This is for Y’all with Styrofoam Phobias

Last week, as mentioned, SA had a terrible flu. Luckily, our new couch arrived on Monday so he could test it out and get it all germy. I got an email from him when I was at work, said something like:

“Ogod. Tomorrow on ‘Tyra Show’ – people who are afraid of clowns. I am totally recording this.”

I laughed, because surely he was feverish and would not do such a dirty, dirty thing.

Last night we watched the episode – one of a series about conquering phobias – where Tyra helped people face their fears of clowns, garden gnomes, ovens and styrofoam. Seems like in a previous show, Miss Tyra conquered her own dolphin fear and so wants to help America with the knowledge she has gained. The best part was when Tyra put prizes in the feared objects so that the people would be incented to dig on through their fears. (The psychologist consultant sat in the audience, gritting her teeth.)

The styrofoam lady had to dig through a closet full of styrofoam peanuts to get to a diamond necklace; (with a ruby on the other side of the pendant – for luck!) the garden gnome lady had to turn over a bunch of garden gnomes and find the one with the “Tyra” sticker to claim her trip to Ireland (too bad she had attributed her phobia to the trauma of watching ‘Leprechaun’ when she was 6 years old) and the girl afraid of ovens had to put cookies in an oven and take them out when they were done. Her reward was a trip to South Beach, which I’m told is the blingiest bling bling of it all. Bling.

There were two people afraid of clowns. Tyra went real in-depth with them. She brought out three clowns to do their things; unicycle, horn blowing, balloon twisting. Then she showed footage of one of the clowns (Laughy-pants. That was his name.) putting on his makeup, to show he was a real person, y’all. Then the clowns came back out and sat next to the phobic people on the couch and talked to them. Told them stories. Watched them twitch and sweat for a good 2 minutes.

And their prize? 4 tickets to the Barnum & Bailey Circus. Fuck you, Miss Tyra.

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We got one of these on the weekend, for the cost of our returned damage deposit and the remains of a gift card, so basically, for free!:

and I made these with it.

And it was all deeply, deeply satisfying.