Previously in Taking You Up On That Offer: Tim Curry and Morgan Freeman Finally Read The Phone Book Out Loud Together.
One of these days — and that day is closer than you might think — everyone and everything that you’ve ever called “my spirit animal” is going to show up at your doorstep and make you go on a vision quest, and it’s going to be awful. It will last for months. You’ll be alone in the wilderness, covered in dirt, and you’ll be cold, and you’ll be hungry. You will hallucinate. Not fun Burning Man hallucinations either. Messed-up primal hallucinations, like the kind Buffy had when she dreamed about the First Slayer.
“Sorry,” the GIF of a Rupaul’s Drag Race contestant and 1960s-era Joan Didion will say in pitiless chorus as you stretch out your arms and beg for water. “You invoked us as your spirit animals. Fasting and sensory deprivation prepare the mind for enlightenment. This is how it works.”
And it won’t stop there, because you’ve never just called ONE THING your spirit animal and left it at that. They’re all going to want a turn, even that fifteen-second clip of Gore Vidal being interviewed by William Buckley.
“Please,” you’ll beg, covered in ram’s blood. “I don’t want to learn any more spells. I don’t want this.” TOO BAD, the gaping mouth of Seth Cohen making an awkward turtle face will soundlessly intone. YOUR SPIRIT ANIMALS ARE HERE.
Seventeen different photo sets of Jennifer Lawrence saying something relatable will thrust poison berries at you. Eat them, they will hiss. Death is your gift.
Liz Lemon and Dorothy from The Golden Girls and a thousand other matronly, charmingly curmodgeonly white women of a certain age descend upon you with knives and glazed eyes. “Pain will purify,” they chant. “Pain will help you to ascend.”
Why couldn’t I have just said I liked these things, you think desperately to yourself, while you are still capable of conscious thought. Why did I have to bring spirit animals into it?
The enormous face of Donna Meagle from Parks & Recreation will appear on the horizon instead of the sun as the world around you is plunged into darkness. She speaks, and every tree in the forest that surrounds you is instantly wreathed in flames. Ron Swanson’s luminous, grinning face rises jaggedly in the east. The two of them war for dominance; she consumes his head whole and entire, then vomits forth a river of blood so hot it shears through mountains and burns right through your skin.
“Stop hitting yourself,” the ghost of Dorothy Parker will say. You will not be able to stop hitting yourself. “You asked for a spirit animal. Isn’t this what you wanted?” Everything hurts.
“No, I — I just sort of meant that I thought you were cool,” you whisper. “I thought it just meant you thought something was cool. I didn’t know I had to do anything. I didn’t know you would come here.”
“That’s not how spirit animals work,” the darkness replies just before it claims you.
[Image via Wikimedia Commons]
Tags: how many buffy quotes did you spot, nothing is your spirit animal, taking you up on that, this is categorized as humor but i am damn serious
Maybe you could just release a book of beautifully-bound Toast posts next Hallowe’en summarizing the first year of being permitted to tag things “taking you up on that” or “this is categorized as humor but i am damn serious”?
Would buy.
“the GIF of a Rupaul’s Drag Race contestant and 1960s-era Joan Didion”
Mallory and The Toast totally have my number.
this is why I never called anything my spirit animal, I knew this would happen
YES thank you Mallory. this is the greatest and best.
this is like a tumblr acid trip. I would definitely eat poison berries that Jennifer Lawrence thrusted at me tho.
This post didn’t really apply to me until Donna Meagle was mentioned… (guilty)
Oh, awesome. I saw the title and thought, “oh, no, not The Toast, too, with the ‘spirit animal’ nonsense,” but my fear was immediately proven baseless. Trust was restored. The love circle remains unbroken.
great piece, btw. I do not know how you produce so much good material on a daily basis.
100% agreed.
I don’t know either, except that I think I would function on a higher plane of consciousness too, after the Great Mini Horse Encounter of 2013
Mine would just be my cat, so that’s cool.
This is beautiful. I spotted two, maybe three Buffy quotes?
If only all gross cultural appropriation could be dealt with in such a manner!
“So you’re claiming that your great-great grandmother was a Cherokee Princess…”
“Kali is going to stomp your ass for wearing that bindi thoughtlessly..”
Oh my god, Mallory Ortberg is my spirit animal. Why aren’t you writing novels, you beautiful writer, you!
You are invoking powers beyond your control.
Nice try, Mallory, but I’m still not convinced that invoking 1) Stationmaster Tama or 2) any healthy red panda cub as a spirit animal is a bad idea.
ok have fun watching a red panda cub eat your entrails for 49 hours until you achieve total consciousness
They don’t eat entrails! They only eat bamboo!
Also, I don’t know, it might be worth it:
Yeah but pretend that pumpkin is your severed head.
They eat *mostly* bamboo. They’ll eat entrails if they can get them.
What about all the small beautifully dressed children? Surely they will guide me through!
Damnit. Should have known. Those bitches get me every time.
So I agree that it’s annoying and gross when people call things their spirit animals, but if magic was real and I got to learn spells I would invoke spirit animals in a SECOND. I DO WANT TO LEARN MORE SPELLS, MALLORY.
The only thing I have ever called my spirit animal is an Orca.
Beautiful, murderous.
This cannot end well for me.
Your vision quest will take place in the sea.
I hope you can swim.
I can, but it’s going to be as cold as a Yeti’s balls.
I’m assuming those are cold.
And so, hypothermia.
Assuming the Yeti is a fast-moving mammal, it has a scrotum meant to keep its testicles slightly lower than the temperature of the rest of its body. I can only assume the Yeti’s normal body temperature is much warmer than its environment based on the prodigious amount of hair the Yeti possesses, as the function of hair is usually to retain body heat. Therefore the temperature of a Yeti’s balls would be quite warm indeed, perhaps even uncomfortably so.
However, as body-temperature effluent of several species has been known to freeze upon exposure in extremely cold enviroments, it may be possible for the Yeti to jizz icicles.
I just got a warning from the commenting system because I tried to like your comment more than once.
I am so glad I have only ever claimed a single spirit animal. Purple-eyed talking owl who knew the meaning of life and appeared to me in a dream in 2003, I AM READY FOR YOU.
It’s either Hogwarts or teaching you to fly before turning you into a goose, I think.
As might be obvious by my username, I give this post ALL THE LIKES.
This piece perfectly encapsulates the burning tide of very strong dislike when dumbasses call things their “spirit animal.” So much more fun to call things your Patronus or daemon anyway!
“This gif of a Rupaul’s Drag Race contestant is my daemon. That’s why I cry out in pain any time I’m more than 10 feet away from it.”
I stand by the abandoned train depot. It will wreath me in vines and graffiti and bind me to the tracks and I will succumb to the many wise lessons of the rolling stock.
I appreciate the Buffy references, but I have to point out that you missed an opportunity for a good FROM BENEATH YOU IT DEVOURS.
http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110210213…
I am now seriously reconsidering every instance over the past year in which I have claimed that Ke$ha is my spirit animal. It now seems like a fate worse than death.
You are right to reconsider things.
It’s not that bad, everyone, after I invoked Mystikal as my spirit animal I had the unique pleasure of being able to watch myself shake my ass.
I want to embroider this on a cushion. All of it.
Or maybe just
“Stop hitting yourself,” the ghost of Dorothy Parker will say. You will not be able to stop hitting yourself.
I want to embroider this on a cushion. All of it.
Or maybe just
“Stop hitting yourself,” the ghost of Dorothy Parker will say. You will not be able to stop hitting yourself.
I’ve never regretted relating to so many matronly, charmingly curmudgeonly white women of a certain age and other awkwardly adorable fictional characters. I’m also further reminded that my own “uniquely awkward and adorable brand of quirkiness” is actually quite manufactured and common in certain circles. Ego crushed, but in a necessary way.
The entire Tumblr world would just implode if they all read this. So many spirit animals on Tumblr.
Mallory Ortberg! – I really just wanted to find a way to message you, and tell you how amazing all of your writing is and how I love reading your stuff. Really. But I am being forced instead to do so from within the comments box 🙂 soooo. Mallory: Your writing. Its amazing. I am a fan.
Someone told me recently that I was their spirit animal and all I could think of was this and I am SO EXCITED.
Oh crap, I am going to be haunted by The Dude.
2014: the year mallory ortberg used her psychic powers to determine that i had, on multiple occasions, called her my spirit animal, and brought justice down on my head in the form of neverending nightmares