unexpected predators

Checking my mailbox is always a treat; even though I rarely get anything good, there is always the possibility of finding a charming surprise. I’m curious where I got the idea that mail is awesome. Perhaps it was in childhood, when I was introduced to all sorts of charming ideas that later proved false. Like when I learned to love the cookie disco, only to later find out that cookies are a sometimes food.

My feeling, exactly.

Mostly, my mail is just junk. These days, my name seems to be on all sorts of weird mailing lists for companies I would never buy from, like children’s catalogs or Pottery Barn. Yet, even at the jaded age of almost-thirty, I have learned that I still have the capacity to be shocked by certain mailings, most recently a lengthy brochure titled “Free Guide to Control All Those Pesky Flies that Bug You.”

So I read this pamphlet, some thirty pages long, which included a detailed taxonomy of common flies. I lingered over the entry on the House Fly. While I was relieved to discover that their “fleshy sponging mouthparts” aren’t for biting people, I was slightly alarmed that “each female lays a batch of 150 eggs on wet, decaying organic matter that within 24 hours hatch into tiny, creamy-white maggots.” Could this be another nemesis?

By page 10, I was more than ready to buy a supply of Fly Predators, the product in question, even though I don't have a fly problem and the brochure seems geared toward people who own barns. But then, a few pages later, I learned that Fly Predators are in fact freaky pupa that “look like black rice kernels,” conveniently shipped in sealed bags ready to sprinkle over horse manure or, you know, your apartment in the city, whatever the case may be.

A close reading revealed that Fly Predators are creepy vampiric she-flies that, “after locating a fly’s pupa, drills a hole in the pupal case, inserts her ovipostior [!!!], and deposits from one to a dozen eggs inside.” And then, as if fucking some fly fetus isn’t pervy enough, she then “ingests the fluid of the developing fly pest.”

While that’s all pretty gross, Fly Predators still strike me as a relative bargain at only $3 for a bag of 1,000.

happy easter

The Washington Post recently held its second annual Peeps Diorama Contest. What an awesome idea.

The subway peeps diorama from '07 might be my favorite.



"Soylent Green is Peeps" works on many levels. I love how it gestures to the grossness of Peeps.



I think that Peeping Peeps would have been better without the glued-on eyes, but I like it anyway.




I wish I could figure out how to enlarge these images of Kissing Peeps, Trojan Peep, Project Peepway, and Nightmare Peep, but you get the idea.



You can watch the full peep shows here and here.

perspective?

I read, with great interest, a NYT book review, “Neurotic Who Makes Scary World Her Banquet.”

The article describes a woman who wrote a book about dread—her debilitating anxiety about all kinds of weird things from flu epidemics to volcanoes. One point the article makes is that Americans make up things to be worried about because we don’t have real problems, unlike the unworried Mexicans who do. And while I’ll grant that there is a kernel of truth in that statement, I think that’s a pretty useless comparison if you are actually interested in talking about what it means to be neurotic and not, you know, blighted. Apples and oranges, etc.

But my real objection is that the woman the article describes does not fit my profile of a neurotic, which is to say that she does not remind me of me. Neurotics obsess and worry over banal stuff rather than, say, apocalypse. There is so much to worry about embedded in the everyday that I can’t imagine why anyone would feel compelled to make shit up to agonize over.

This got me wondering about the difference between crazypants “neurotics” like this author, who worry about things like plagues, and proper neurotics like me, who worry about life in general. Is there, in fact, a meaningful difference? Is it better (or even different) to worry about outlandish things or mundane things?

After close analysis, I have concluded that the things I worry about are truly fearsome. Driving, for instance, is both deadly and terrifying, but most people have grown accustomed to it out of sheer necessity. Similarly, it seems clear that birds are a huge threat, but most people, in the interest of living normal lives, turn a blind eye to their malice. I understand that these are survival techniques, and I have accepted that the world is full of willfully blind fools, excepting me.

This is my burden.

But the fucking flu? Are you kidding me? I don’t respect gimmicky dread, even when it’s endorsed by the Times.

charm school

Every once in a while, I have a truly awesome idea.

I had some friends over for dinner last night. Earlier this week, I was brainstorming with D about what to make. We wanted to come up with something special and celebratory because one of my guests, J, just finished the first draft of his dissertation. We discussed his favorite candy, gummy bears. What kind of dessert could incorporate gummy bears?

And then it came to us: we would create an over-the-top ice cream sundae bar that would appeal not only to his love for gummy bears and all things sweet, but also to his fondness for making a mess.

Fantasy sundae spread (post-sundae)

Shopping for the toppings was half the fun. It took forever (well over an hour, maybe two) to decide what we should buy. D and I don’t care much for candy, so a lot of guesswork was involved. I think the other shoppers were confused that we could be so repulsed and excited at the same time. D would say, “Jesus, this looks disgusting.” And I would say, “That looks awful, so he’ll probably love it. Put it in the cart!”

Here’s what we ended up with:
I made: vanilla ice cream, hot fudge, caramel sauce, whipped cream
I bought: pineapple, strawberries, blackberries, sprinkles, reese’s cups, nestle crunch, kit kat, mini oreos, peeps(!!), chocolate chip cookie dough, reese’s pieces, marshmallows, m & m’s, whoppers, gummy bears

Our group had only five, so we bought individual-sized candies, which kept the topping bar pretty cheap. After a long day of cooking other stuff, I was amazed that I had enough containers to accommodate the toppings; luckily, I had a host of (otherwise useless) cupcake-shaped containers that were perfectly suited for the job. Even though I made the sauces in advance, prepping all those toppings took longer than I expected. Also, because we were trying to keep it a surprise until the last minute, our friends thought we were crazy.

I was excited to use my cupcake-shaped containers even though V said they look like nipples.

Assembling the sundaes was just as much fun as you’d imagine, and even more delicious.

We didn’t have maraschino cherries, so J topped his sundae with a peep.

incommunicado

Day-to-day life is rife with little land mines for nervous people like me. I find it fascinating that I can get so worked up over stuff that I don’t care much about. I wonder if this is what happens when analytical people are too lazy: we train a cold gaze within that was designed only for the world without. It's enough to make a person feel weird about anything...or everything.

Or maybe we just make shit up. I really don’t know.

In any case, it doesn’t take much to trigger a flare-up of what T once called my “social disease,” a diagnosis she delivered after I said I might prefer to communicate with people by writing on a notepad instead of talking. (I was joking, but that doesn’t mean she was wrong.)

Luckily, there are a few people I talk with who don’t make me want to reach for the notepad. Even so, for the most part, I hate talking on the phone. It makes me uneasy. Sometimes I say the most peculiar things, and I’m troubled when I can’t erase them.

I recently noticed that I pace whenever I’m on the phone. Isn’t that odd? Literally, I walk back and forth throughout my conversations, no matter who is on the other end.

Still, some phone calls are easier than others. Phone chemistry is an interesting thing. I hate talking to some of my best friends on the phone, even when we’re just making plans for later that night. There is something about making a call that stresses me out.

Then again, I have a few friends with whom I can talk on the phone for hours. After much analysis, I believe that my ideal phone partner has to be willing to talk about nothing, sort of like an episode of Seinfeld. (I really like to talk about nothing. You should know, given that you read my blog.) Often, I worry that I am like a character in an Oscar Wilde play—a shallow person full of pretty, clever talk. Sometimes I think I’m not shallow; others I think my words are not pretty or clever. That must mean I am perfectly balanced! :-) :-)

(Speaking of which, is there anything more unbalanced than emoticons? Every time I get one of those e-mails, I assume its author is crazed.)

I also enjoy crisis calls, which is when one person has a crisis that the other person tries to work through. But who doesn’t? Crises are compelling, even when they make us pace. This is also why I like television.

Anyway, after discussing the phone-torture phenomenon with a few friends, I discovered that there are others like me. V doesn’t like talking on the phone for any reason. A prefers agenda calls—he can’t stand to talk on the phone unless he has an objective that can be achieved within 1-3 minutes. Usually, he prefers texting, which is, of course, okay with me.

quotation marks

P has a blog where he likes to make lists. I love lists! They appeal to my compulsive side. Recently, he made a special list that is also a game. I also love games and procrastination, so I made a special list, too.

Instructions: Look up 15 of your favorite films on IMDb and take a quote from each. List them below. When someone guesses the quote correctly, cross it off the list. Leave a comment with your answers. And NO CHEATING.

1. The ratio of people to cake is too big.

2. Initiative comes to thems that wait.

3. You know, I have this awful paranoid thought that feminism was mostly invented by men so they could, like, fool around a little more.

4. I got off the boat with nothing but my dancer's belt and a tube of Chapstick.

5. Some people are okay, but mostly I just feel like poisoning everybody.

6. You know those days when you get the mean reds?

7. The more you know about who you are and what you want, the less things upset you.

8. Four minutes, forty-eight seconds. We're all dead. Burned to a crisp.

9. When a man says no to champagne, he says no to life.

10. This is what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass!

11. The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he did not exist.

12. You can never replace anyone because everyone is made up of such beautiful specific details.

13. See how I transform this old rat into the most delightful hat!

14. I will sell this house today.

15. But you're not as confused as him, are you? I mean, it's not your job to be as confused as Nigel is.

the first indignity

I have been making a special effort to make my peace with my thirtieth birthday, which is just a few weeks away.

The idea of thirty has haunted me through my twenties, so it’s hardly surprising that I’m upset. As with so many things in life, part of the problem is that I have a bad attitude. Still, I never expected to feel such a sense of loss. It reminds me of something a friend told me when she quit smoking: that she genuinely felt as though she was losing one of the coolest things about herself.

I’m not sure how shallow that sounds to you, but I know exactly what she meant. On an intellectual level, my friend knew that she was cool in a hundred different ways, but she couldn’t ignore the sense of loss that she felt on a cellular level. That, in a nutshell, is what it's like to turn thirty: I feel like I’m losing something even though I know that I’m not.

So lately I’ve been trying to talk myself out of feeling bad. Just as smoking was not an essential part of my friend’s awesomeness, being a twenty-something is not an essential part of mine. In fact, I am mostly pleased with my thirty-year-old self. I always thought that, by now, I would feel like a proper adult (whatever that is—I guess you just know), but the fact is that I don’t, in the best possible way. I have been reasonably successful while hanging on to an easygoing lifestyle. I am smarter, savvier, and happier than I’ve ever been.

Of course, all of that turned to shit when I received a letter from my health insurance provider explaining that they were raising my premium because I’m turning thirty. I stood in my doorway sick with shock, thinking, my god, here it is: the first indignity.

I’m guessing the second indignity will involve age-inappropriate vomiting.

face-off

The mouse corpse I found in my kitchen suggests that, just as I feared, extreme terror conjures nemeses.

You might remember that D, who lives in the apartment below me, spotted a mouse in her kitchen a month or so ago. In response, I took certain precautions, including several traps that A wedged in the space between my stove and some cabinets. I was uneasy, but after a few weeks I convinced myself that all was well.

Then, last Friday, I was vacuuming in my kitchen when I saw the tip of its tail. Incredulous, I bent down to confirm the kill. As you can imagine, this was a terrible mistake.

After a few hours, the maintenance man came to collect the body. He picked it up with his bare hands and casually tossed it in my trashcan. This upset me, and he got all pissy and condescending when I asked him to take it outside. Now, to me, any sensible person knows that there’s no point in trying to reason with someone who has an irrational fear. Then again, I also believe that a sensible person would wash his hands after handling a mouse corpse. Clearly, we weren’t on the same page.

Anyway, he said that some other worker would have to come to plug the mammoth hole behind my stove. Meanwhile, he suggested I set more traps. That’s how I found myself in the rodent aisle(!!) of the hardware store, tearfully examining all the fucked-up contraptions that people have devised to rid their homes of pests.

I am haunted by the creepy instructions that came with the mouse traps I bought.

After what seemed like a very long weekend, I phoned my landlord today to form a plan of action. He explained that a worker would install a metal plate called a “mouse strip” behind the stove, just as soon as he returned...from Thailand.

And that’s how I found myself on the phone with C to ask if I could borrow Logan the cat.

Logan

D and I discussed borrowing a cat back when she found her mouse, but we never went through with it. (D believes that cat smell repels mice. I don’t know if that’s true, but I suppose it can’t hurt. Desperation is a funny thing. Soon I'll probably have some hippie rid my apartment of mouse vibes.) After sizing up all the cats we know, we landed on Logan. While he seemed a bit panicky during his journey in the pet taxi, he quickly adjusted to his new environs. He didn’t even seem to mind when I picked him up to rub cat scent on the stove.

I bought Logan a crazy feather toy because the box said that it "promotes hunting."

Hopefully, any other pests will be warded off by my guest or the ghost of their dead comrade (and, eventually, the mouse strip). Let’s just hope I don’t conjure any of my other nemeses. I am feeling rather fragile.