Eight-legged groove machine
Sep. 18th, 2004 12:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
j4The damn thing bit me. It was wandering around my bath, and rather than washing it down the plughole, I thought I'd pick it up and chuck it out of the window. So I scooped it up in my hands, and it was battering itself against my hands like a mad thing, and the whole tedious "my mum was bitten by a spider once and you know actually they all bite and they're all poisonous but most of them just don't have strong enough teeth to get through your leathery skin and their poison isn't strong enough to even make you woozy" thing went through my head, and then suddenly there was this weird tingling pain in my hand and the bastard thing had bitten me. So I squealed like a girlie and dropped it.
We got it out of the window in the end after a bit more fuss-arsing. It was the second spider we'd seen that night: there was a huge one in the kitchen earlier, and I tried to catch that, but only succeeded in chasing it under the fridge. Apparently that was about the size of the one that had crawled up
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sion_a's trousers the other day.Ten black spiders standing on a wall,Anyway, it re-emerged later, and that's when
Ten black spiders standing on a wall,
And if one black spider should accidentally fall
It'd crawl up your trouserleg and paralyse your
NINE black spiders, standing on a wall...
sion_a's mum caught it, briskly and efficiently and in a pint glass.- "That'd explain why we've had so little trouble with flies this summer," says
sion_a, in response to the upstairs bathroom spider incident rather than the downstairs fridge mother spider incident.- "Well, I think one bite in 26 years is a small price to pay for being free of flies." I've already done the my-mother-was-bitten-by-a-spider anecdote, earlier, out loud as well as going through my head. It doesn't improve with the telling. "And besides, the flies probably bite as well."
- "House-flies don't bite!" He says. I've never seen a house fly.
- "Well ... but spiders eat mosquitos as well. And ... bugs. The ones that bite." I pause, before narrative honesty compels me to add: "Probably." I'm losing ground. "And I'd rather be bitten once in 26 years than be kept awake all night by a fly buzzing." Can't argue with that one.
It was strange, though, how I knew the bite was going to happen. I felt as though my hands were full of cobwebs. Maybe they spin when they're frightened? "His little heart beat so fast..." God only knows what kind of tangled web the spiders of love would weave.
But, as I was going to say, it is a small price to pay, and it reminded me of the bit in The Dark Half where the sparrow pecks Thad as a reminder that nobody ever really controls the harbingers of the living dead, after the bit where they've carried George Stark away, and I always imagine the cloud of sparrows around him like a cloud of flies. The torture never stops. Funny how some images stick, like napalm.
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no subject
Date: 2004-09-17 05:37 pm (UTC)There is a venomous spider found - rarely -in Southern England and believed to be breeding here. The London School of Tropical Medicine and one or two of the rare NHS toxicology units up and down the country recognize about half a dozen bites per year.
The Brown Recluse Spider
From your symptoms, your bite wasn't one of these little darlings. I mean, you'd notice a six-inch necrosing lesion. So, er, apologies if this comment creeps people out.
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Date: 2004-09-18 11:29 am (UTC)I can't even feel the bite any more. I'm not overly worried.
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Date: 2004-09-18 11:44 am (UTC)Resist any urge to don skintight red clothing, climb up walls and spray sticky stuff at people. Unless all parties concerned are consenting adults.
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Date: 2004-09-19 04:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-18 05:43 am (UTC)I think The Dark Half is probably my favourite Stephen King book. So many outstanding images in that book, but especially the one you mentioned. Pity the film of it was so awful, but they so often are.
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Date: 2004-09-18 08:15 am (UTC)Totally agreed on both the book and the film of The Dark Half. I don't know how they managed to turn such a great book into such an abysmal film. (In fact, thanks for reminding me, I need to get rid of the video, because I'll never watch the damn thing again.)
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Date: 2004-09-18 08:39 am (UTC)But yes, they generally don't film Stephen King's books too well. The best film of one of his books perhaps, The Shining, wasn't even much like the book. When he shot a version of it himself for a TV mini series, it was awful, so I guess he saw the problems first-hand!
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Date: 2004-09-18 11:34 am (UTC)Oh, and I wouldn't want to see the TV version of the short story "The Langoliers", either, but that's because the story scared me rigid. God knows why, it wasn't that great, it just ... urrhhhh. Shudder. Don't wanna think about it.
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Date: 2004-09-18 12:42 pm (UTC)Having said that, I thought the mini series of It was reasonably good, but seeing as though the book seemed far too long to me I don't have the written version to compare it to :)
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Date: 2004-09-18 02:52 pm (UTC)But it has Dean Stockwell in it.
Anyway.
Shawshank Redemption, anyone?
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Date: 2004-09-18 03:16 pm (UTC)Oh, yes! -- I tend to forget that that's Stephen King because it doesn't have everybody getting blown up by aliens at the end. :-) The film is superb, and very true to the book, which is also superb.
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Date: 2004-09-21 02:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-18 03:21 pm (UTC)And if I want to see Dean Stockwell, I'll invariably reach for "Blue Velvet". His miming to Roy Orbison almost - but not quite - stole the whole film from underneath Dennis Hopper's feet.
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Date: 2004-09-18 03:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-18 01:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-18 03:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-18 04:55 pm (UTC)Eight Legged Groove Machine
Date: 2004-09-19 02:52 pm (UTC)