Obscure Phobias

Tonight I watched a bit of Tosh.o on Comedy Central. I'm not a huge fan of Tosh, as I  find rape jokes to be in poor taste, but I couldn't reach the remote control and was too energy-depleted to get up and retrieve it. I knew that at some point one of my parents would come into my room and turn my TV off for me. I'm not above taking advantage of a temporary illness to engage in the simple act of laziness.

Anyway, while I shouldn't enjoy watching Tosh.o, not just for his denigration of victims of sexual crimes but for his overall irreverence and disrespect for many of society's weak and defenseless individuals, I cannot help sometimes finding him funny. (That's probably why I find him funny.) Tonight he was taking shots at ventriloquists. I dislike ventriloquists beyond a level  which I can rationally articulate.  When I was two, my parents took my brother and me to a ventriloquist performance. The entire experience exceeded my creepiness tolerance factor to the degree that I cried hysterically and had to be taken out of the auditorium by my father while my mom and my twin brother stayed inside and thoroughly enjoyed the ventriloquist's performance. Such was very typical. My brother loved mimes  and ventriloquists, yet was afraid he would be sucked into the sewer if he happened to be standing too close to (or, God forbid, sitting on) the toilet while it flushed. Go figure.

Daniel Tosh said that the technical name for a ventriloquist phobia is automatonophobia. Tosh, on the other hand,  thought that a fear of ventriloquists should simply be called "normal." I'm inclined to agree with Tosh on this one.

Learning the term automatonophobia inspired me to research other lesser-known phobias. One such phobia is ablutophobia, a so-called irrational  fear of washing, cleaning, or bathing. Is the use of the word irrational in the description of this condition not redundant? How would fear of washing oneself be considered rational in any sense of the word? Furthermore, a much more realistic phobia would be the fear of individuals with ablutophobia.  I certainly wouldn't want to be stuck next to one of such phobics on a crowded airplane or anywhere else.

    I don't know what particular phobia she has, but she clearly is suffering from one or more..

There is an actual word describing the fear of palindromes. The word happens to be aibohphobia. Seriously, who has time to make up such terms? Is this included in any volume of the DSM? If so, this is proof positive that mental health professionals are, in addition to in possession of too much time on their hands, more sanity-challenged than is the population they purport to serve.

Amaxophpobia has been described  an extreme fear of sitting inside any type of moving vehicle. I have a solution for individuals suffering from this affliction: time travel, as in back to the time before the invention of the wheel. The problem with my solution, of course, is that time travel would involve sitting inside some sort of moving vehicle, The cure is probably worse than the disease in this particular case.

Geliophobia is an [again irrational] fear of being around people who laugh. If person is paranoid, which is a  diagnosis in itself , and the person thinks he or she is the subject of the laughter because of ridicule, this is odd but understandable. Otherwise, as far as gelioophobia is concerned, what a miserable way to live.

Bufonophobia is an excessive fear of toads. I don't particularly appreciate toads, though I don't think my dislike or fear quite meets the criteria necessary for diagnosis of this condition, which is unfortunate, as I otherwise might qualify for hundreds of dollars in monthly income in the form of SSI money if it did.  I selected this particular phobia from the list of hundreds simply because it caused me to think of  the name "Joey Buttafuoco."

Believe it or not, there is an actual term describing the fear of people who are overweight. Cacomorphobia is the term. Australia actor Jesse Spencer, formerly of House and presently featured on Chicago Fire, reportedly suffers from this phobia.  Is it written into his contract with NBC or Dick wwolfe or with whomever he is formally contracted that he is not required to rescue any fat people  on Chicago Fire.?  Or dies he have no issue with fat males but only fat women?  Is it simply Jesse's excuse to surround himself with hot chicks? Exactly what might Jesse fear from fat people? That one might sit on him and crush his svelte body?

Chirophobia is a strange and unexplained fear of hands. My suggestion here is for a person suffering from this phobia to relocate  to the mideast, in particular to where people frequently commit crimes for which extremities are cut off. Not everyone in any locale would be without hands, obviously, as who would cut off the hands of the so-deserving if absolutely no one there were n possession of hands  but a far greater percentage would be hand-free than would be found in most pars of the word, save a few highly primitive leper colonies located on isles in the tropics?  (This reminds me of the old "Bob & Tom radio program faux soap opera [set in the mideast]  All My Children Are Missing Extremities which ran either before or right after The Guiding Shiite.

Hagiophobia is an intense fear of saints and holy things. In today's world, it should not be all that difficult to find places where few saints or holy things abound. I'm not buying into this one. In years past, maybe it was for real, but for now, one must merely stay away from churches (and even some of them are relatively free of saints or anything remotely holy), sanctimonious republicans, and the sort of Portuguese people who insist upon setting up shrines in their front yards.

Koumpounophobia is a fear of buttons.  My suggestion to anyone suffering from this malady is to buy pull-over shirts, sweat pants,  or clothing that zips or snaps. This isn't rocket science.

Medomalacuphobia is an [irrational] fear of inability to maintain an erection.  My thug school restroom attacker apparently did not have this condition. His was not an irrational fear. He really couldn't maintain his erection, or at least couldn't do so once I threw up in front of him. The most fitting analogy I can make here is that a person does not possess an inferiority complex if the person truly is inferior.  The thug really couldn't maintain his erection;  his fear, therefore, was rational. There are drugs that could help him with this problem, but for the well-being of the females of  world,  I hope he never gains access to any of them.

Hundreds of phobias have been listed, and probably an equal number have been omitted. See the site http://www.buzzle.com/articles/list-of-all-phobias-and-their-meanings.html#g  for additional information. Not all phobias have yet to be identified or given names, nor do they need to be.  When my mom was in private practice as a therapist, she had a client who had an irrational fear of getting stuck in a drive-through lane at a bank, fast-food restaurant, or other place of business. My mother told the woman it would  cease to be a problem if the  woman would simply park her car and go inside the establishment to conduct her business. (Again, it ain't rocket science. Sorry for the use of the word ain't, Mom and Dad, but I felt like using it.) It would be better for the environment  not to spew exhaust fumes with one's automobile into the air we all must breather while waiting one's turn in a drive-though lane, anyway.

The list is so exhaustive that it must stop somewhere. Now is a fitting time and place.

"They're coming to take me away, ha haaah
         -- by Jerry Samuels, recorded under the name Napoleon XIV

#  the non-artist still known as Alexis

Superman

Tonight when it was time for me to go to bed, my dad was engrossed in a movie and my brother wasn't home. I can't yet make it upstairs on my own, and my mom can't carry me upstairs. I could have whined until my dad interrupted his movie carried me upstairs, but I decided for just this once to be selfless and to watch the remainder of my dad's movie with him. It was on some movie channel, so he couldn't have stopped it and restarted it when he finished transporting me up the stairs. (We have a DVR but not Tivo.)

Even though I wasn't the one who chose the movie and wasn't actually watching it with any genuine interest, I'm still slightly embarrassed to admit what the movie was, but it's hard to explain from where I'm coming without divulging the title of the movie, so I'll share. My dad was watching Superman, and I actually watched the last portion of it with him. It's hard to even concentrate on what's happening on the screen anyway with that particular movie, because it features the late Christopher Reeve. I for one cannot watch a movie with Christopher Reeve in it without becoming extremely depressed about the poor guy becoming a quadriplegic and then dying, and then his wife dying of cancer, leaving behind a little kid. Then if Christopher reeve were not depressing enough, there's poor Margo Kidder playing Lois Lane. Ms. Kidder had and possibly continues to have major mental health issues that have ravaged her quality of life.

But I digress.  Depressing stories of the movie's actors notwithstanding, I must return to the original point of this post, which is that Superman was one of the most asinine movies ever made, yet my father took it all in as though he was having some sort of a religious experience. It could have been Saving Private Ryan or Dr. Zhivago when considering the intensity with which he viewed the movie.  Even though no one else was present to witness the spectacle, I was positively embarrassed for my father, and by extension, for myself.

My father refuses to watch TV medical dramas or sitcoms. This is all perfectly fine. He's ensconced in the inner workings of the medical field all day long during every work day, much as I am ensconced in a rather dysfunctional family all day long when I am not in school and in an incompetent school system when I am at school.  Why in hell would I want to watch TV dramas or sitcoms about dysfunctional families or incompetent  educational institutions when those are what I live day after day?  So it's understandable that my father would not choose as a diversion to watch a TV program about his profession. Quite frankly, I would wonder even more about his sanity than I already do if he did choose to watch medical dramas and sitcoms. It's his reason for avoiding them and complaining when anyone else chooses to watch them that utterly baffles me. My father refuses to watch TV programs in hospital settings because they're not realistic!!! Did you get that bombshell? TV dramas and sitcoms aren't  true-to-life in every detail. Remember, you read it here first.


Just so the significance of my dad's issue with medical dramas and sitcom is not lost, allow me to be more specific. My dad absolutely detests  House -- both the character and the program. It seems that it wasn't realistic enough for him. Let's take the premise of House for starters. A university hospital decides to have a multimillion-dollar diagnostics department in which at least four doctors (except for the time when all Dr, House's underlings quit on him and he was forced to provide diagnoses with only the assistance of a hospital janitor) and God knows how many nurses and technicians work for days at a time solving just one case involving just one patient.  The title character breaks virtually  every known hospital policy on almost an hourly basis. House is a consummate ass who treats almost everyone deplorably, yet his shortcomings are forgiven because he nearly always comes up with the solution to each week's patient's health crisis just in the nick of time before the patient dies. (Just to keep the show from being too formulaic, every once in awhile a patient dies, then House comes up with the solution.) He's essentially a psychopath.  Bad science attempts to masquerade as bona fide medicine.  (A protozoan is not a fungus. Even Jesse Spencer knows that!) Nothing about this show relates in any way to the real world of medicine. And I haven't even touched upon the season when House assembled an entire room full of doctors in a surreal reality-show like competition to determine who next could join his band of outlaw physicians.  The show has (or had; it's final episode aired last spring) absolutely nothing to do with realism or with the actual world of medicine, diagnostic or otherwise. People who watched it did so because the characters were compelling, the dialogue was clever and humorous, and the plot, though incredibly far-fetched, was intriguing. Enough said.

So my father  is not content simply to stay away from the TV when House is on, but rather, takes his vendetta against House, Grey's Anatomy, or even old Dr.  Kildare  reruns, to a level that can best be described as rabid evangelical extremism. He's like the leader of the al-Qaeda of TV Medical Programming Reality. I've seen him attempting to having a rational discussion with a two-year-old about how a resident physician would never have time for so much adulterous sex as is portrayed on Grey's Anatomy. (No one else but my ex-boyfriend's baby brother would listen to him.) He practically foams at the mouth if forced to remain in the room while an episode of Scrubs airs.

So one would be justified in assuming that my dad has an aversion to any programming whatsoever in which the subject matter is portrayed with anything but the utmost technical accuracy. I might have thought so as well, but I've seen the man sitting on the edge of the sofa, gazing at the screen in  practically a hypnotic state, shoving popcorn into his mouth as Superman throws down boulders to create a makeshift dam when an earthquake destroys the existing one, or flies at the speed of light against the Earth's orbital direction in order to reverse time so that Lois Lane's death can be undone.  It's truly mind-boggling and more than just a little bit scary that a man charged with decoding the mysteries of blood and lymphatic malignancies can be entertained with such mindless drivel.

Good night, all, and remember that it's only one-hundred-twenty-three days until election day.