![[tmbchr]™](/journal/popocculture-blog-logo.jpg){kind=logo}
What Am I Afraid Of?
Since I’m the target of so much criticism lately, I thought I’d toss in this latest email from a reader:
How can you expect anyone to take you seriously when you swear so much? Of course adding fuck, shit, and damn helps to get your point across doesn’t it. Anger and hate stems from fear… so what are you afraid of?
I told them I wasn’t, for one, afraid of people not taking me seriously. I hope they don’t really. I think sometimes people lose sight of the utter idiocy of calling oneself an “occult investigator”. I also don’t think that anger and hate stem from fear. In fact, I think they are each their own separate emotion, although oftentimes they get jumbled up together.
In any event, I also told them I thought this was a presumptuous question on their part. Would you go up to the man on the street and ask him what he was afraid of? But since we’re being presumptuous and making personal statements about me lately, have at it. Here’s your chance to psychoanalyze me. Tell me what I’m afraid of. Or tell me what you’re afraid of.
July 19th, 2005 at 1:42 am
When I speak before classes, I make an effort to clean up the potty mouth. But I intentionally let a few curse words or bar jokes off when the class doesn’t expect it. I have found that it allows the students to relate to me more and doesn’t make the lecture so huffy-puffy.
As for fears, I can’t explain it but I am deathly fucking afraid of ghouls and zombies.
Even in The Simpsons Halloween special where Ned Flanders is a zombie or, god forbid, Resident Evil, I get shivers up my spine. My friend Tara and I went to see the remake of Dawn of the Dead. I felt like I had a stroke and she cried in the washroom for five minutes after the movie ended. It didn’t help that we saw the late show at West Edmonton Mall and, upon leaving the theatre, it was a similarly desolate setting as was portrayed in the movie.
Zombies are scary, scary shit.
July 19th, 2005 at 1:45 am
As for Tim… I bet he’s afraid to grow up to be the guy in the Ultraculture® Mayan weenie image.
July 19th, 2005 at 4:51 am
I’m terrified of occult investigators asking me what I’m afraid of, knowing that they have the frightening resources to find out my every secret and that their asking is just to distract me from this fact.
July 19th, 2005 at 8:09 am
Back to the original letter–what do hate and fear have to do with “bad” words??? That’s a huge non sequitur jump in that letter from one to the other.
A better question would be why many people these daysautomatically brand anything they don’t agree with, especially indignation from political opponents, as “hate”. For instance, that’s a popular ad hominem conservative attack on people who get indignant at conservative shell-games and fraud.
July 19th, 2005 at 8:34 am
I’d say one of Tim’s biggest fears has got to be these fuckwits that keep bothering him becoming a majority of the readership here.
Tim, keep on cussin’ - just shows you’re not making shit up but actually conveying to us what you’re thinking.
July 19th, 2005 at 9:13 am
I’m afraid the world will become overrun with tight-ass plonkers, who think dropping the F-bomb invalidates the thousands of other interesting insights you discuss on this blog.
July 19th, 2005 at 11:50 am
fuck shit fuck fuck fuck shit.
um, i think you are scared of………. somehing to do with art.
i like your artwork, and wonder why its not somehing you push heavier…
and i only say that because i know how it is with my music…
one
human?
July 19th, 2005 at 12:00 pm
i’m afraid of white people.
really, tho’, when i was a kid, i was utterly terrified of aliens (greys & whatnot). never been abducted, but i had this love/hate relationship with the scariness of abduction accounts. i’d have to keep the lights on until 4 am, because for some reason i thot i’d be safe after 4 am.
i’m w/m– what a silly leap from cussing to hate/anger to fear. hell, most of the time that i use fuckshitdamn words it’s got nothin’ to do w/anger or hatred.
July 19th, 2005 at 12:06 pm
Yeah, when I saw Fire in the Sky we wanted to rally the troops, get out the bats, and go find ourselves some E.T.s to feed to the dogs.
Love the power of anti-extraterretrial propaganda.
July 19th, 2005 at 12:16 pm
Aye, I was scared of the whole alien business for a while, too. I just hid under the covers. That was miserable in the summers, but it saved me (because blankets can protect you from everything). Anything with empty (or even just impenetrable) eyes creeps me out -especially if it stares at me or gets too close. My worst nightmares for a long while came after watching Star Trek VI. You know the part where the space suit gal comes and kills all the Klingons, and they’re floating around in their blood? I don’t know why that was so scary. Perhaps the idea of getting slaughtered by a alien (faceless spacesuit, unstoppable phaser rays), the loss of a root when you don’t have gravity…
July 19th, 2005 at 12:19 pm
Partly inspired by you, Tim, I’ve decided from now on I will use the word “fuck” exactly once in every essay.
When I was five years old I had a dream that I was walking down a stairway carved into the earth, and it was easy to take a step down but almost impossible to step back up, so I kept getting deeper into darkness while up above my family was walking farther and farther away. What I’m afraid of is any situation that is easier to get into than to get out of.
July 19th, 2005 at 12:47 pm
i had a dream once where i was looking through the curtains of our dining room out into the dark night and i saw the face of an owl. it was the scariest thing i`d ever experienced in my young life. i still think about it sometimes. i was terrified. i have read the ufo/abduction take on the owl, and thier position is that it`s a screen memory. i can`t say it`s not. i know the feeling of terror remains.
i am afraid of deep water. there is something religiously awesome about the deep mass of a vast river from the vantage point of a bridge or the side of a large ship. i`m not concerned about the hieght though. i walked onto the glass floor of the c.n. tower in toronto without a concern. the security guard admitted that it took him months to get up the nerve.my sister crawled out on her butt to take a picture. irrational yet functional.
i think that our fears are invisible to us, for the most part. they are invisible fences around our lives that on one hand are protection and the other a limiting factor that stops us going where we want to go.
sometimes you just have to dare yourself past the fear.
i used to have a horrid fear of public speaking. i have been physically ill as a result. it was a huge barrier in my work. once i willed myself through the fear and into the endorphin high of talking to groups my life changed. i use that change in myself as a tool for helping others to change too. a shock to the system can be a powerful catylist for positive change, if managed properly. like tim leary said, it`s all about mood, dosage and setting.
July 19th, 2005 at 4:52 pm
i love public speaking! i also love that part in star trek VI with the floating blood. i remember it so vividly. it really blew my mind. as ive written about elsewhere, i was always terrified of aliens. but also gremlines and also A.L.F and also realistic puppets. i think there was some puppet news show for a while during the late 80’s that scared the living crap out of me. i was really freaked out about drowning as a kid and still can’t swim. ive recently started getting weird about heights. im not sure when it happened, but ive been playing this game with myself to get over it just before i go to sleep where i imagine that i am standing on one foot on top of the wire that is at the top of the empire state building. for a split second, i look down in my imagination and i get that rush of fear. but i try to imagine myself falling and that’s not scary for some reason.
July 19th, 2005 at 6:24 pm
I was scared of aliens for a long time, the same thing as Jeremy, staying up late in the night. But reading things like the Mothman Prophecies and Communion, etc., have actually helped me get over it. Just learning about them and forcing myself to confront them head-on makes them lose some of their power, maybe?
When i was little I was scared of the lady who had a computer take over her body in Superman III. Does anyone remember that?
July 19th, 2005 at 9:42 pm
Hmm, I must be in some minority. Never was (and still not) afraid of aliens.
My biggest fear is being alone. Utterly alone, with no one around at all. I think I must have some co-dependency issues or something. Any nightmare that I have consists in some way of me being alone, whether it’s just that nobody will take notice of me like I’m invisible (and inaudible) or there literally are no people around but me.
Heh, Garrett, that’s interesting. I don’t know if it’s the same Superman movie or not, but the one where the machine turned Superman evil scared the crap out of me. Went to see it in the movies when it came out. I think I was like 6 or 7. I don’t remember which movie, so I don’t know when it came out and can’t say for certain how old I was. Anyway, that whole idea of Superman turning bad just scared me. Good was supposed to always stay good, ya know? I think I had a few nightmares about that for a few weeks after seeing the movie.
July 20th, 2005 at 1:11 am
i’m afraid of normal. no, really i am. and not just normal things, but the whole concept and the word itself.
whenever someone says “normal” some bad shit is about to go down. they always say “he seemed so normal”, and “gee, it was normal this morning” and things like that.
if someone says “oh that’s normal” you’d better believe it isn’t.
July 20th, 2005 at 8:06 am
I am afraid these comments didn’t turn out as interesting as I thought they might.
Actually, my largest fear is claustrophobia. Can’t abide even the thought of tight places. Aliens, random violence, peak oil, terrorist attacks, atom bombs, ebola, apocolypses and the rest don’t bug me too much.
I have a decent imagination and can conjure up the image of a tight spot in my mind and I will feel claustrophobic. Anyone recall that part in Anne Rice’s The Vampire Lestat where he has to crawl through that tunnel each morning, dragging a cement plug behind him and seal himself in the center of his tower? Whenever I want to evoke some fear in myself I just think of that scene.
I am also afraid that Ran will not finish his book which I thought was good except for the part where the baby switched from suckling a raccon to a dog (or was it coyote?).
July 20th, 2005 at 9:59 am
Hey Tim,
My biggest fear is censorship! Of anything really, but especially your site! Long live the first amendment!
July 23rd, 2005 at 6:07 am
I like your use of the occassional expletive. It gives you that “John Constantine” edge, and definitely shows you don’t take yourself *too* seriously - something I (and far too many in the occult world) need to work on myself!
July 23rd, 2005 at 2:09 pm
Yes, censorship is a very bad idea. For a look at truth and reality–something to stick in your own face and confront the programming of your mind, visit:
http://www.evilbible.com
July 23rd, 2005 at 2:10 pm
Are you afraid?