Faces, on reflexion, are very freaky. Three big holes in the flesh like wounds that have never healed properly, full of slimy, gunky stuff. Two slimy bits of gristle underneath thin bits of skin that flap up and down. Random bits of hair. Disgusting.
Also: boobs. Big painful growths on your chest.
Bees making honey. Eddie Izzard famously pointed out the freakishness of this. ‘Do earwigs make chutney? Do spiders make gravy?’
Belly buttons leak??
Escalators freak me out, I always imagine getting caught up in the side of them!
On this one, at least, I can set your mind at rest. The 2am laundromat vortex is full of chocolate bars and icecream. I know this, because once I walked past a laundromat, in New York City, at 2am in the morning. I was on my way back to the youth hostel with some friends, after a late night at a bar in Alphabet City (huh! I still love it that there is a real place in the world called Alphabet City 
) We were just starting to whinge about how hungry we were, when we came across a 24 hour laundromat. On the bench outside, there were two Snickers bars, and a Haagen Dasz icecream (still frozen, so it can’t have been there that long). There was noone in the laundromat. There was noone on the street. The food was still sealed in its original wrappers, so we ate it. And, well, we’re all still here, so I guess it must’ve been ok. Ergo, the laundromat vortex heard the pleas of five cold hungry Australians in the big city, and released some goodies to feed us. I’ve tried getting back into the laundromat vortex since, but had no luck… I guess you need to be really hungry, and possibly also a little drunk, for it to open up.
As Hobbes once said in nearly identical circumstances, “I think conversation should be kept to a minimum until afternoon.”
That’s the miracle of the glottis! Not only can it help you say /h/ (and glo’'is, if you are a Cockney), but it also keeps you from breathing pie!
Babe, I’d ask a doctor about that. Right. Now. Because leaking is not normal belly button behaviour.
Trained monkeys - Whether it’s a small helper monkey or something like Koko that has been taught simple sign language, I am always a little concerned with trained monkeys. I kinda think they already know all of this stuff and are just getting close enough to take our stuff as we sleep.
Piercings of anything except the earlobe. This didn’t used to be normal, dammit!
Also tattoos.
Tire pressure. Specifically, inflating near the manufacturer’s suggested max, for optimum gas mileage. Here in 'Jersey, the roads are in such rotten shape, I feel like I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t. Between the potholes that could swallow a VW, the surreal ridges and troughs in stretches of major highways like Rt. 1 (I swear, there’s got to be a good 8-12" difference in elevation between the truck ruts and the regular elevation in the pavement!), and areas with even minor rises and hills that aren’t planed off properly (so that you come down way too hard on the down side if you’re going faster than, say, 10 m.p.h.), it’s amazing that everyone don’t suffer a blowout every year. Just another thing to worry about. It’s just outrageous – one of the highest revenue-contributing states to the federal budget, and we suffer with roadways on a par with the Developing World. Disgraceful.
That, and the crisper drawers in the 'fridge. How exactly does that supposedly work?
Of course, West Virginia’s highways and bridges are doubtless in perfect condition…
My fascination rests with people moving from place to place.
You hear a plane going overhead. You look up and realize that there are people inside going someplace for some reason. Where are they going? Why?
The same holds true for buses. The people on the bus are travelling from Point A to Point B, from Here to There (and perhaps Back Again), but you have no idea why. Are they visiting? Moving? Leaving behind a bad situation? Going to grandma’s house? On the lam and running from the law?
What will they find when they get to wherever it is they’re going? Let’s hope that there isn’t an accident…
Everything freaks me out if I think about it for long enough. But some things I can pin-point right now would be:
Oh-ohh! I just thought of two more thigns that really freak me out:
Okay, that’s enough outta me.
skeletons
They’re always laughing at us. And everbody has one inside !! LIke they’re renting space in our bodies. How would you like to be chased by 10 or 20 of them? How awful would that be?
reality
What if eveyrone stops moving when I don’t see them? What if I’m the only one really alive on this planet? How do you really know that Mom or Uncle Fred or your wife really exists? They could be robots or androids or really good special effects. How do you know that something called Paris or Greenland or Rome really is there? In effect, this is my planet. Other humans have their own planet.
I was just thinking about this as I finished the first page of this thread. Then I change pages… and see your post. THAT freaks me out. :eek:
Other things that freak me out:
Lipstick. Covering a sensitive part of the body with this paste substance, then possibly touching similarly sensitive parts of other peoples’ bodies, and smearing it… ick. ick. ick.
Cheese. Especially when warm and gooey and stringy. That’s not food–it’s like half-melted plastic. ick.
And h.sapiens, delphica, and World Eater, I’m with you on the general freakiness of small dogs, especially the ones with long fur so that you can’t see the legs. Dogs wearing clothes are just… wrong.
Phone calls are freaky, especially long-distance ones. As you speak, someone in another place connected to you by, at most, a couple of wires is hearing your voice… and responding.
Emotions. The idea that everything you do has effects on other people, and you can’t go through life without hurting someone, even if you don’t intend it… that is extremely freaky.
<twitch>
This thread reminds me of many a conversation I participated in while in college. Usually sparked by alot of smoke, coughing, and a Grateful Dead tape.
Now where are those cold beers and potato chips…?
Nowhere near as profound as some of the stuff flying around here but:
It occurred to me recently that there must have been a whole bunch of people in the '70s who went out and made a concious decision to buy a brand-new Dodge Dart.
:eek:
Pedestrian crossings.
I never questioned them until I started driving. Now, I’ll be driving along, the light will go red in front of me, I’ll slow down and someone will step out right in front of my car. Sometimes they step out before I’ve even come to a halt. How do they know I’ll stop and stay stopped? They trust me with their lives! Can I accept that responsibility?
Also, for Marine_One’s bones, there’s a brilliant story by Ray Bradbury called “Skeleton” about a man who becomes aware of his skeleton and thinks it’s conspiring against him: incredibly creepy. And the “cure” is not nice.
My number one freak-out.
Bono.
Yes, I love his voice, and can listen to his CDs no problem, but when I see any video of him performing live I suddenly realize where the phrase “makes my skin crawl” comes from. That prancing, walking, dancing thing he does just reminds me way too much of that guy from “silence of the lambs” dancing around with his ‘skin suit’ ideas and genitals tucked under.
shudder
Evo
Okay, I’ll go with the “stars are weird” thing, but it doesn’t bother me, you know? They are weird but interesting, not weird and scary. Although if they all decided to blink out at the same time some night, that would freak me out.
plnnr, I have that thing with people traveling, too. Especially, for some reason, people on buses at night. Even if I am one of them. It’s just creepy.
Then there is a phenomenon I think of as “another planet” - mostly it happens at night, especially if it’s raining, but it can happen on a clear day, too. It’s when you’re going along (usually driving) and suddenly everything looks like another planet. Nothing is familiar or comfortable; trees, houses, streets, signs, people walking dogs, it’s all new and all incredibly weird. I tried to explain this to my husband and he looked at me like I had two heads, so not everybody knows this, but my daughter understood.
Akin to this is that it sometimes feels incredibly weird that I am looking out of these eyes, like I’m trapped in this hunk of flesh and can’t get out. Why these eyes? Why not somebody else’s? Why am I inside here at all, for crying out loud? Okay, obviously I have an eye thing going, don’t mind me.
There’s also foreign languages. Other people clipping along making noises that clearly mean something to them and sound like gibberish to me. Maybe they’re really extra-terrestrials. How would I know?
Oh, another thing I just though of.
I haven’t rode in a plane since 9.11 and I never liked flying much to begin with so I am sure my next airline vacation is gonna require some benzos before I even step aboard.
But other than the normal fear of crashing, etc. I have always thought it was wierd that here we are, an entire vessel of people virtually isolated from the rest of the world (I guess the pilots have radars and radio contact etc. but the passangers just feel so ‘alone’). At some point during my flight I always look out the window, and seeing nothing but pure white, start wondering:
Could we all be dead and not know it? I mean, if another plane just hit us out of nowhere (or an asteroid, giant flying chicken, choose your missle here) and we all died in an instant–without even seeing it coming–would we know we were dead? Or would we just be instantly transeferred to another level of existance where we all thought we were still in the plane.
and also, while we are up there, if we ARE still alive, is it possible that when we land it will be a wasteland? Everyone else would have died from some wierd poison gas or something that we were miraculously saved from due to our pressurized, recycled-air, flight?
points to ponder,
Evo
Lots of the above but also dolls that cry. My daughter’s have quite a collection of them and at first they’re just annoying but if I think about how they sound they start freaking me out.
I’ll second the pets thing. There are furry, live animals walking around my house and I put them there! One of them is sitting on my lap as I type this! How weird is that?
I have a thing similar to SparrowHawk’s about identity. I’ll catch sight of myself in a mirror and think, “Wow. That’s me. That’s how people see me. Who am I?” It’s this weird identity freak-out. It’s hard to describe, but I just get this sense of “who the hell am I? What the hell am I doing?”