EWW

When I was little and happened to see something black with lots of legs cruising its way up my wall, I would always run into the living room and hover there a minute before telling Mom that there was a bug and that she needed to come kill it for me. I thank God that my mom has been a biologist since before I came from the womb and was usually rather fearless about such matters, instead uttering a "My word" before dutifully grabbing a paper towel and marching into my bedroom. I couldn't believe the chutzpah. She didn't attack it with some nameless, hazardous spray cleaner or even whack it with a shoe, she went right up to it and SQUISHED IT just beneath what to me was always a much too thin sheet of Bounty. I mean the bug is practically right there when you do it that way. You can probably feel its insides ooze out from under it's soft exoskeleton. It gives me the heebie jeebies just thinking about it. Eww.

"And it's an insect, not a bug," Mom would always say. Whatever.

I remember the first day I saw an insect crawling around my indoor vicinity and realized that I'd have to kill it myself, like some weird right of passage into adulthood. It was inevitable, and terribly sad for me, but the day finally came when I couldn't call a parent to come kill the Big Nasty. My heartrate jumped to 90 miles a minute, I jabbed the air around the BN with my flip flop, and got down on my hands and knees and stared at it for at least ten minutes, pretending to strategize. The thing is, you gotta be quick, because multi-legged creatures move freakishly fast, and losing sight of one is never an option. Sometimes, it would perch itself in that unreachable corner between wall and ceiling, and all I could do was stare at it warily as I lay in bed, praying it didn't move any closer to my pillows.

Since those heart-pounding days, I've encountered a plethora of creepy crawlies, not the least of which have made their debuts in my various DC apartments. If I thought going after thumb-sized flying cockroaches in Hawaii was bad, (and let me tell you, those things learned to run from me), that was nothing compared to my introduction to the standard house centipede; a thin, wafty looking thing with thousands of big beefy legs that ripple it across a floor in 0.00005 seconds. These things range in size from I-need-a-microscope-to-see-it, to the size of a baby chimpanzee. Yeah. Exactly. As a bonus, hitting them with a shoe (or anvil) dismembers the body from the legs which continue to twitch long after they have a brain to tell them to do so. I repeat, eww. At this point, I have to take my own paper towel and clean up the crime scene, something I've finally managed to steel myself against. Because one of these days, the cycle will repeat itself, and I'll be the brave one running to the rescue of my bewildered daughter. "It's an insect, baby, not a bug. And you better not watch this, it could get messy."

The Back of Your Head is RiDICulus

So, for those of you who aren't DCians, and haven't already memorized this video, here's a little ode to H Street. This is a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much...

Can I Have Your Number?

Today's Favorite Quote

"...the truth is, I drag myself to the computer. I get up every morning, brush my teeth, and then go back into my bedroom to wake the writer part of me. He's still in bed, snoring, slobbering all over the pillows. I rock him from the shoulders at first, and when that doesn't work, I make some noise, and when that doesn't work, I pull the covers off him and yell..." -Donald Miller

I relate to this in eleventy different ways. I don't snore or slobber, mind, but it is a bit like trying to wake the dead.

Eliminate Unnecessary Words

Dear Washington City Paper,

In the future, might I suggest when placing a listing in your classified section in search of an editor for your own paper, that you have a qualified person actually edit said listing. The classifieds are no place to be overly verbose about things that may or may not have anything to do with actual job position, ie. history of newspaper, number of staff members, full 2,000 word job description, etc. While these facts may have significance once someone has expressed interest, taking up two entire columns beforehand is nothing short of ridiculous, and at some point a "Call or visit website for more details" segment is encouraged. I fell asleep halfway through the second paragraph and woke up half an hour later with backwards typeface on my forehead that still hadn't reached the next job posting. Please explore meaning of "brevity" and "necessary information," two concepts which have sadly escaped your publication, and consider engraving "eliminate unnecessary words" on a plaque to be placed above new editor's desk.

Sincerely,
Boycotting Excessive Print

Seeking Imperfection

You know what I hate/need/want to throw at a passing bus? Books that convict me. Books that speak truth that I really, REALLY don't want to hear. I can only get through a chapter or two before I end up slamming it shut and sliding it across the floor or table or wherever it is I happen to be sitting. I look at it, lying there, mocking me, black cover slightly ajar, seeming to talk to me despite the fact that I can no longer see type. So you're saying I have to actually do something? That I can't just sit around and wait for things to fall in my lap? You're saying that I'm never going to be completely satisfied and the minute I stop expecting every little thing that happens to me to be life changing and wonderful that I'll probably be a lot happier? Freakin'.... AHHHH. I've had this misguided outlook my entire life, not to say that it hasn't served me at certain points in the past. My best friend just so conveniently reminded me that I've lived a life anyone could be jealous of and that I haven't wasted a moment. It's only now that I appear to be digging my own rut with my own shovel and settling down to walk in it on a daily basis. Life isn't perfect. It never will be. I'm never going to find the perfect place to be or the perfect country or the perfect guy or the perfect job. These things don't exist. Chances are good that even if these things did exist, they would bore me to tears with their very perfection.

I'm being challenged these days, challenged more than I would prefer. I'm reading about being a tree in a story about a forest and having numerous conversations about the difficulties of relationships and visiting chapters in the Bible that are all about one man's intense bout of suffering. He quite literally wrote the book on it. In placing these things in front of me, God is messing about with my status quo. Did I sign up for this? Wait, I believe that I did...