Getting Ready for "Snakes"

I'm terrified of snakes to the point of....I'll give you an example of what my imagination is capeable of:

On the hot days while walking my dog, I seriously think about the possibility of someone setting their pet Burmese python free - and of course, I'll be the one to find it. I picture a rain of snakes (much like the Cane Toad rains of Queensland, Australia) every time the summer skies turn grey. I'm convinced that one day, I'll wake up to find that my arms are now snakes, and they won't stop biting each other; then they tear each others' heads off after pumping me full of venom. All these irrational, fearful thoughts occupy the space where Ewan McGregor or Will Arnett are supposed to be making out with me, or I'm honoring Good Friend Jason Keller with the Medal of Excellence in Friending. I'm a National Geographic subscriber who has to have my husband quickly flip through each new issue to check for Diamondback Rattlers, Taipans or King Cobras. Scary snakey thoughts are robbing me of fun times in my head!

The really crazy thing is, I'm fascinated by snakes. Absolutely. I really, really am. In fact, I'm going to highly reccommend a book by Jeremy Seal called "The Snakebite Survivor's Club".

The author (a Brit who suffered a severe snake phobia at the time of writing) decided to conquor his fear by travelling to the four places on the globe saturated in snake culture. He dove in head-on: India (The Cobra), Australia (where the world's ten deadliest snakes can be found), Africa (The Anaconda) and The United States (Highly Religious Appalachian Rattlesnake Handlers). This book kept me awake, gave me nightmares and scared the shit out of me. I coudn't put it down. The sheer guts this guy had. Insides made of.....how would Judas Priest describe it? British Steel!

Well - it's about time I "got over" this fear. Why now? Because in about two minutes, the media blitz for the upcoming what-you-see-is-what-you-get-in-the-title movie "Snakes on a Plane" is about to be unleashed. The trailer I couldn't keep my eyes open for, billboards, magazine covers and countless references to snakes are coming. This is frustrating for me because this movie is DESTINED TO BE AWESOME. It's going to be so wonderfully good/bad and fun as hell...BUT!There are going to be scares around every corner. The slightest sound in the garden, the hiss of a radiator are now going to be reasons for me to shit my pants. I will have to know which music accompanies what logo in the first few seconds of the trailer. What if it begins with a shot of a striking Black Mambo - it's mouth a wide open cavern of terror? What then? Am I to cover my eyes during all commercial breaks? And why do we have so many fucking TV's in our house anyway?! Everyday, I feel like we live at a Best Buy.

People will start wearing snakes around their necks in public. Mark my words. It's going to happen. This summer is going to be extremely terrifying for the girl who is afraid of rubber and "lame-o CGI snakes, dude". Just like the 17 days after Easter (when all the adoptive bunnies are set free from bored children in nearby parks with the View-Master slide-like green, green grass) - the snakes will be set loose. And I will find them by accident.

But I have a de-sensitising plan with these pictures! I do. I'm just going to have to look at fucking pictures of snakes until they start looking like puppies and kitties.

(And here's where I was going to post some nifty pictures of snake sock puppets that would probably only scare me...but the picture capabilities are a little down right now.)

Maybe it's best if you just picture the worst googly-eyed snake sock puppet imaginable, and then picture me being truly scared of it. Now you can point and laugh. There was another great picture of He-Man in the grip of a two headed viper.

Fuck off, snakes.
I'll conquor you one way or another.
My own way...
-J.