Craptastical Amerikana

Sometimes on Saturdays, I just have to watch a little Lawrence Welk. There are several reasons.
• I adore real hoofers and Lawrence sometimes has them.
• If you don’t know your history you might repeat it.
• One needs to study his audiences to understand a large chunk of America or at least their parents.
• I have a thing for brass and clarinets.

Today, however, I tuned in for a few minutes, long enough to see the schmaltziest version ever of “Tie A Yellow Ribbon”, and that's gotta be some serious schmaltz. After which I proclaimed “That was craptastic” and switched to some heavy Gregory Peck/Telly Savalas B&W movie. Could it be the original Cape Fear? If it's not it seems very similar.

Edit: Amazing, I was right. My film noire credentials suck, I'm just not a film person. That was a damn good movie though.

I recently was told that spiders molt. This makes me sad as I had assumed all those carcasses were dead spiders. Dead of natural causes, we don’t kill ‘em. I appreciate the wonderfulness of spiders, I just have major arachnophobia.
Now I realize that all those carcasses just mean their former owners have gotten bigger.
We let the spindly ones I call ghost spiders live pretty much wherever they want, but the wolf spiders, which it turns out I’m allergic to, they have to go outside. One of Hosha’s (my cat) titles is Spiderbane. She used to go down to the basement at night and kill wolf spiders. Then she would carry them up and line them up next to the bed. One had to watch their step upon arising.

I made a complete fool of myself the other day, folding a tarp in the yard. A spider carcass got on my hand and I just started screaming. I tried so very hard to not. I really did. I just couldn’t help myself. The neighbor was staring at me and the worst part was having to confess it was dead.
I mention this because I just found such a conglomeration of arachnid carcasses all wound together in a register vent, such a jumble of jointed legs and web. The fear must just be primeval. Like the fear of the rattle and the blade.