Terror in the Central Market
1999-06-08 21:12:58
An innocent trip to the Central Market resulted in a severe attack of arachnophobia (and a meal) when a depraved street kid set her vicious pet spider on an unsuspecting shopper.
The shopper, yours truly, was selecting a new book when his arm and heartstrings were tugged by a doe-eyed beggar child. With my wallet out to pay for the book, I couldn't really ignore the malnourished youngster and I gave her a few hundred riel.
Turning back to complete my purchase, the tugging on my arm continued so I turned round to see the child giggling from a safe distance and a gut-twistingly evil spider on my arm. It was black and hairy and its fangs were dripping with poison. Its mesmerising movement was taking it up my arm… towards my face!
I must have mumbled some confused, high-pitched babble in my panic, but it quickly became clear that the devious arachnid was in cahoots with that sly beggar-girl vermin and I had better watch my wallet while fending off the eight-legged monster. I braced for a sideways sweep of my free arm that would knock it off and simultaneously project it into stamping distance, but the urchin deftly picked it off me and ran off with it, no doubt to scare the pants off some other foreigner. My wits slowly returned.
Everyone nearby was looking. The woman I'd been buying the book from shouted something stern at the child which seemed to satisfy everyone: The event was over, so checking that my wallet was in place, which it was, I headed to the Foreign Correspondent's Club for a restorative.
The next time I went to that market there were stalls selling the same hairy buggers deep fried in batter. I savoured a moment of satisfaction knowing what fate had claimed the savage beast and allowed myself a fiendish cackle. Deep-fried hairy spider tastes of fishy cauliflower, and apart from the crunchy exoskeleton, is soft like Mr Whippy.
Oliver
T O P S T O R I E S
The Future Ain't What It Used To Be
Ideas have taken horrifying shape and rooted into our modern reality. (More...)
The Once & Future King of Dust
Only The Onion could have acquired Infowarts. (More...)
Another Nobel Prize-Winning Author Describes Drunkenness
This book won a Pulitzer Prize. Here's its famous paragraph on getting drunk... (More...)
Why I'm pretty sure JD Vance had sex with a couch
True or false? The answers await us in that magical land where all truths are revealed -- the internet. (More...)
In 2010 Dr. Cheng-Huai Ruan discovered a way to cause a patient with an abnormal heartbeat to get back into a normal rhythm by sticking a finger up the patient's ass. (More...)
WKRP in Cincinnati aired from 1978 through 1982. Howard Hesseman played Dr. Johnny Fever, a DJ from Los Angeles who was fired from his previous job for saying the word "booger" on the air. In the show Hesseman would do some dialogue, introduce a song, and start the song. You'd hear a few notes, but never the whole song. (More...)
C L A S S I C P I G D O G
40 Acres, a Mule, and a Crummy 90-Second Spot on Weekend Update
Consider the plight of the Black Man. The Black Man on "Saturday Night Live," I mean. Has there ever been a more pathetic thing than a token unredeemed for 28 years? Where is the NAACP when you really need them? (More...)
The One I Feel Sorry For Is Joses
We've had a lot of Jesus coverage lately here at the PDJ. But let's face it, we're not exactly cutting-edge in this subject area. Jesus has been making headlines for, oh, I guess it's a couple thousand years now. Jesus is a very strong brand. Jesus has a lot of mindshare. (More...)
Skunk School -- Learn Why Not To Keep Skunks As Pets
There is an alarming trend in pet purchasing habits this fall. People inspired by the WWII film, "Life is Beautiful" -- the one with that annoying Italian guy -- are buying descented skunks by the millions. (More...)
Spock Went, Spock Wrote, Spock Kicked Ass
Every Labor Day weekend a large portion of the PDJ staff joins 30,000 other freaks at one of the biggest and strangest art festivals in the world - Burning Man - somewhere on the edge of the Black Rock Desert. Our base of operations is always the ultra swank Spock Mountain Research Labs - the World Leaders in Beverage Science and Leisure Technology. This year, we hauled up our computers, printers and a massive digital duplicator, determined to become Black Rock City's third daily newspaper. Even Spock was surprised by our success - news will never be viewed the same on the playa. Read all seven issues of the 2002 Spock Science Monitor for yourself and see why. (More...)
Body and Soul, a night of fucking in San Francisco
For the benefit of Pigdog readers, I took it upon myself to explore the deep frontiers of human behavior and attend a saucy festival of the flesh. This was no ordinary fete of carnal delights, dearie. (More...)
Patient Joab's scientifick editorial discusses aspect of the space-time-beer continuum never before processed by sub-bush-robot minds!!! Too fabulantastic to contempulate! (More...)