irrational social fears        


i'm sitting here, minding my own on a monday evening, reading my email and procrastinating before doing a little work-at-home work.  elysse is playing final fantasy in the next room.

i get to my last email message, part of a mailing list, in which the poster points out the webpage for a new handheld music device which raves about the device's quality but neglects to mention the fact that mp3s don't typically sound that great to start with.

i click the hyperlink.

while waiting for the dns resolution, the creation of a new window, and the sloooow loading of the overly graphical webpage, i get a severe itch in my nose.  my nose has been gummy for weeks now, not runny, but just annoying enough to create lots of sinus drainage and painfully hard boogers and all sorts of other stuff everybody gets but nobody likes to hear you complain about.

the itch is quite uncomfortable, so i remedy it the only way a human can.  i go for the pick.  what the hell, nobody's watching, and there's a trash can and tissues not far away.

in the midst of excavation, i notice that the page has finished loading.  the left side of the page consists of a photograph of a rather attractive brunette lying on a bed and pointing a remote control at the camera, so the perspective warps out and it looks like her hand is coming out to get you.  she's smiling in a friendly way, looking only marginally posed and fake.

immediately i blush and get all nervous and embarrassed, because this pretty girl has caught me mining my nose like a four year old.

then i realize that i've become embarrassed because a photograph of someone i've never seen before caught me doing something that everybody does (whether they'll admit it or not).

what kind of sick and twisted fears has society put in me that this should happen?  or am i just crazy?

probably the latter.


Mon Jan 6 22:31:49 EST 2003