up behind him. Jonathan Harker does not see anything in his mirror. Suddenly, Dracula reaches out and touches his shoulder.

THIS IS SCARY.

I love my gothic novel class very much (it's probably one of my favorites this semester) and I AM glad we're reading Dracula because, gosh darn it, I HAVE to overcome these ridiculous fears. But but but--!

It's this weird thing. I can't explain it. On the one hand, I'm afraid. On the other hand, I enjoy being so afraid. It makes me feel stronger, in a way, because I'm forcing myself to face things I'm scared of facing (I do have limits about this, though. There's scary, and then there's gross. I don't go for gross. Just scary). Plus, if you live your life never in fear of anything, well, that's got to be pretty boring, you know? It keeps you on your toes! And it makes you a stronger person and allows you to grow.

As scared as I am of vampires, you should also know that when I was a little kid in sleep away camp, a friend and I used to pretend to be vampire slayers and we would creep around the outside of our bunk at night slaying imaginary vampires (and no, I never watched Buffy).

In any case. I just needed to get all this out. Scariness.

To make Dracula far less frightening, I'm going to retell it...the PT style:

Nuthing lik a vampir

by erasha

(grat buk!)

In the morning, I luk in a mirror.

Drakyula dusn't lik to not vare.

AAAAA where my clothing is? (where is my clothing?)

Over thar, that is war it is. [image of count scaling down castle in harker's suit]

(what's going on in the cage?)

(that's the vampire cage)

(you have a cage for vampires?)

(yeah! the vampires like to be up there!)

AAAAA! Don't wure, we don't needa suc all the blud today.

Hmmm.

Wuat cind of vampir is this!?

Grad F!

Wuat!

You didn't get a gud grad on this.

Ho boy. Are you gonna leave the cassle? Do you wanna have wafers wen we get home?

Uh, no, I'm gonna stay at the cassle.

OkI'mleevingwithoutyoug'bye.

Dreeeeaaaaming.... (doo doo doo doo)

(what are you dreaming of?)

F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F-F

The ledder F is so good. It stand for your last name...Frangin.

Ugh, why do I cep getting F's?

Because your last name is Frangin.

Hmmm, maybe your grads are good. F for frendly vampir. A for attack.

Vaaaampirs are mor importint evre uther day!

The end.

(other versions can be found here and here)

Are there any books you guys find particularly frightening? Or am I the only weirdo out there?

Also, I thought this was apropos: