Also, why is it when I am sick, like very sick, with like, allergies or pneumonia or bad colds, and I chill and have hot flashes, my mind seems to work strangly, and I see weird colors and shapes?
I too have long been fascinated and perplexed by the concept of “pets.” I look at our cat, sleeping peacefully on the end of the bed. He wakes up, stretches, and wanders outside, where he disappears for hours and does whatever it is he does. Then he comes back. I can watch him for long durations, just wondering what the heck is going through his tiny fuzzy brain.
Every now and then, I’ll remember the skeleton inside. Either I’ll sit quietly and poke my arm, saying to myself, okay, here’s the ulna, and the radius, and they fit together here, and, oh, there’s some cartilage… Or I’ll zone out while listening to somebody, staring at them, visualizing the bones that make up their internal structure. It’s most fun if you start with a fairly obvious one, like the collarbone, and then imagine it curving back, hooking into the top of the rib cage and the shoulder assembly, and so on. To me, the weirdest single bone is the scapula, just because of how it floats semi-free around the back. Bizarre.
That’s not the weirdest aspect of teeth. Not by a long shot. Try this:
Baby teeth.
We’re born with one set of teeth, though it takes a bit for them to emerge from the gums (and that’s weird enough all by itself). These teeth serve us well for seven to ten years.
Then they fall out, and new ones grow in. Like a shark, except only once. And nobody seems at all conscious of how incredibly mind-blowingly weird this really is.
Except me, of course, and they’re coming for my jar right now…
YES!! I think the same things, especially that bit about how we perceive colors.
When I was a kid, I remember tormenting my parents with endless questions about how I got into my body. I had figured out that there was more to me than just my body and it totally freaked me out.
I also have this bizarre fear that whenever I turn my head, that whatever is now out of my sight disappears into nothingness and then quickly reassembles itself when I look around again. Either that, or everything gets up and moves around behind me. This is especially unsettling around dolls.
shudder
But what REALLY freaks me out is the fact that there is a whole message board here full of thousands of people who think exactly the same way I do. :eek:
what you cannot see - you never know what is going on outside your field of vision, but you don’t really want to turn your head and find out sometimes.
on a similar note, windows, particularly dark ones at night. what if you look out it and see someone looking at you. especially on like the third story.
again with the ocean theme. what is if a giant mouth suddenly appears out of the big wave and swallows you whole?
That I’m a person and other people see me like I see them. By being myself, it’s sometimes hard to remember that I’m seen just like I see everyone else.
I’ll second pooping. But from a more unpleasant standpoint- Here you have all the undigested food matter you have left over, and it all comes out looking the same. Ugh. But the worst part is that gross thing was inside your body for a certain amount of time. Blechh. And getting it out often involves several seconds of discomfort (or blinding pain in some cases) then the wierd freaky feeling of your abdomen caving in after a really big dump. Damn.
Nipples on men. Gross.
Tampons. Personally I have this aversion toward stuffing things in my body cavities. Its really difficult for me to fathom women stuffing these objects up their vaginas for the better part of a day, with some little string hanging out, then pulling it out (and god knows what mess that’s gotten backed up behind it) :eek:
The possibility that food I’m eating might still be alive. Once, at a restaurant with my dad, I was enjoying some breaded scallops when my dad pointed something out. He held a half-eaten piece and said, “You know its still alive” of course even at six I was skeptical, but then he gave it a little squeeze that made it look like the scallop twitched and I was so freaked out I ran out of the restaurant screaming and hid underneath my dad’s truck. He couldn’t coax me out until he had the waitress assure me that the scallops were quite dead, and chopped into bitty pieces.
What a cool thread.
I used to think about the color thing, too; because it’s one of those things I don’t think we can ever establish: whether the same color looks the same to each of us or not. So we could each see the world entirely different from everybody else, yet all of our different perceptions coordinate with everyone else’s to the point that we all seem to be operating on the same wavelength, as it were.
Living food: A quite hilarious yet sadly out of print book (Moses May Have Been An Apache, and other Actual Facts by Cully Abrell and John Tompson) pointed out: “In a way, everything we eat has been eaten before.” Ponder that.
I also used to look at other people and animals, and wonder why I couldn’t see from their vantage point; as if my consciousness had chosen my particular body to look out of right then, but I should be able to move from one body to another. I also thought I should be able to fly and move things with my mind. It was never a case of thinking it would be neat to be able to do those things; rather it was a case of feeling like I should be able to, and not understanding why I couldn’t: a native set abilities that I’d somehow forgotten how to utilize.
Crowds freak me out if I think about them. Going to a college football game or a concert, and looking at all the people. Every single one of which has a personality, a home, a history, a circle of friends and family and acquaintances…all of which likewise have all those things, and so on, and so on… The sheer variety that is there but that I will never experience is almost overwhelming.
Okay, it’s 3:30 in the morning where I am, so I’ll get to it, and it’ll be long and rambling. Some of these have been addressed before, but hey, they’re my thoughts too.
Monkeys. Specifically, monkeys on television, acting like people. I have no problem with nature shows, but watching chimps, bonobos, orangs, et al mess around with clothes on and riding bikes and driving cars creeps me out. Those credit card commercials with the apes makes me switch stations. I think it has something to do with how they’re not people, but we’re making them act like people for our own amusement. For all I know, that ape likes smoking a cigar while holding a wad of cash and wearing a three-piece suit. But it’s just not fitting of what I think a monkey should do. I had an anthropology course that had pictures of bonobos giving each other oral sex in the required reading. I had to literally cover the pictures with my hand so I could look at the rest of the page. Sure, they do it naturally, but - eew!
Along with things that act like people but aren’t, I’ll throw in baby actors. Huggies commercials with toddlers manning submarines, doing laundry on tiny washing machines, and so on. Babies don’t do that! Any movie or show that superimposes moving lips on a baby face (Baby Bob, I’m looking at you) is downright creepy.
Sleep. Actually, the process of falling asleep. I’m always had trouble sleeping - not insomnia really; I’ll sleep for a good 13 hours if you let me, but going from “concious” to “asleep” is a long time coming. I can remember being awake, I can sometimes remember my dreams, I can remember waking up, and even being in the half-awake state when you hit the alarm and turn back to the pillow. But I can’t recall a single moment of falling asleep. My brother, with whom I used to share a room, would drop off to sleep in five minutes while I stared at the ceiling. I’d envy him that. But think: in these hours I can post my opinions to you! Isn’t that great?
Once in a while I’ll be sitting there reading a book or something and my stomach will make a noise. I’m not hungry and I haven’t eaten for hours. What’s going on here?
The interior of the human body will, under ideal curcumstances, never see the light of day. But it’s so colorful.
Tea. Who first thought of holding a dried-up old leaf in a cup of water until it turns brown, then drinking it? What makes it different from the gutter besides the quality of the water? Eventually people starting making special trees just for the quality leaves they would dry up and throw in their water. If I throw some potpourri in my Brita filter, will I get a sweetly-smelling brew?
Why are people so uptight about breastmilk? I mean, I’m not especially crazy about it, but most people (or so you would believe) freak out at the mere mention of it. “Eew! That came from a person!” Yeah, but all this time we’ve been drinking from a whole different bunch of species. How is that less unsettling? The human race is acting like a bunch of cookoo birds: we usurp the maternal instincts of other animals (in this case, lactating) and use them to raise our own children. And then we do it for the rest of our lives.
Sometimes I’ll look at a word in print and just think: “Wow, what a wierd sound.” Even normal words liks from, watch, or pencil. I won’t be wondering about etemologies really, but more just the sound it makes.
Wow. Thanks for putting up with all this. It felt cathartic.
I get that too, especially late at night when I’m in bed trying to sleep. I start thinking “who am I, who am I, who am I?” and start to feel like I don’t belong in my body. It’s really unreal. I have to make a conscious effort to stop thinking like that because think otherwise I’ll go mad.
Well, you know there’s a theory that there are only about 500 “real” people on the planet - that’s you and your friends and relatives. You know it’s true because you keep meeting people who know other people you know. Everyone else is(are?) androids.
I really love my sister, but if for some reason she had never been born, I wouldn’t miss her at all. It freaks me out to think about all my sisters who were never born because a particular sperm of my father’s did not find its way to a particular egg of my mother’s at a particular time. I guess there are a whole lot of people who were never born for a similar reason, but nobody misses them. Oh well, they were probably jerks anyway.
some wise person once said, “WW3 will be fought with nuclear weapons, WW4 will be fought with sticks and stones”
you know what is really freaky?
Great surfacing hoards of people walking around the earth with cellphone shaped brain tumors.
the fact that technology has a stronger hold and influence on most people than other people.
I’ve been reading this thread over several days, and missed it if someone else mentioned it.
It freaks me out to think that things I have, do, or buy will “out-live” me. The cup I’ve used for holding my toothbrush the last 35 years may be sold to someone else at a rummage for a quarter. The kitchen tiles will be good for years and years. The comb I bought today, will it be the last comb I ever buy?
My son, that’s what he’s there for, to out-live me. But these THINGS out-living me is freaky.
Sometimes when I’m walking around, I’ll get a notion that some time ago, when I thought I was asleep, aliens actually drugged me, took me to their operating room, and implanted tiny cameras at the backs of my eyes.
So, what I’m doing as I walk around, is actually showing the aliens everything I see. They’re discussing what I’m looking at and seeing every time I blink my eyes. Sometimes when I rub my eyes and those images form inside my eyelids of the mitochondria and nerves of my eyeballs, they see them too.
They see all the disgusting things I do first hand when I think nobody’s watching. And they’re writing it down.
*4:02 pm: Subject pushed his thumb inside his left nostril when he thought his coworker was looking the other way and pulled out some hardened mucus along with a stray nose hair.
4:03 pm: After balling the mucus with this thumb and forefinger, subject flicked it over the cubicle wall and acted like it never happened.
4:04 pm: Subject used his tumbnail to dislodge a piece of chicken that was stuck in his teeth. The very same thumb that picked his nose earlier.
*
YES! I get that too. I’d look in the mirror, just stare myself in the eyes, or just stare into space, and think “Who am I? When did I start thinking of myself as me?”
The fact that we have to make certain parts of our bodies swell up and push against the skin by using them repeatedly in order to get stronger.
The fact that our minds are so amazing, and yet can be injured and tramatized so easily, often by things that we ourselves have made.
Ever since I read Pastwatch by Orson Scott Card, I’ve had the notion that somewhere in the future, a group of scientists are studying me with their past-seeing equipment, and analyzing me, studying what I’m doing and how well it fits their patterns. And, of course, since they’re the viewers, they can look at my life at any point they want, including the points I haven’t lived yet - but hopefully will live, in the future.
I consider it my prerogative to give them a good show. It’s the leas
Somebody else already mentioned hair, the fact that it is a bunch of dead cells and it is so close to their brain. Hair:–a slender threadlike outgrowth of the epidermis of an animal; esp : one of the usu. pigmented filaments that form the characteristic coat of a mammal
What about all the wierd stuff we do to these threadlike outgrowths of our epidermis that are hanging out of our scalps? We chop them off at different lengths or some of us let them grow until they split and break off. Some of us use chemicals to mold them into the shape of a curl, others of us use similar chemicals to mold them into straighter shapes. Then we get it wet by washing it and then turn right back around and dry it with either “nature” or use appliances that heat it up and blow it around.
Some of us shave it off of certain parts. Some of us pull it out with tweezers or hot wax. Not usually the hair on our heads though–well on top of our heads. That stuff we treat well.
We envy the way other people’s slender threadlike outgrowths look shinier than ours, or if it has more “body” than ours. Some of us freak out if it doesn’t continue to regrow after it falls out and go to great lengths to make it seem as if it IS growing back.
People have to go to a special school just to learn about how to chop it off, change it’s color and shape. I mean, it is just really bizarre.
Libraries, oddly enough. The very small, poorly supplied neighborhood ones are pathetic enough, but my main problem is with the very large, world-class libraries with millions of volumes. They just spook and depress the hell out of me, as if they were not the vibrant legacy of human civilization, but a massive mausoleum of all the world’s writers, scholars, and researchers – and each book a neglected quasi-holy relic, a stand-in for its author. Try perusing the stacks at random, examining the odd book here and there: the vast majority are utterly obsolete (non-fict.) or passe, superceded (fiction); the bulk are dusty, musty, and never get checked out, except by the silverfish. Reminds me of Sylvia Plath’s “All the Dead Dears”: “…These three, unmasked now, bear/Dry witness/To the gross eating game/We’d wink at if we didn’t hear/Stars grinding, crumb by crumb,/Our own grist down to its bony face…”, and “…until we go, each skulled-and-crossboned Gulliver/ Riddled with ghosts, to lie/ Deadlocked with them, taking root as cradles rock.”
Come to think about it, Plath’s poetry also freaks me out, the more I think about it… :rolleyes:
All of the above horrors pale in comparison to the idea of FLESH-EATING ARACHNIDS that actually live in your, my, and everyone’s eyelash follicles. Think of it – you’re going about your daily business, thinking that you’re a clean-living person, and all the while there are bugs drinking your tears and your facial oil and laying eggs in your follicles.
Check out the face of that bugger in the last photo. Cute, isn’t he? ::chomp chomp chomp::
I will not click on that link. I will not click on that link. I will not click on that link.
Thankfully, the insane urge to click has passed. For now.
Sheri