Holy. Crap.
I could have lead a very happy, grape-eating life had I not stumbled upon this article during a random google search this morning. But now, since I’ve read it, you should, too:
Black widow spiders are being found in Canadian supermarkets on imported grapes from California
Arachnophobia, anyone?
Oh good lord. I’ll never eat grapes again!
Tarantulas in bananas, too. I slosh all my fruits and vegetables in Fit anyway, so all the spideys float to the top.
And they’re only lethal if you’re really young, really old, or have a compromised immune system. Live dangerously, eat a grape.
Not to mention visit a vineyard. 🙁
Yaknow, telling me to wash ’em in warm water is all very well and good, but now the BWS is in my house. They should have a dunking bucket at the store!
Also: AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.
I’m more afraid of being bitten in the store than at home. EEEK!
Well, I *wasn’t*…
Now I’m envisioning you as this crazed villanous megalomaniac, trying to conquer the world by constructing a master race who are immune to spider-bites. Peter Parker is your sidekick. You go around with pockets full of fuzzy eight-legged beasts ans arrange large covert operations that result in hospital wards, retirement homes and daycare centres being infiltrated by arachnids.
I think I might hate you now, due to my overactive imagination. Or fear and respect you. It’s hard to tell.
Besides, we don’t NEED black widows to cull the herd – that’s why we have SARS. I refer to some of my earliest diarizing, back when I was insane. Ahem.
2003-03-31 – 4:55 p.m.
If I hear the acronym SARS mentioned one more time, I may just have to start wearing my vintage Sandman Mystery Theatre-styling black rubber gas mask onto the subway in the morning. This would have several desirable outcomes. Firstly, it would righteously assert my sense of wartime fashion, indicating that maybe there are worse things happening in the world than fever and the sniffles (and I’m not talking Norwalk or Ebola, either — please, they are SO last year). Simultaneously, this shecky respiratory accessory would indicate my deep disdain for the irrational outbreak of hysteria on the streets of Toronto. My fellow TTC riders would no doubt obligingly panic wildly, thinking that SARS had developed into an airborne virus that would penetrate their flimsy surgical masks like sperm through a Vaselined condom. Come on, people. It’s just a hopped-up version of the flu: sure, if you’re old or unwell, you’ll die, but come ON. If SARS takes you down, frankly, you had it coming. As a matter of fact, I myself am breathing deeper in public areas and trying to touch as many stair railings, doorknobs and toilet handles as possible, so I can catch this fucking thing. Then I will either survive it and have a new and improved immune system, or I will die and rid the earth of my pathetic, underachieving genetic strain. I have spoken.
*gestures weakly for someone to call an ambulance and get the black widow off her face*
*dies*
*funeral*
Sister, you just described my afternoon. Fear me now, respect me later, hate me always.
Wow, did you just cyber-verb “to funeral”?
I think you did!
I also think I just invented “cyber-verb” to describe the mystical transformation of random words into first-person actions with the simple addition of opening and closing asterisks.
You and I are awesome!