It’s a hell of a thing, killing a spider.

Actually, NO IT’S NOT.

It’s a service to humanity, for we are burdened enough with terrors and frights in this day and age. This modern world of ours  is fraught with things, we are told, that put us in peril. Drive-by shootings, Russians with the bomb, CRACK BABIES!

Wait now…that’s the 1983 list of perils. That was a good year. Yeah, boy, they don’t make looming disaster like that anymore! Does anyone remember that mini-series The Day After?  Soviet Russia bombing middle America? Holy shit I was never so glad not to live in Kansas. I created a makeshift bomb shelter in our dog’s kennel shortly after watching that. Duchess did not warm to my company, though I never determined if this was due to her inability to open canned goods, or the way I talked openly about the necessity of eating pets in a nuclear aftermath.

Never mind, it’s 2010 now and we have perils  far more sophisticated than 1983 ever imagined. Back then, we worried constantly about the Russians, and their sinister plans to vaporise us and take away our shopping malls and drive-in theatres.  I often imagined Soviet generals hunched over maps, with tell-tale red push pins indicating all the decadent Western shopping malls they would take out. Then they would come for the drive-ins. After this, Western governments would teeter on the verge of capitulation, until a plucky bunch of teenagers took on the entire Red Army and won!  (Hollywood has often been my comfort in times of peril. ) And then there were  the Iranians and their Islamic Revolution. Religious zealots who also had their eye on our malls and drive-ins.

But it’s no longer 1983, and things have changed. In these unsure times, where we have so much to worry about on top of Russians and Iranians, people should not have to hesitate to squash a spider. If you have ever walked face first into a web inhabited by some fat, leggy fucker, you know what I am talking about.  Consider it the removal of one small peril that you can take charge of. One little fright in your day that the Russians and Iranians have no control over.

Or DO THEY?

We all knew it.

[note: I see the its-it's thing in the title. it's a trick of the font used there. Greater minds than mine will have to work on that. ]