Stress

It's 9:08 and I already feel overwhelmed with my day. I hit snooze one extra time, was running late, didn't have time to finish breakfast, put it in a tupperware bowl, rushed out the door, and then proceeded to hit my neighbor's car while backing out of my driveway. I knocked on his door, apologized, made him come out and look, and then he wouldn't take my insurance info. He said it was "not bad," "no big deal." I couldn't believe it! I assume he hasn't had his first cup of coffee yet today, because nobody's THAT nice, are they??? I'll definitely talk to him more about it in the next few days. I feel incredibly stupid and guilty. Sigh.

Support Troops Biker Eagle

SupportTroopsBikerEagle
Originally uploaded by desanders

Things I Want

Kiss Me Until It Hurts

I saw this written-word art piece in a book, "Kiss Me Until It Hurts, part 2," 2008, by Birgit Brenner. It was in the book totally out of context, and thus I post it here totally out of context.
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Dear --

It is grey and wet and windy, and I can’t get you off of my mind. I woke up thinking of you. I got dressed, brushed my teeth and ate breakfast thinking of you. I rushed into day thinking of you, I walked down the street thinking of you, I sat in the park thinking of you, I walked down the street thinking of you, I sat in the park thinking of you and I missed my bus thinking of you. With every gust of wind I think of you. I wait with anticipation for each breeze to come blow you out of me, and then I foolishly catch myself ducking to avoid it. You see, you are my most coveted ache. I am stormy and I crave sleep. Maybe it’s just all this yellow and gold. My love is delicate and ferocious and all yours. Do with it as you might. Goodbye. Goodnight.

Ps. Forgive me, I am not myself.

Crazy Rasberry Ants

In other totally unrelated news, I'm discovering that the way I hold my torso has a strong effect on use of core muscles and back pain. Now on to the main point: psychotic flesh-eating ants are taking over Houston.
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Ants swarm over Houston area, fouling electronics

By LINDA STEWART BALL, Associated Press Writer Wed May 14, 3:16 PM ET

DALLAS - In what sounds like a really low-budget horror film, voracious swarming ants that apparently arrived in Texas aboard a cargo ship are invading homes and yards across the Houston area, shorting out electrical boxes and messing up computers.

The hairy, reddish-brown creatures are known as "crazy rasberry ants" — crazy, because they wander erratically instead of marching in regimented lines, and "rasberry" after Tom Rasberry, an exterminator who did battle against them early on.

"They're itty-bitty things about the size of fleas, and they're just running everywhere," said Patsy Morphew of Pearland, who is constantly sweeping them off her patio and scooping them out of her pool by the cupful. "There's just thousands and thousands of them. If you've seen a car racing, that's how they are. They're going fast, fast, fast. They're crazy."

The ants — formally known as "paratrenicha species near pubens" — have spread to five Houston-area counties since they were first spotted in Texas in 2002.

The newly recognized species is believed to have arrived in a cargo shipment through the port of Houston. Scientists are not sure exactly where the ants came from, but their cousins, commonly called crazy ants, are found in the Southeast and the Caribbean.

"At this point, it would be nearly impossible to eradicate the ant because it is so widely dispersed," said Roger Gold, a Texas A&M University entomologist.

The good news? They eat fire ants, the stinging red terrors of Texas summers.

But the ants also like to suck the sweet juices from plants, feed on such beneficial insects as ladybugs, and eat the hatchlings of a small, endangered type of grouse known as the Attwater prairie chicken.

They also bite humans, though not with a stinger like fire ants.

Worse, they, like some other species of ants, are attracted to electrical equipment, for reasons that are not well understood by scientists.

They have ruined pumps at sewage pumping stations, fouled computers and at least one homeowner's gas meter, and caused fire alarms to malfunction. They have been spotted at NASA's Johnson Space Center and close to Hobby Airport, though they haven't caused any major problems there yet.

Exterminators say calls from frustrated homeowners and businesses are increasing because the ants — which are starting to emerge by the billions with the onset of the warm, humid season — appear to be resistant to over-the-counter ant killers.

"The population built up so high that typical ant controls simply did no good," said Jason Meyers, an A&M doctoral student who is writing his dissertation on the one-eighth-inch-long ant.

It's not enough just to kill the queen. Experts say each colony has multiple queens that have to be taken out.

At the same time, the ants aren't taking the bait usually left out in traps, according to exterminators, who want the Environmental Protection Agency to loosen restrictions on the use of more powerful pesticides.

And when you do kill these ants, the survivors turn it to their advantage: They pile up the dead, sometimes using them as a bridge to cross safely over surfaces treated with pesticide.

"It looked like someone had come along and poured coffee granules all around the perimeter of the rooms," said Lisa Calhoun, who paid exterminators $1,200 to treat an infestation of her parents' home in the Houston suburb of Pearland.

The Texas Department of Agriculture is working with A&M researchers and the EPA on how to stop the ants.

"This one seems to be like lava flowing and filling an entire area, getting bigger and bigger," said Ron Harrison, director of training for the big pest-control company Orkin Inc.

Heeeeelarious

This made me laugh for, like, at least a solid minute.
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Bush: I quit golf over Iraq war

4 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AFP) — US President George W. Bush said in an interview out Tuesday that he quit playing golf in 2003 out of respect for the families of US soldiers killed in the conflict in Iraq, now in its sixth year.

"I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal," he said in an interview for Yahoo! News and Politico magazine.

"I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander-in-chief playing golf," he said. "I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them."

The US president traced his decision to the August 19, 2003 bombing of UN headquarters in Baghdad, which killed the world body's top official in Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello.

"I remember when de Mello, who was at the UN, got killed in Baghdad as a result of these murderers taking this good man's life. And I was playing golf -- I think I was in central Texas -- and they pulled me off the golf course and I said, it's just not worth it anymore to do," said Bush.

Bush's last round of golf as president dates back to October 13, 2003, according to meticulous records kept by CBS news.

On the day of the bombing two months earlier, he had cut short his golf game at the 12th hole and returned to his ranch in tiny Crawford, Texas.

Where Can I Get One?

1957, Nanna Ditzel for R. Wengler, Denmark. I want this chair, but probably a cheaper version, not the fancey, designer one.

High School Disturbia

I was down in the basement tonight, digging out high school yearbooks so I could take them to my friend's house this weekend. I'll be getting together with three ladies I was friends with in high school, and thought it would be fun to share the horror that was annual yearbook. Lo and behold, I struck gold! I found numerous creative writing journals from the early 1990's. They were written entirely either by hand or on a typewriter. I now feel the need to transcribe them into computer form and then share them here for all the world to read.

One of my most vivid memories is the story I wrote about Leonard and Carrie, which I have chosen to title "Bugs In the Drain." I seem to remember that at the time, I had a really deep concept about how the bugs in their house were like a metaphor for the secrets and shame that was kept in their marriage. Obviously I didn't explore the metaphor terribly deeply (I'm bolding/emphasizing the bug references for my own future attention). Anyways,here it is. Oh, and I'm editing the names/ err changing the names to protect the innocent.:
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Bugs in the Drain (originally written Dec. 12, 1994)

Back in the early 1990’s, my friends and I used to go every weekend to the Jessups'. Usually we would sit around in the clammy basement all squished in together on the saggy olive green sofa and run Gurps or Paranoia, or Dungeons and Dragons if we were really bored.

Billy Jessup was the father. He was sweaty, and you could always see a hairy band of stomach bulging out from beneath his white undershirt, which functioned less as an “under” shirt and more like a fancy every day dress shirt. He said “fuck” a lot and didn’t have to bend over to display his butt crack. His oily face had dents all over it. Billy was a huge man. He must’ve been seven feet tall.

He always sat upstairs in the living room, in his Lazy Boy chair, watching tv. That’s all he did. One day he accidentally leaned too far back in the Lazy Boy and put his head through the living room window. He didn’t even flinch. He just said, “fuck,” more annoyed at the inconvenience of having to fix the broken the window than at the fact that he might have been injured. I’d only seen him out of that chair a few times.

He loved the chair, because the t.v. was in full view, and he could see right out the front window. Always paranoid of intruders, Billy installed motion-detection lights in the front yard, and kept a tall shot gun leaning on the wall next to him. Also, he could conveniently swivel the chair around to his computer, where he would proudly show us the porno gifs he had downloaded that week.

Billy and Laurel had four kids. The oldest one, Matt, was in high school with me. He was from Billy’s first marriage. The youngest one, Billy and Laurel had together. They named him Bubba. Bubba couldn’t speak very well, so the school wouldn’t let him go to kindergarten, even though he was old enough to go.

Laurel Jessup was the mother. She was in her early twenties. She was so petite that she could fit into children’s sized clothing. Laurel was very pretty. She had a young face and looked like she could be one of us teenaged kids. She always wore skin-tight jeans, the kind with zippers at the bottom of the legs. You’d never know by looking at her that she’d ever given birth.

Sometimes she would bring popcorn down to us in the basement and hang out with us for awhile, always wanting to tell us her personal business. Billy had saved her. Like a superhero. She was previously married to a man who beat her up all the time, and Billy helped her get away from that husband. Billy gave her a home, and she didn’t even have to work.

One night she told us that he had wanted to have anal sex for a long time. He was BUGGING her about it every day, and she finally caved in. It made her bleed for four days. She was mad, because if he had stopped when she said it was hurting, then she wouldn’t have bled for so many days.

Billy and Laurel’s house had a lot of COCKROACHES, especially for some reason, in the bathroom. I think Laurel was bothered by all the ROACHES, but Billy wouldn’t pay for an exterminator. “They’re not that bad,” he would say dismissively. I was afraid to wash my hands in the bathroom sink, because I always saw BUGS crawling down into the drain.

The History Of Pizza and Tacos

IMG_0026
Originally uploaded by desanders

This is totally my favorite display at the KS Museum of History. It tells about the history of pizza and taco restaurant chains in Topeka. For realz.