Café de Nuit

LadySoth wrote:I had a real life madness check: went to doctor to get treated for a spider bite. Was given anti-biotics. Had severe allergic reaction to this particular brand of antibiotic and got very bad rash. Had to return to the doctor two more times and finally was given correct combination of pills/creams to treat the rash. I hate going to the doctors, and having to go 3x in one week was really too much.

Too soon to recall the Scary Story to Tell in the Dark where the girl gets a spider bite and several days/weeks later in the shower and the "bite" hatches. Sorry Lady Soth, I really did not want to add horribleness to injury.

Dark Angel wrote: Too soon to recall the Scary Story to Tell in the Dark where the girl gets a spider bite and several days/weeks later in the shower and the "bite" hatches. Sorry Lady Soth, I really did not want to add horribleness to injury.

No worries Dark Angel! We've had these spiders here lately, called "false widows" they look like Black Widows but aren't as poisonous, but you can still get a nasty reaction if one of them bites you!!!!

LadySoth wrote:

Dark Angel wrote: Too soon to recall the Scary Story to Tell in the Dark where the girl gets a spider bite and several days/weeks later in the shower and the "bite" hatches. Sorry Lady Soth, I really did not want to add horribleness to injury.

No worries Dark Angel! We've had these spiders here lately, called "false widows" they look like Black Widows but aren't as poisonous, but you can still get a nasty reaction if one of them bites you!!!!

"Not as poisonous", sounds way less reassuring than you are making it out to be...

Kinda like if you see a scorpion be thankful for the size of it.... for the bigger it is the less poisonous is.....

I'm sure most people's reactions to a scorpion being small would be that it's just a little thing.... XD

I want to read that book again though now. Think I'd appreciate it more now that I'm older

Zilfer wrote: I want to read that book again though now. Think I'd appreciate it more now that I'm older

Pretty sure there are 2-3 books now, but it may have been turned into a compilation.

One of my uncles brought his American-born white wife, XWingPilot, to the Taiwan family retreat. This homestead is in the misty mountain terrain, where snakes and scorpions and other creepy crawlies enter the house at all hours.

My aunt XWingPilot was put up in the reading room - a hardwood peaceful retreat of Confucianist solitude and academic focus. Lying on the reed mat and cotton blankets, she looked up at the ceiling and saw an immense spider looking back down at her. It was as large as her hand and (in her words) looked like it would be better at opening the lids of stuck jam jars.

XWP got up hurriedly and paced nervously around the house, looking for my Chinese relatives who were still awake. She encountered my biological aunt, H#2, on her way to the bathroom.

"Can you take a look at my room?" XWP asked nervously. "There's a huge spider in it."

H#2 gamely padded over to the reading room with XWP and looked up at the gigantic spider there. She cocked her head to one side thoughtfully. In the end, she issued this pronouncement: "Hmm. I don't think it's poisonous..." and then she walked back out of the room.

This did not improve XWP's spirits very much. She finally fell asleep at around midnight and woke up again a few hours later in a panic. In the interim, the spider had disappeared. She could not sleep again after that.

Dark Angel wrote:

Zilfer wrote: I want to read that book again though now. Think I'd appreciate it more now that I'm older

Pretty sure there are 2-3 books now, but it may have been turned into a compilation.

It is. I even had to buy it anew because my old one was falling apart. Some stories you're just never too old for. The Moldy Hand is one that still scares me, if only because of the illustration and the blatantly supernatural aspect of the Moldy Hand. Harold is another one.

I asked my landlord if I could borrow an umbrella, as my is knackered and it was raining heavily today. When I opened it up, I saw that it had a dude's face silk-screened onto it and some writing. It was pretty faded, but I could make out "To the Glory--in commeration of the life of (dude's name)" Seems like it was a memorial "gift" given away to mourners at this poor guy's funeral. Yuck--what a morbid thing. I used the umbrella anyway, as I didn't want to get soaked, but shesh, what a weird thing.

Reminded me of a funeral dinner I once saw at a restaurant where the parents of a young man who had passed away very suddenly felt it would be a tasteful idea to have a "memorial cake" made in his honour--which had a big photo of the boy printed on the top in edible ink.

Where do people get these crazy ideas? How, in anyone's definition, is a memorial umbrella or a memorial cake (with the person's face on it!) a tactful thing to have at a funeral? WTF?

Anybody else experienced anything similar?

Well, I've always felt similarly about the memorial rear windshield decals you sometimes see on cars. Really? you want to think about your dead loved one every time you go for a drive?

Unrelated to dead people, but related to giant silk-screened faces, when I was younger (heck, even now, really) my mother would often get me gifts based on the formula "You like ____, right? Well, here's a horrible thing with ____ on it." Except she didn't know they were horrible. So, knowing that I liked Star Trek, she bought me a T-shirt with the giant face of Commander Riker on it. My google-fu is weak today, and I can't find an image of the shirt. But this one is close:


Imagine that shirt, except instead of a shot of Riker from the chest up, it's just a giant Riker face covering the whole picture area. <shudder> She got me the same shirt with Data on it, which somehow wasn't quite as horrifying. But I don't think I ever wore either one except to mow the lawn.

^ I would totally wear that!!! It doesn't sound so bad Gonz, the Data one sounds cool anyway. But I tend to love loud novelty T-shirts. And a Star Trek novelty T-shirt would be just plain awesome in my book! (although giant Riker head DOES sound kinda creepy, LOL)

HuManBing wrote:"Hmm. I don't think it's poisonous..."

I missed this. Actually all spiders are poisonous. It's just a matter of whether or not their poison is dangerous to humans. Big, hairy tarantulas, no more than a mosquito bite. Smaller brown nomads, very dangerous. And no, the Sydney funnel web spider is not the most toxic; that dubious honor goes to the Brazilian banana spider.

Here's another useful rule of thumb for those of us living in scorpion territory: the smaller the scorpion (including young blighters) the more toxic the sting. Not that all scorpions stings aren't dangerous, just that the smaller ones are more toxic. Kind of counterintuitive yet it's true.

Ugh! Now I'm making a Horror check just thinking about arachnids!

High Priest Mikhal wrote:

HuManBing wrote:"Hmm. I don't think it's poisonous..."

I missed this. Actually all spiders are poisonous. It's just a matter of whether or not their poison is dangerous to humans. Big, hairy tarantulas, no more than a mosquito bite. Smaller brown nomads, very dangerous. And no, the Sydney funnel web spider is not the most toxic; that dubious honor goes to the Brazilian banana spider.

Here's another useful rule of thumb for those of us living in scorpion territory: the smaller the scorpion (including young blighters) the more toxic the sting. Not that all scorpions stings aren't dangerous, just that the smaller ones are more toxic. Kind of counterintuitive yet it's true.

Ugh! Now I'm making a Horror check just thinking about arachnids!

Haha about the scorpions you said basically the same thing I did! And I also think it's funny most people would be more afraid of being stung by a larger scorpion.... I always wonder how poisonous those monsterous scorpions are in the movies.... lol!

Halloween again! It took me two hours in the bathroom with LomboDot's help to shave everything below the neck. I put on my trousers this morning and I could swear I felt every individual thread of my pants sliding across my leg skin.

LomboDot is looking forward to doing my makeup. She said I'd be like her oversized dress up doll.

I'm not sure how I feel about that.

HuManBing wrote:Halloween again! It took me two hours in the bathroom with LomboDot's help to shave everything below the neck. I put on my trousers this morning and I could swear I felt every individual thread of my pants sliding across my leg skin.

LomboDot is looking forward to doing my makeup. She said I'd be like her oversized dress up doll.

I'm not sure how I feel about that.

I am guessing she did not have younger siblings (at least with a larger age gap)? When I was born, my then 7 and 11 year old sisters treated me like their own personal dress up doll.

By age 12 I finally said, "OK! This is enough!"

HuManBing wrote:Halloween again! It took me two hours in the bathroom with LomboDot's help to shave everything below the neck. I put on my trousers this morning and I could swear I felt every individual thread of my pants sliding across my leg skin.

LomboDot is looking forward to doing my makeup. She said I'd be like her oversized dress up doll.

I'm not sure how I feel about that.

Be afraid. Be very afraid. O.o