Something I Could Live Without: A Paranoid Delusional Rant Devoid of Wit, Substance or Direction
Jon Balog

Before I begin, I'd like to make two things crystal-clear. One: I love animals; I always have, and I always will. Growing up, I knew having only five cats living in our house meant that there was still room for two more. I believe that animals are just as entitled to happiness and a long life as humans are, and I am a fierce opponent of animal testing. I was a vegetarian for ten months, but then I was forced to hop back on the meat wagon for medical reasons. Two: I am against prejudice in all of its ugly forms. I have always been of the opinion that whenever one makes a generalization, he or she is making a broad statement about a lot of people or things that he has never met or seen.

Having said that, I hate snakes.

Since I was a kid, I've loved horror movies and Halloween. I don't even mind walking home through the cemetery at night anymore. It goes without saying that I don't scare easily, but snakes just freak the hell out of me. This goes back as far as I can remember…. When I was a kid, there was a door in my bedroom that led to the stairs to the attic. There was a big black snake that lived up there. We knew because we would occasionally find it's skins lying about >shudder<. I used to lie in bed at night clutching a baseball bat waiting for it to make the first move.

When I transferred to WAC all of the dorms were full so I got an apartment at Kent Crossing. I love the walk to and from school; it's refreshing and I'm contributing that much less CO2 to the atmosphere by not driving. However, for some reason, these long, slithery serpentine creatures take it upon themselves to lie across my path as I'm trying to get by. I've talked to lots of other walkers from Kent Crossing and they don't seem to have this problem. I swear, they must lie in wait for me and come out when they sense me walking their way. Anyway, I started walking through the cemetery to avoid them and just the other day, one of them -- a brown one -- crawled by me! Then two days later (this was really disgusting), I saw a dead one piled up on a median strip on campus! God, what the fuck is it with this town and snakes?!

Lately I've been wondering just where exactly this bizarre phobia comes from. I think the childhood backyard is a place of playful fun in the sunshine, and when the security of the yard fence is penetrated by something long, dark, sneaky, and potentially venomous, it just shatters the illusion of safety and evolutionary superiority. Most people have a similar problem with clowns or spiders, but I've always thought that spiders are kind of cute….

Have you ever seen that episode of The Simpsons where those crazy Springfieldians celebrate "Whacking Day" by going around the town whacking snakes with sticks and bats? I know this make me sound like a jerk, but I've already bought a club just in case the idea catches on.

I went to my optometrist last year to see if I needed glasses. After my examination, he asked me if my dad still liked looking at snakes. I said that I hadn't really asked him about it lately. When he asked me what I was majoring in, I told him that I had just changed my major from Photography to English. He said to me, "Well son, if you like to look at paintings and read books and take pictures, then you'd better get glasses. I know that your dad doesn't usually wear his, but he doesn't need glasses to look at snakes." I didn't even know my dad had glasses. I wonder what else he's hiding...

This week I watched a documentary on the Discovery Channel about venomous snakes in North America. I was kind of hoping that it would help me get over this stupid childish fear, but no such luck. They showed footage of this one specimen in North Carolina that can actually glide across the top of water on one long, inflated lung! I wasn't even able to finish the program. I turned on Comedy Central and called my girlfriend to have her reassure me that everything was ok. I did learn a few interesting facts, though. Contrary to popular belief, snakes are not cold-blooded. Actually, they have no inner temperature regulation system at all, which is why they have to bask in the sun all day.

In a drawing class I took at Towson, we had to sketch a nude male model who wasn't circumcised. It looked like a snake wearing a turtleneck.

According to some Christians and Jews, the snake was responsible for the fall of Mankind. Just think- if it weren't for those hideous creatures, we could still be running around the Garden of Eden stark naked and every day would be like May Day.

This past year I have come to realize that there are very few people who I actually hate. However, there are quite a few people who possess personalities which are not compatible with my own, and because of this, I prefer not to be in the presence of said individuals. This is basically how I feel about snakes. I'm sure the unholy abominations serve some purpose in the grand scheme of things. They keep rats out of people's gardens, I suppose... so I really don't mind if they exist; I just wish they would keep their distance.

Thank you very much for wasting your time reading this. Indiana Jones had it right. They're coming to get me, I just know it.