I have had many fears in my life but I now have one that tops them all. We’ll get to the new one in a moment. For now I think I should divulge some of my more eccentric fears. I have conquered my fear of slate and the occasional deer-phobia. I have mostly ignored the long standing thought that my water tastes vaguely like bats and that I am secretly working for and being controlled by my dog. I also believe that she (my dog, not the bats) might be telekinetic. Telekinetic bats are a different phobia. My belief that my dog is telekinetic is based on the fact that my dog stands and stares at the door and it eventually opens. Of course it’s me that opens the door but that hardly takes away from my telekinetic dog fears theory. Also, my dog’s food bowl does occasionally fill itself after she has focused exclusively on food thoughts for several hours. She usually accomplishes this by standing three inches away from the bowl with a fixed and determined look while she silently thinks what I believe to be: “Fill now! OK Now! OK NOw! OK NOW!” I’m pretty sure this is what she is thinking but I’m not necessarily sure how often she is thinking these thoughts. It might be an irregular thought filled by long stretches of emptiness, kind of similar to Wyoming, or it might be like the guy on the cell phone commercials, “Can you hear me now?” I’m honestly not really sure.
Speaking of the “Can you hear me now?” guy, I was scared of him too. I actually began to believe that when I turned off my television and could no longer hear him now, that I was having problems with my cellular network. Either that or maybe I couldn’t hear him now because I didn’t pay my cell phone bill again. As you can probably tell, confusion reigns in my world even when it’s sunny.
I’ve wandered long enough. Now to reveal my newest fear. It will sound strange for the first few minutes but as this thought festers in the crevices of your grey matter you will understand the truly horrifying consequences of what I’m about to say. The ShamWow can be used by terrorists! Ok, ok stop laughing for a moment and think about it. What if the terrorists are sitting around right now with their terrorist thoughts and making a ShamWow that will be big enough to soak up the world’s oceans. It says right on the infomercial that it can soak up to twenty times its own weight in fluid. I’ve done some inexact calculations (I’ve been drinking since sometime this afternoon) and discovered that the terrorists would only need a ShamWow that is twenty times larger than the oceans of the world to complete this task! Ha, ha! Who’s laughing now?
As I have proven before, mostly through my math grades in college, I’m no mathematician. But I know for a fact that water covers approximately seventy percent of the Earth. Therefore, the terrorists only need a ShamWow that is twenty percent of that seventy percent, right? By my calculation that means the terrorists only need a ShamWow roughly the size of the Southern Hemisphere to soak up our world’s oceans. Ummmm. Right. About that drinking since noon thing.
OK, fine, maybe this is closer to a Dr. Evil from Austin Powers strategic plan, but that is hardly the point. I mean, Dr. Evil is a terrorist too, right? And Vince from the ShamWow commercial could be a secret agent for Dr. Evil, right? They admit in the infomercial that the ShamWow is actually made in Germany and, I hate to point fingers here, but the Germans have a bit of a rough recent history. There was this thing a few years back. It was big in the papers. Anyway. Worry about this terrorist threat for what it’s worth. As Vince from ShamWow says right in the infomercials, “Are you following me camera guy?” Ah crap, camera guys following me. This is obviously German secret code woven into an infomercial that will become another senseless phobia for me. Thanks a lot ShamWow.
