donut.nu

One of my favourite webcomics, xkcd, is exactly right about the problem is Wikipedia. I can’t be the only one who has lost hours when clicking through random pages about Brazilian soda brands and oil reserves after looking up Queen Ranavalona I.

Sometimes, I’ll end up reading up on all the really grisly things that scare the hell out of me. Such as plane crashes. I’ve figured out a way I could manage to visit every single country on the planet, should I want (and be able to afford) to, without ever having to step foot on a plane.

You have no idea how happy this makes me. I like my forms of transportation firmly attached to Earth in one way or another.

Sure, sure, I’ve heard all the arguments. The number one most quoted is you’re more likely to die in a traffic accident than in an plane crash. That means nothing to me because 1) I never learned to drive, 2) I’m not particularly fond of cars anyway, 3) I’m betting a lot more people drive every day than get on a plane, and 4) it happens to somebody–so why not me?

Then sometimes I end up reading about the most prolific serial killers in history.

And other times I’ll just end up reading about The Ring. The American version¹ scared me. It probably didn’t help that I first heard about it because they filmed some it at a (Christian!) summer camp I used to go to as a kid in a cabin that already had various murderous stories associated with it. Plus, that child frightens me. Once, several years ago on my ancient Dell laptop², everything I was typing into my computer was appearing backwards (siht ekil tsuj) and I was convinced Samara was going to pop out of my screen and kill me.

My fears are completely irrational, I know.

I really know how to induce nightmares in myself which is why it’s good I’ve recently learned that I Can Has Cheezburger is a cure for nightmares. True facts.

Now if only I knew how to tear myself away from Wikipedia.

1. Actually, I find Sadako in Ringu to be more terrifying than Samara. The look in her eyes is particularly terrifying. ↩
2. This was pre-OS X conversion, clearly–though I was lusting after PowerBooks at the time, but when you have a crap Dell laptop with broken hinges and a 400 MHz processor, anything above 1.0 GHz looks so sexy it becomes difficult to breathe. ↩