Clusters of small holes present no obvious danger, yet they induce a primal fear reserved for snakes and death. A recent study only augments the mystery, raising more questions than it answers. Trypophobia is a discovery, not an illness, an encounter with terrible wisdom, the first step on a convoluted path to some dark enlightenment. Found so often in nature, object of apprehension and meditation throughout the ages, this pattern is a symbolic code. Some Call It Trypophobia deciphers it and reckons with the message.



Everyday life is more terrifying and bizarre than vampires or zombies. A potent narcotic called Routine numbs you from its primordial strangeness. The essay and stories in this collection peel away the thick callus of familiarity, revealing the world in all its raw horror.



Join the Sentinels of the Chandelier. The idea that enlightenment requires a seated posture of meditation is wishful thinking. Accessing the Chandelier of Consciousness, the transcendent mind of which each sentient being is a crystal, demands great exertion and danger. The first amendment protects freedom of religion but not felonies. (Based on an undercover exposé.)



Why does a man climb a mountain? To taste the distilled essence of life, to glimpse the clandestine maneuvers of his soul, and to learn the illusory nature of personal identity from a prehistoric ground sloth. (Inspired by a disastrous attempt on Denali.)



Defilers of burrows, scourges of the underworld, are Dachshunds not magnificent? Yet it comes as a surprise that the purpose of creation is them, not us. When you meet a wandering sage and his wiener dog, worse news follows. Apparently Schrödinger did not have a cat. (This story has been expanded to convenient novel size.)



Letting your girlfriend drag you to Burning Man, what were you thinking? Her brainless ideas -- foolish in theory, disastrous in practice, subjected to the analytic rigor of a child at Chuck E. Cheese’s -- why don’t you act as the brake of sanity? This is worse than meeting her parents. (Inspired by events that would have made Sophocles groan.)