While perusing briefly through Hot Topic during one of my anthropological observation excursions to the mall, I noticed a little box on one of the shelves. Usually I'm not attracted, but repelled by cutesy goth stuff, like the little Death comic book dolls they sell. This one however, a doll with an oversize skull head and a tiny little body caught my attention, not because of the way it looked, although it looked amusing, but because of the name: "The thing wot squeaks." I suppose the skull must have a squeaky thing in it like a dog toy.

Several things about the name make it funny to me. The spelling of "wot" and its use as a relative pronoun struck me first, followed by the fact that such a phrase implies something menacing, such as "The thing wot comes in the night and gnaws on your more sensitive parts before beginning the main course", or "The thing wot slobbers and breathes down your neck as you walk through the forest alone." Squeaking just doesn't seem to cut it. I did not buy the product since the main thing that made it appealing to me, the concept, was free.

Unfortunately for my popularity rating, no one seems to think this nearly as funny as I do when I tell them about it. Maybe I should stop preceding the story with, "This is really fucking funny, or laughing while I'm trying to talk and repeating the name over and over again in an ominous voice when they don't seem to comprehend.

Maybe I'm just a hopeless geek.

This thing wot squeaks is called Spooky, and it is a small squeak toy owned by the character Tenna from the very witty Jhonen Vaquez's comic I Feel Sick (available from Slave Labor Graphics). I happen to own a Spooky toy, as any self-respecting Uber-goth would.

Not that I'm goth. Oh no.

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