LIKE JAMMING YOUR FUCKING THUMB INTO A SHEER ROCK WALL

I went rock-climbing this weekend. for some reason my friends are way into rock-climbing now. they have membership passes to this rock climbing place that's like a gigantic warehouse filled with 150 foot climbing walls and other x-treme shit. i have been x-tremely hesitant to go on these rock climbing excursions because a) my arms are pale and lifeless b) yo, what if that shit breaks? and c) you gotta drop like $24 to climb for the day. and i could have just as easily stayed in bed and gotten another hour of sleep for free and casually smoked a bowl instead but NO. gotta mix it up. can't fall into routines buddy, that's where they get ya.

so i'm climbing with some bros and brodettes in this indoor climbing monstrosity (it's called island rock, it's on long island you'll love it) and we're doing free climbing. no helmets, no ropes, just a cushy mat under you that you have to fall onto to not break your world. there are different ascents up each rock wall marked by colored strips of tape. so we're all five of us trying to do this one particular free-climb path. when it gets to me, i fuckin give 'er my standard 85% and come close to the top of the path, about 12 feet up. i can't get a steady hold on the top spot but technically you just have to be able to touch the end of the path, which is marked by an X in whatever color you've been following. so instead of securely establishing my post atop the Red X, i kind of hoist myself up high enough to slap it five, then drop off into nothingness. i landed hard on the edge of the mat, slamming my back against the wall in the process. everyone was all like 'are you ok are you ok' and i'm all like 'im ok' and i start to get up and take stock of my various appendages when i realize my thumb doesn't feel right at all. not necessarily broken, but definitely not normal. the pain starts to grow and suddenly my thumb is swollen to twice it's size and hurts to move.

i decided to stop climbing for the day and dwell on the fact that my thumb was severely fucked up. rather than seek medical attention, i decided the best course of action would be to go to the movies, eat a large dinner, and get wasted. later, while wasted, my friend greg asks to see the thumb. after looking at it for like a second, he came to the conclusion that it was dislocated and would have to be snapped back into place in order to ever return to normal functionality. for those of you who have never had to re-locate your thumb into its socket, it involves yanking on your thumb as hard as you possibly can. there was no way i was going to do this to myself. 'you do it, man' i say to greg. 'just get it over with'. he takes my thumb, and after an ungodly tense few seconds, he pulls. the cracking sound that emitted from my thumb was almost worse than the pain itself, but all i could do at that point was deal with it and hope for better times and a working thumb. a few minutes later, greg decided that maybe the thumb was messed up on the lower joint and not the upper one, which would require a different kind of yank (lol). i hesitantly volunteered him to do it again, just to make sure my thumb wouldn't go further into its plump unfunctioning state. this time it hurt like a motherfucker, a moment that was captured in the picture above. it was a grueling gauntlet of pain to endure, but i honestly think it had to be done. now it's been about 24 hours since i let a guy yank me and i'm a lot less swollen. it was a weekend of pain, hilarity, and the ongoing reminder that yo, everything's a test. sometimes shit gets real and you have to pay a hefty price to get out of it, but man, once you do, you can look back on all that pain and all those trials and tribulations and be like yo, i fuckin did it. i fuckin did it.

Fear of What?!

you may recall from the last hatepost that interviewee lisa noble concluded her questioning by noting that she'd written an essay on fears (of which she has many). we've received a copy of this essay and present it here, unedited, for your consideration:

Fear of What?!

For a good part of my youth there were often nights when I would imagine myself rising from bed still asleep, and unintentionally hostile. I’d walk out of my room, creep downstairs, and find my way into the kitchen where there would be a knife or some other sharp utensil I could manage to grab depending on the position my somnambulism has placed me. I’d then walk through the main hallway of the house, all the way into the master bedroom where I would proceed to stab and kill my mother or my father or both, in a blind and bloody sleep-filled rage. Sometimes instead I would stumble down to the basement where my brother sleeps and I’d murder him. Other times I would be too disoriented to make it past the kitchen, and my subconscious would settle for killing myself. These were the nights I would need two Extra StrengthTylenol and sharp swig of Nyquil to calm my nerves get into a nice motionless sleep. Otherwise I’d be awake nursing a mild panic attack all night, fearing against all odds that such an improbable accident might ever occur.

I have never been a sleepwalker. The only instance of sleepwalking that has ever taken place according to my knowledge was once, when I was about four, my mother found me downstairs in the living room, helpless, crying, and evidently unarmed. Yet, after many years of replaying this unfounded but highly morbid vision and all its variations, I will not go to bed entirely comfortable until I have shoved the scissors to the back of my desk drawer and suggested to my roommate that she invest in the proper bedside armor.

It’s not always sleepwalking that triggers such, shall I say, paranoia. I’ve actually gotten over my potentially threatening subconscious for the most part by convincing myself that most people tend to wake up when someone is standing over their bed with a knife. I can only hope that I would wake up in time as well, if anything to save myself the embarrassment of accidentally slaughtering a loved one. These days, my fears are a little less drawn out in length and detail, and play out more like fleeting thoughts of probability. I experience what I can only describe as a two to three second flash of an images having to do with my present situation and what might come of its risks . And as low as the chances may be, the effect of consideration is paralyzing. For instance, I often wonder how many minutes exactly it takes standing in front of the microwave before the radiation gives me brain cancer, or skin cancer, or colon cancer or whatever. In the midst of a blink I’ll picture myself rubbing a tumor the size of my fist. However, this is a possibility that I cringe over briefly in the last few seconds it takes for some mozzarella sticks to finish cooking. I might scratch a fresh mosquito bite and the thought passes through my head that this pest has taken great pains to make his way transcontinentally all the way from Africa to my arm and now I’m sharing blood with a diseased child from Somalia. The bump starts to redden and selfish thoughts of malaria are overpowered by a minor irritation of the skin. As laziness would have it, in both of these cases the convenience of inaction overrides the need for resistance of what are already short-lived fears. This is how I came to make the distinction that these considerations are indeed fears, and nothing more extreme as would a phobia imply.

A phobia, I found out, is more than a fear; it is an attempt to avoid your fear at all costs. A phobia would cause me to not only not use a microwave but dodge its line of vision when inactive and burn the instruction manual, just to be safe. And while fears can be just as irrational and just as distressing as phobias, fears do not significantly compromise ones way of living (i.e. agoraphobia: fear of leaving one’s home, or kathisophobia: fear of sitting down). So my question is then, what do they compromise?

If my chronic fears ever did turn into chronic phobias I would never walk up stairs for fear of falling back down and breaking every bone in my body. I would stand a good 50ft distance from street curbs either to deny villainous pedestrians the satisfaction of pushing me into oncoming traffic, or any buses likely to tip over in an attempt to turn the corner, squashing me like the reckless bug I am for not taking better caution. I would be an expert on exotic spiders, knowing in detail the features of one whose bite might shock me into a state of paralysis (this is not to say that I don’t avoid spiders when I can. But the occasional spider bite won’t really need medical attention until it’s mutated the fibers of my DNA and I’m climbing up walls like a tormented comic book hero). If I were prone to phobias, I’d constantly be in search of the best possible maneuver to surgically attach a carbon monoxide detector to my nervous system. But the last time I skimmed the aisles of CVS and found these things were running for $25 each, I decided to wait hold out for the coupons. And as of now, I don’t even have one for my apartment.

I don’t even know why these anxieties are so specific in the first place. In all logic, it doesn’t really make sense to be scared of one thing and not of another. Heights, terrorist attacks, roller coasters, and drawing pints of blood from my veins don’t faze me. Yet I lose sleep over just thinking about the chance of a lighter getting to close to my face. There’s just so much randomness out there; so many chances for a lost limb or a punctured retina that we just don’t see coming. Sure there are plenty of means for fears to be induced. The media is constantly telling us we’re likely to be shot, bombed, or asphyxiated at any given moment. Rumor could be what makes us wince in the dentist’s chair, anticipating the moment that decides whether or not that dental hook will end up lodged in your esophagus. Maybe even some of these anxieties spring from a traumatic childhood experience. My parents’ house has several very large mirrors which were not installed securely enough by the previous owners. The mirror in my parents’ bathroom fell off of the wall, smashing and scattering into what seemed like a billion pieces one night. My mother avoided this incident that likely would have killed her, by about fifteen minutes as she was finishing up her favorite TV show in the other room. We had all of the mirrors replaced after that, but until then, I was always a little hesitant to check my own reflection for too long. And it can’t be that all fears work this way, ingrained by some existing form of experience. Like I highly doubt that 80% of adults who are now afraid of clowns were possibly abused by one as a child.

For me personally, I need those little panics periodically. Fearing something irrational somehow makes me feel as if it’s prevention in itself of having to come face to face with it; that letting the uncontrollable know that you’re keeping your eye on it, makes it back off, turn the other corner and focus its attention on someone who’s not going to expect it. It seems safer to expect the unexpected, because there are things that you just can’t control by force, avoidance, or even rationality. It may be that it’s the irrational that serves as your only means of defense. Furthermore, it makes me feel all the more accomplished, getting through each day, knowing all there is out there to survive.


lisa noble is a coffee production manager who hails from georgia

interview with lisa noble

i wanted to interview my friend lisa noble because she is a fascinating member of blogciety and i think one of the great minds of this or any decade. she makes coffee for a living but is a skilled writer by night. also she's really weird. we sat down for a chat recently on aim, and i decided to talk about being scared, as this is a situation i often find myself in:

(IHTFB) so what would u say is the scariest thing that ever happened to u?

(lisa) im done. cant think og anythign

u suck. wors interview ever.

yoir the worst inttertvie ev

why dont you actually try to think of something instead of being a rag doll clump

nuthin that scarys happened to me

nothing ever happened that freaked you out and you thought there was gona be a ghost or monsters or something?

once i fell into a wall really hard when my brother was trying to hypnotize me, but that wasnt really scary...it just hurt a lot

or like scary men with feely hands on the subway?

oh shit yeah! ihad some childhood fears...i just thought you meant like getting run over by cars

well anything super scary stories

i used to sleep on top of the covers because i thought scorpians were going to be hiding in my sheets

how come?

cause i lived in georgia where there were lots of bugs and my house was kind of embedded in the woods

were you scared a lot growing up?

yeah but i think most of my fears were/are irrational...or at least implausible for the most part

how do you reconcile the implausibility with the ongoing fear if you know its baloney?

mostly laziness

whats your biggest fear right now?

apocalypse

what sort of apocalypse?

usually earth being demolished by an asteroid or comet

why do you think that is?

i feel like we're due for another one

are you crippled by your fears?

no. except i dont light candles because im afraid my apartment will burn down. but other than that... i dont think so. i mean im definitely scared of a lot of things

what advice would you give to people who are scared all the time?

well most fears i usually only think about when applicable. for instance im scared of buses tipping over when they turn the corner. and i definitely think about it every time i see it happen...but i feel like thats some form of prevention in itself

how so?

i guess because alot of fears are random and mostly have to do with the unexpected freak-accidents in life...at least for me. so if you expect the unexpected... it probably wont happen.

i think that about wraps it up. thanks lisa!

i suck. actually ive written an essay about this exact topic before




lisa noble is a 22-year-old blog writer living in new york.

Found Note: December 2015

-found by a scavenge team outside a firebombed neighborhood in eastern Connecticut.-

Honey,

I don't know if you got the voice mails or if you'll ever return here to read this, but I'm leaving this here in the hopes that you can find it and we can reunite. The house has been without power for 6 days. I can't get any calls out, still those emergency messages. After what happened I don't know how safe it is to go out. All the neighbors are gone, DON'T GO INTO THEIR HOUSES, there's NO FOOD, nothing left. I don't even want to tell you what I saw in some of the houses. ALSO - Don't Go To New York. Whatever you do. The last I heard, and this was last week, those things overran the whole city. We thought Dana and Grover were sick, but it was something else. I can't explain it to you but it's something nobody expected. Those growths on their backs, I knew all along there was something off about it all. They were like tiny riders, controlling the dogs, communicating through them. It sounds absurd but I know if you've seen half of what I have this week then you suspect it too. You're so smart, baby, I know you found a way to make it through this. If


-the note ends without completing the sentence, nor any indication of who the author was.-

AURAL FLAGELLATION

I filmed a concert by the scumfuck band Amebix tonight. it was swell. i got to wear a special wristband with a skull&crossbones on it and stand in front of the barrier that held everyone else away from the stage. the only downside to this was having my ear directly to the main amp and not having earplugs. the loudness and bass force of it all shredded into my ears, destroying hearing fibers & entire pitches and frequencies. at this very moment i am plagued by an intense ringing and a general fuzziness to everything i hear. at one point a gentleman jumped from the balcony of the theater (this was at the trocadero in philly), onto the giant side amp, and then onto the stage, from which he stagedived right over my head and back into the crowd. truly an impressive feat, met only by the severe aural flagellation wrecked upon my inner ear cavities. if you don't know Amebix they are like Motorhead but slightly more satanic and slightly less metal. they attracted a rather crusty crowd, and the scent of bag was ripe in the air. all in all a good show.

BONUS: a friend told me we spoke for several minutes last night and every sentence i said would end in BRUUUUUH. i don't even know what that means and i have no recollection of it due to profound drunkenness BUT this goes to prove my ongoing theory that when i reach a point of being black-out drunk my body reacts subconsciously by making me call someone on the phone to spew my drunkenness at them. it's kind of like casting a message-in-a-bottle out to the realm of sobriety. otherwise you might just slosh in a sea of drunk forever.

elimidate

there are many busies to be busied about. i don't make nearly enough money but i am always working at something. many times the work isn't necessary to my survival but rather the survival of my craft. i am a fucking artist, although much of what i do is in jest or simply without relevancy to anything anyone else would want to identify with. i am directing a movie called baby boner and hosting a show called smut cave. there is always the drive towards some sort of punchline, some striving that goes beyond creativity into "how fucked up can i be" land. i often regret that language cannot represent all the things that go on in my head. i think the only way i will make it big at this point is if someone who has already made it "discovers me" and decides to bring me into whatever echelon i can sing and dance my way into. mine is not the path of glory, rather the scenic route of curiosity and fringe possibilty. while kanye raps about getting arab money, i listen to the piano sections on drukqs and think about rainy days. someone told me recently that if they were in my shoes they would be really depressed. the only reason this is not so is because i am not usually in my shoes, rather floating somewhere above them. i'm making a music video with a cat that lives in my house. my facial hair looks really rugged lately. the heating system in my mom's house makes horror movie music. i stayed awake until the sun came out.

DOGRIDERS PART 2: BAYVILLE

THE STORY SO FAR: Somehow, completely unbeknownst to the scientific community, the Dogriders launched an Assault on the World of Man. Their purposes unknown but violently demonstrated, the Dogriders were once average house-pets spanning the globe in untold billions. Whatever consciousness existed within the animals, it chose to unleash itself in a terrifying unison as each and every breed & pedigree of dog on the planet simultaneously sprouted a nub on its back resembling a mottled troll of yore with a wicked countenance to match. Strategic masterminds on the urban battlefield, the Dogriders formed large hunting parties, systematically extinguishing any trace of human life their keen senses could detect. As the Assault wages on and fewer living souls remain, we join survivors JOSH and NICK, waging a desperate struggle to remain hidden in the sewer systems of Long Island, New York.



SEWAGE SYSTEM: Josh and Nick trudge through thick rivers of slop.

NICK: If this goes East, we could make it all the to Bayville.

JOSH: No, we're getting out of here as soon as we can. That smell... awful.

NICK: What, and meet up with those Dogriders again? I don't think so.

JOSH: I'm gonna throw up again.

NICK: Breathe through your mouth.

The ROAR OF DOGRIDERS echoes through the tunnels.

JOSH: Where's it coming from?

The ROAR OF DOGRIDERS swells.

NICK: Sounds like they're up top.

JOSH: Did they find us?

NICK: Not likely. I don't think they can smell us through all this ass-puke.

Josh vomits into the shit river.

NICK: Sounds like some kind of a rally. Could be hundreds of 'em up there.

JOSH: Let's not stick around and find out.



CONCRETE TUNNEL: Still covered in shit, the two take cautious steps down a massive underground pass.

JOSH: Shouldn't we get off the island?

NICK: You got a plan, I'm all ears.

JOSH: Well the mainland's back thataways right?

NICK: Oh, the City, brilliant idea. Let's go where even more Dogs are at.

JOSH: We go east we're just gonna run into the ocean right?

NICK: I'm counting on it.

JOSH: What, and take a boat?

NICK: Or a plane, or the L.I.R.R., or fucking ANYTHING, WE CAN FINDALRIGHT?? WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU WANT TO HEAR? Th-THERE'S A ROYAL CARIBBEAN OCEAN LINER WAITIN' FOR US IN MONTAUK IS THAT WHAT YOU FUCKIN' WANNA HEAR?

Josh is sullen, keeping his head low as they walk. The wind reverberates in low registers through the subterranean hall.

NICK: Alright, I'm sorry Josh. I just... I got nothing.

JOSH: It's OK.

NICK: All I know is if we keep moving maybe, maybe we'll get out of this.

JOSH: Yeah...

They follow the corridor, led by the growing gloomy note of the wind.



SEASIDE DRAINAGE OUTLET: A chickenwire mesh screens the steady flow of sludge arcing out over a sandy inlet. There's a wavering in the stream as bare hands grasp the mesh, tearing it asunder. Nick emerges first, dropping to the murky puddle fed by the outlet. Josh pokes a cautious head out and joins him on the sandbar. The ocean makes itself known with a subdued dashing of froth to the shoreline.



BAYVILLE BEACH, DUSK: Josh and Nick walk along the deserted shore, keeping an eye on the upcoming township.

JOSH: I don't see any boats.

NICK: I think there's a harbor coming up around this bend.

JOSH: You said that the last bend.

NICK: It's Bayville, there's gotta be... bays.

The staccato of summer rain pelts the surrounding beach.

NICK: How bout that. At least it's washing the shit off.

JOSH: Smells like rain.

NICK: I love that smell.

A faint bark nips the air, barely audible.

JOSH: This is good, we're not seeing any of them, right?

NICK: We haven't seen anything since we got out here, Human or Dogrider.

The rain is picking up, and already a a gray cloud brews overhead.

JOSH: Maybe they all left.

NICK: And went where? I don't get it. And why would they go after us in the first place? We didn't do anything to them. I loved my dog! And where's the armies? Where's the guys who're supposed to be saving our asses?

Nick trips, falling hard into the sand.

JOSH: You OK?

NICK: I'll live.

JOSH: Look what you hit.

Both pairs of eyes come to rest on a SHOVEL, partially emerging from the dunes.

NICK: Alright.

He picks it up, examining the blade as rain streaks patterns on the metal.

NICK: Could be a good weapon, right?

All the color has dropped from Josh's face, his mouth slightly agape.

NICK: Well, I think it could be.

Josh's head is shaking ever so slightly, as if in stunted disbelief.

NICK: Hey, quit it.

Nick turns the shovel blade so that it reflects to him what Josh is actually staring at: a dark shape approaching behind them. Nick turns to see the hundred or so feet between him and TWO EXTRA-LARGE EXTRA-VICIOUS DOGRIDERS. The Dogriders approach slowly in full-on hunt mode. There's a dark shaggy one and a pure white wolf-like one, the pair forming some kind of nightmarish yin-yang amidst the growing storm. Nick raises his shovel in a ready position.

NICK: Josh, I want you to run, run to the ocean and do not look back, got it?

JOSH: Nick?

NICK: You're gonna swim out as far as you can as quickly as possible, understand? And do not, look, back.

JOSH: Nick, what are you doing?

NICK: Josh, I'm sorry to raise my voice again buT RUNNNNN! GO! GET OUT OF HERE, RUN!

DOGRIDERS: BROUF! BROUF! BROUF! BROUF! BROUF! BROUF!

NICK: GO,WHAT ARE YOU DOING, GO!

Josh tumbles backwards but snaps into a sprint as the Dogriders begin to rush them.

DOGRIDERS: BROUF! BROUF! BROUF!

Nick swipes at the black Dogrider, slamming it aside with an astounding impact. The white Dogrider leaps past, keying in on Josh as his feet slap against the shoreline.

DOGRIDERS: BROUF! BROUF! BROUF! BROUF!

Nick raises his shovel high overhead, bringing it down hard on the felled Dogrider. For the first time ever, the horrific brown nub protruding from the Dogrider's back opens its infantile maw.

NUB: EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEH!!!

It's a horrific noise, the sound of bitter troll suffering amplified to an unnatural resonance. The sound stops the white Dogrider dead in it's tracks; it's a distress call of the highest order! The beast is momentarily stalled: does it go for Josh or return to help its downed huntingmate?

NUB: EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEH!!!

The white Dogrider doubles back with renewed anger.

DOGRIDERS: BROUF! BROUF!

Josh thrashes about in the choppy surf, bobbing among waves as the riptide pulls him farther out.

JOSH: NICK! NICK!!!

He swallows seawater as a wave slams into his face. Between the whitecaps and sheets of cold rain, he sees the white Dogrider lunge at Nick, knocking him to the ground.

JOSH: NICK!

He tries to swim back but the current is growing under the storm's power. His vision obscured in the brine, he catches one last glimpse of the white Dogrider and the recovered black Dogrider swarming their prey, now a mere red blob on the receding coast. Thunder erupts overhead as waves begin to blot out the shoreline. It's a struggle to merely keep afloat.

JOSH: NICK! NICK!!! NIIIIIIIIH-HIH-HIIIIIICK!!!

(end part 2)