Pancake City

“HORRIBLE!”
“Oh. So you have cancer or live in Iraq?”
“Well, no, but….I just want to whine, okay?”

Plants. I water my plants as often as I update my blog. My plants are dead.

Mouse. WHY WON’T YOU DIE. We have a mouse or mice scurrying between the walls of our house. My roommates bought some cruelty-free traps, which are akin to small tubes that the mouse is supposed to walk right into and close the door behind him.

That would work great, if this were some country rube mouse who was born in a stack of hay and lived under the knot of an apple tree. “Golly gee, there’s some cheese in that there fancy hole. I’m gonna go git me some!”

Not going to work for city mouse. Centuries of rough living and brutal Darwinism have weeded out any sense of fear or compassion for our cheese. City mouse is tough, sophisticated, and intelligent. He gnaws through our bread bags and poops on our counter without fear. I came home one day and turned on the kitchen light to see him rappelling down to the stove from the ceiling. He froze when I saw him, and then tossed a smoke bomb to cover his tracks.

This mouse isn’t going to walk into a slender metal box labeled “Conto Mouse Trap” just because it has a mote of cheese at the end. This mouse can read. Yet my roommates think I’m the unrealistic one just because I’m willing to do what is necessary: buy a comfy chair, a sniper rifle, and a pair of night vision goggles.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. It’s a post-apocalyptic computer game that takes place in Chernobyl. I kept getting killed by packs of rabid dogs. By the time I open my inventory to toss them a treat, they tear me apart. Hey, quit it! I walk your friends in real-life.

In a way, they are like the dogs I walk. Except my dogs try to kill me indirectly by licking the sunscreen off my arms.

Poker. @#$%^&**#A#$@. I’m too angry to play poker regularly. I overestimate my emotional fortitude, get frustrated with the natural downs of the game, and ended up not playing my best or having fun. I wish I could teach a robot what I know. A robot me would kick ass. And I’d be a robot, which is a reward unto itself.

What would you do if you were a robot? First, I’d walk in all in the scary neighborhoods. With my wallet hanging from my neck, like Flavor Flav with a MBA. Then I’d get a few lasers, because every robot needs a few lasers. Next, I’d hit on a some guys. I already have a come-on line. “What is this ‘love’ you talk about?”

Finally, I’d find President Bush, and give him a good, robot kick in the balls. “Crappiness does not compute, Bush.” [whack] Then I would go on the morning talk-show circuit and tell everyone that robots have gained sentient life, and our first duty was to deliver a clear and decisive message unto President Bush’s nut sack. Read that as you may. I’d also hint that we would not hurt the vice-President, as we wouldn’t harm one of our own.

It would be total bull, as I would be the only sentient robot, but we all know how the media is liberal and doesn’t ask tough questions. I’d wave goodbye, announce I’m leaving for my homeland, Japan, and then lie in hiding and hopefully watch a wave of change brought upon us by The Little Robot That Could (Children’s book I would have pre-written before the event. A robot has got to make money too. Especially after being banned from playing poker)

A sign that our troubles are not so great, at least in the D.C. area, is that we are worrying about cicadas.

This year’s cicada brood, Brood X, comes out every seventeen years. As a 6th grader, I was both squeamish and fascinated by the hordes of insects that became part of recess for a few weeks. They were bugs after all, possibly with fangs. But the delicate shells they left after molting were almost as precise as a cast mold, and you could place one on your finger without fear.

If I read the newspaper back then, I would have known that cicadas are a horrible menace that will ruin life in Washington as we know it and psychologically scar all children, the elderly, and those with weak hearts. Thankfully, I read the paper now, and the almost-daily articles in The Washington Post during the past month have taught me to view them as a rare but annoying event, kind of like Nature’s herpes sore.

If only an enterprising terrorist could figure out how to coat the cicadas with ricin. Then the real fun would start.

To be far, The Washington Post has had some interesting articles about this brood of cicadas, like in their Science section today. I have wondered why the cicadas come out every 17 years, and not 5 or 8 or 23 years, and how do they get the timing right. The Post’s article interesting theory of how this unusual cycle came into being.

Snake people pop up often in fantasy literature, TV shows and movies. And it’s always the same snake people: slits for eyes, a hissing sound when they talk, and a strange desire to conquer whatever planet they are on.

Bird people get Sesame Street. Mice people get Maus. Snake people get relegated to stereotypical, two-dimension bit parts that require them to curse our warm blood and rail against our vertebrae. “Look at them, hunched over their computerssssss, lifting heavy objects with their backsssss. They get to have spines, and they don’t even take of them. Ssssssss. Soon, we will have our revenge…once we destroy the Joes. COBRA!

Why do snake people always get the shaft? They deserve our compassion. They have the worst of both worlds. They can’t slither in small places and they have to pay taxes. Yet we hate them. For all we know, kind snake people from space wanted to visit our world and share their knowledge, but they were disgusted by our intense ophidiophobia. We even have a patron saint for the fear of snakes, St. Patrick of Ireland.

How deep does our hatred run that we need to embody it in a Catholic saint? Do we have a patron saint for murderers? For open sores? For television writers?

Actually, we do. The Catholics did some crazy shit. But that is no justification for narrow-mindedness. It is time we have a fair portray of snake people, one that shows them as sensitive souls and suspends the superstitions and stereotypes suggested about them that some have sought to spread in this sworld.

If the thought of snake justice still makes you uncomfortable, just remember this: the initials for snake people make up the first two letters of special.

I watched Leno for a few minutes tonight. A woman from Sea World was on with a brigade of furry, cute animals. One of them looked like a cross between a raccoon and a koala. This isn’t a word-for-word transcript of what Jay said, but it’s very close:

LENO [animal crawling of his shoulder]: “Now, I noticed they have very soft fur. Is that why they’re endangered, because of their fur?”
WOMAN “Actually, it’s because they only live in the forests in Madagascar, and 90 percent of their habitat has been destroyed.”
LENO: “Do they make good house pets?”
WOMAN: [stunned pause] “Um, no. They’re an endangered animal. There are only 1,000 of them left.”

In the past few years, the National Zoo in D.C. has lost tens of ducks and birds from attacks by animals such as foxes.

For wild animals, the zoo is essentially a giant box of Skittles. The zoo ducks are all gathered in a pen, their wings are clipped, and the electrified fence around them provides as much protection as a plastic wrapper provides against a two-year-old who learned how to take off Mommy’s mittens. Taste the rainbow…Northern Pintail, Teal, Mandarin…

“Suddenly, a leap by those powerful hind limbs as the jaguar bursts through the vegetation, closing the distance between him and the peccary within a blink of an eye. In an instant, the canines clamp the skull, and the large front paws grab and twist the neck sideways at an impossible angle. The peccary is dead before it hits the ground, its skull pulled apart by the motion of the jaguar’s jaws.”

From Jaguar, by Alan Rabinowitz

The light turned red. An ant scurried up my leg, so I flicked it off. It landed in my car’s change holder and tried to crawl away. His body felt like a pebble as I pressed my finger on its frame. It writhed, twitching in a circle. I pressed until I heard a crack. It was still twitching. I ground my finger the way one would extinguish a cigarette with the tip of a boot. It moved slower, flipping in circles.

Many years ago, I wrote a story where I asked, “What if ants could scream?” How different is that person from me? I got a piece of paper and smeared his body away like an eraser over a spare apostrophe. The story I wrote had many mistakes, but my classmates loved it. The light turned green and it was time to go.

I thought we had a deal. Last night, when I found your two-inch antennae sweeping my bathroom wall, presumably looking for a human baby you could carry back to your nest, I refrained from screaming. I assure you, my girlish, blood-curdling squeal would have hurt your delicate sense of hearing more than mine.

I also refrained from pounding your skeletal frame into the wall with my shoe. I admit, my decision was not altruistic. I have never seen an insect of your girth and flying ability, and there was some concern that a 9 ½ soccer shoe would irritate you rather than kill you.

So we made a deal. I’ll skip going to the bathroom and I’ll leave the door open, giving you the whole night to leave on an adventure on a new world. You responded by buzzing around the light, indicating that you thought it was a good idea.

Yet when I woke up at 1:00 P.M. today and rushed into the bathroom to clear some logs from the dam, I saw our window blind shake and heard a loud buzzing. It appears in addition to being obscenely large, or perhaps because of the social reaction to your condition, you are agoraphobic.

I’m sorry. I really am. But you have to leave now. My alternate bathroom is five miles away at McDonalds, and if I end up going there, I’m either bringing back an exterminator or a clown with big feet.

Sincerely,

A NORAML-SIZED Human

P.S. The neighbors next door have a 2-year-old child. I left their window open.

HIM: [after talking about birds for 5 minutes] “There’s this bird that’s just like the Blue Warbler but I can’t remember its name.”
ME: “I believe its official name is the ‘Almost Blue Warbler’.”
HIM: “Really?”
ME: “Uh, no. Not really.”

I flipped the light on in the kitchen for a late-night snack. Two moths were having sex on a plate in the dish rack. I felt embarrassed, then angry when they kept on going. Doesn’t anyone in the insect family have any shame any more? I mean, if you were having sex on a plate, wouldn’t you stop if a giant moth walked in? I don’t know what genus these moths were, but let me just say I haven’t heard very good things about the Ctenucha genus.

As I was leafing through the phone book, I spotted this message from the Hello Answering Service. “Thanks to you, it’s been over 75 years.”

Finally. Validation for my theory that I led two past lives, one as a newspaper boy from 1917-1931, until I was gunned down in the streets of Chicago by pressuring Capone’s righthand man to buy a copy of the Sentinel. ‘Come on, Mister.” I pleaded. “It’s the story of the year!” I yelled the headline: “CAPONE ARRESTED FOR TAX FRAUD! AND HE’S A PUSSY!”

In my second life, 1933-1974 (two-year new life waiting period), I worked as a struggling web page designer. I would gather spiders in the wood, increase their intelligence by dipping them in mercury (pharmacist’s instructions), and wait for them to spin pages of elegant poetry. The plan worked beautifully. One of their poems:

Meat with Wings

Hello, Meat with Wings.
How I would like to meet you
to whisper in your ear,
come near, come near.
Love I will bring,
songs I will sing,
as I massage your wings
and caress you, dear.
You are so much more
than Meat with Wings.
Come near, come near.

I gathered their poems for a collection, “64 poems by 8 spiders and a water insect who looks like a spider, and writes more beautifully than the spiders, at least until they ate him”.

As the 64th poem was being composed, a young bum knocked on my door and asked if I knew of a place he could stay on that rainy night. Before I could answer, he said “Thanks”, walked in with his muddy shoes and fell asleep on my couch.

We chatted when he woke to raid my fridge. He was gone the next day with my spiders and my poems. That bum, Jack Kerouac, stole my life’s work, added some drug references, and became famous. I attended all his readings and gave him the evil eye until his death in 1969. I succumbed five years later to toxic poisoning.