Monthly Archive: April 2010

“Are you livin the life that you always dreamed of?”

Welcome to Brother Martin’s traveling salvation show.

Worship services are commonly held in a theater. Last weekend I was blessed to have attended twice: at the Majestic in Madison, Wisconsin, and the Fitzgerald in St. Paul, Minnesota.

We rocked and rolled and filled our souls.

As far as I can tell, the main tenets of the Church of Martin are Peace and Love, Unity, Freedom, and Dreams.

Chasing your dreams.

Dreams of freedom?

We give thanks to failure in the Church of Martin, for it can make dreams come true. The dreams that choose me and you.

Brother Martin calls out to Jesus, Allah, the Higher Power, and the Universe to help us in our journey.

Brother Martin glowing in theethereal light of theFitzgerald Chapel.

He gives us this meditation: Hop the dog!

You gotta hop the dog.

Say it for about three hours straight, so you …

Well.

I hoped to hear from Fritzi by now, but she appears to have dropped out for good. No new posts, as you can see. No tweets since yesterday. She hasn’t answered my emails. (Not that she was very good about that after getting her author access.)

Let’s hope she’s okay. We don’t know that Hildi has anything bad in mind for her, although the woman seemed just a bit unhinged. And let’s also keep the other spiders in our thoughts. That Nolan guy is probably well over the edge and bent on mass spider murder, now.

Despite her deception in securing the guest blogging spot, I appreciated Fritzi’s contributions. She did the job I “hired” her for, which was to post more frequently and liven the place up. She had a “quest for freedom” that I could relate to. I think some of my regular readers enjoyed her tale also.

Great job, Fritzi. You’re welcome to come back anytime, if you can extract yourself from your current predicament, and have anything more …

The man and woman walked into the kitchen, and the woman immediately came over to the jar. “There you are! How are you doing, little earth mother?”

The man rolled his eyes. He said he would be right back, and went upstairs.

I thought: I’m in prison, you daffy broad. You put me here.

I still didn’t trust her. Lots of happy-happy earth-friendly talk, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find she had plans for mounting me in a display case on her wall. She leaned on the counter and was about to say something, but then the man returned with his laptop.

“I have something to show you,” he said, setting the laptop down on the counter.

“Oh?”

“Yeah. I found this interesting web site last night.”

“Okay…” the woman said. She seemed wary.

“Now, I just want you to know that I was okay with keeping this spider around,” he said. “Not thrilled, but I was willing to try it, for you.”

“But…?” she said.

“Well, just see what I found. I really like you, Hildi. I don’t …

The man came downstairs, all cheerful and singing “Whistle Stop.”

“Hi, Spider!” he said to me. It was really too much. (I think the cat agreed, but for different reasons.) “Guess what? Hildi called.”

Hildi?

“She’s coming over right now!”

Apparently the woman’s name was Hildi. What kind of human has a name like “Hildi?” I wondered why he was being so chatty. Were we suddenly best buddies? Was he trying to get on my good side to win favor with the woman?

After feeding the cat, he went to make tea!

(Finally!)

He filled the kettle with water and put it on one of my rigged front burners. I almost did a jitterbug, thinking about all the dried up beetle parts and sawdust waiting to combust.

With his hand on the igniter, he took a step back, and appeared to be leaning away. What was this? But still, he turned the knob!

There was the tick, tick, ticking… and — a flash of flame! But that was all, and now the burner was running normally. The man …

Nothing major to report and I’m still trying to conserve battery life, but I had to vent some frustration.

After the man and the cat went to bed, the other spiders started coming by the jar. At first I was excited about the prospect of getting help, but they only wanted to enjoy a little schadenfreude and tsk-tsking. They seemed satisfied that the situation had “resolved itself.”

They didn’t want to hear my plans for getting me out of the jar. They definitely didn’t want to hear how they could help with those plans. No one would go outside and find the house number and street name so I could call outsiders in to help.

This is upsetting. I’m a part of this community. Maybe not the most popular member at the moment, but still. I would do anything to help a fellow spider sister or brother in need. I have been doing everything in my power to help them get rid of the man. But they’re too cautious and small-minded to appreciate …

There was quite an uproar in the shelter after the woman said she liked spiders. I argued that she would stop him from waging all out chemical and conventional warfare on us. Boris said I was a fool, that the man would surely dump her.

He also pointed out that it was clear the man hadn’t forgotten about the “spider problem,” which caused several people to nod in agreement and scowl at me.

Someone called out, “Let’s throw Webber out of here right now!” Yikes. You don’t want to run into an angry spider mob. That’s the worst kind of mob. I also heard: “Who knows what else she’ll do? She’ll get us all killed!”

No, no, no! I was trying to save them, the ingrates. I thought of the stove, still waiting with its incendiary payload, and wondered if and when I should warn them about staying clear. Not quite yet.

But what if the woman did prevail on the man to leave us alone? What luck to find such an ally. She …

Oh my goddess! The man brought his date back here last night!

They watched movies. They writhed around on the couch, which the cat observed with obvious distaste. (Especially when the woman sneezed a couple of times, mentioning cat allergies. Oh, the cat did not like that.) Then they went up to the man’s bedroom.

She’s still here this morning. The entire community is atwitter about it. He never has guests. What did this mean, we wondered. Would the woman come to live here? Would she be prejudiced against the arachnid community like him?

Boris said female humans are much worse when it comes to speciesist attitudes. Especially against us. What if the man told her about the incidents of the past few days? She might want to deploy pesticides against us, Boris said. He made a point of looking my way, as the source of the incidents and the danger to the community.

I felt some urgency in seeing my latest plan succeed, knowing that no one else would act, and realizing that …

The man is home from work, but my plan has been foiled (temporarily!) by an unexpected event. The man is a creature of habit. I was counting on him to reliably follow his normal routine. On Fridays, he always has tea after work. He likes to make it in a kettle on the stove.

Do you remember those old PSAs with the cartoon barbecue grill named Fiery Fred? Fred would appear to be sleeping peacefully while unsuspecting spiders crawled on him, but then he would wake up and flames would shoot out of his “mouth.” The announcer would say in a deep voice, “Be careful, kids. Gas grills might look like fun places to play, but remember Fiery Fred. You never know when he will wake up!”

And of course the news always has stories about idiots moving into a grill’s venturi tubes, thinking they will be safe there, away from the mouth part. Sometimes they cause a fire, with occasional spider fatalities. It’s sad, tragic, and unnecessary, …

The man came home very late last night, empty-handed.

The cat was going nuts. It was long past dinner time. The man apologized, saying he had been out to happy hour. He claimed to have called to explain, but that the cat hadn’t answered. (I don’t remember the phone ringing at all.)

He was acting peculiar. Was he “drunk?” Maybe more like: giddy?

The man is almost never late, and as far as I know, he never goes to happy hour. An unexpected turn, but it seemed a good thing for me. Even Boris acknowledged that this was a positive sign. He said that people usually don’t hold grudges for long against spiders. But then he added that spiders usually don’t go to such lengths to “freak out the homeowner.”

He further observed that, maybe, if the man didn’t see any evidence of spiders for a few days or weeks, maybe we’d escape from pogromatic activity. The others all sighed with relief, as if suddenly Boris was a respected village elder and the source …

Thinking about Konrad’s question, “Do you ever think about anyone other than yourself?”

I know in my heart I’m doing it for the good of the community. Pursuing this vendetta against the man. And I will continue to serve my spider sisters and brothers, even if they prefer otherwise or wish that I was dead.

I’m choosing to take pride in my impressive achievement earlier today. I engineered the downfall of a truly enormous prey, a gazillion times larger than me. But did I think he would actually die from the fall? Maybe not, although you never know.

There was a greater chance that he could have been knocked unconscious or injured in some way. Had he been knocked out, I could have waited for the cat to go away, and then tried to close off his air passages with a combination of webbing, and dead bugs, or something…

Okay, so maybe I hadn’t completely thought it through, but I was all pumped up with the mighty huntress thoughts and got it all …