Month: April 2007

Chaetophobia

I was reminded of a phobia that I have had for as long as I remember. I meant to look the word up and Amy found it: Chaetophobia, the fear of hair. I don’t know how to pronounce it, but I can certainly describe my own version of the phobia.

When I was a kid and my mum was bathing me, I was terrified of floating hair in the water. So I already had long hair at the time. I remember curling up as far as I could from these long, threatening, floating and offensive threats. My word was “thread”, as in “there is a thread”. My mother had to remove the floating “thread(s)” from the water.

Now I don’t curl up so much, but I’m still really bugged by the occasional strand(s) of detached hair. A lot.

I don’t mind attached hair at all. How funny to make the distinction.

Book: “Good Omens” (Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman)


[This post originally appeared in Dullicious, where I blogged as Barbie-dull for several years.]

Amy lent me “Good Omens” by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. An excellent book; very funny, from the foreword to the “about the author by the other author and vice versa”.

They write in the foreword that the authors

“didn’t know they were going to write the most repaired book in the world.”

and that they have

“signed a delightfully large number of paperbacks that have been dropped in the bath, gone a worrying brown color, got repaired with sticky tape and string, and, in one case, consisted entirely of loose pages in a plastic bag.”

And also that

“the books are often well read to the point of physical disintegration; if we run across a shiny new copy, it’s usually because the owner’s previous five have been stolen by friends, struck by lightning or eaten by giant termites in Sumatra.”

I purchased of copy of this book in the San Jose airport last February on my way to Boston via Las Vegas. And then flights were delayed and I was stuck in Las Vegas for 9 hours. That gave me ample time to walk to the Strip, with my book in a plastic bag, purchase a few gifts from Vegas, place them in the plastic bag and go get my next flight. Unfortunately, I left the plastic bag somewhere in the Boston airport after landing.

Amy, I’m done with your book, thanks so much for lending it. As soon as I’m done writing this entry, I’ll be upstairs to give it back to you.

what’s so triffic about creating people as people and then gettin’ upset ‘cos they act like people

[This post originally appeared in Dullicious, where I blogged as Barbie-dull for several years.]

“It doesn’t matter!” snapped the Metatron. “The whole point of the creation of the Earth and Good and Evil–”
“I don’t see what’s so triffic about creating people as people and then gettin’ upset ‘cos they act like people,” said Adam severely. “Anyway, if you stopped tellin’ people it’s all sorted out after they’re dead, they might try sorting it all out while they’re alive. If I was in charge, I’d try makin’ people live a lot longer, like ole Methuselah. It’d be a lot more interestin’ and they might start thinkin’ about the sort of things they’re doing to all the enviroment and ecology, because they’ll still be around in a hundred years’ time.”

“Good Omens”
By Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

Harry Belafonte & Muppet Show, The Banana Boat Song

[This post originally appeared in Dullicious, where I blogged as Barbie-dull for several years.]

I knew this song as “Day-Oh”, by the French band Pow Wow who were mostly doing acapella songs. I learnt years later that it was a cover. I was searching for MP3s of the song and found a few: a version by Shaggy, one by Danny Elfman (the one used in the movie Beetlejuice), and one by Harry Belafonte & the Muppet Show. YouTube are great, I can now see what I had imagined after hearing the sound track numerous times:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6obqAG6Ejj0&w=425&h=350