Mosquito Massacre

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!" You've tried swatting them, you've tried screening them out, you've cursed and reviled them. I'm talking about the state bird of so many states -- the mosquito.

Who hasn't had a lovely summer evening ruined by these pesky pests?

I went hiking in a salt marsh once and got swarmed. But I was prepared with long sleeves, one of those screen hats, and long pants stuffed into boots. Still it was unnerving.

And now these little winged brutes carry Zika virus. It's really dangerous for pregnant women.

The other day I heard a motorized din. I looked across the street and saw a pest control service spraying the shrubs and lawn of one of those despicable McMansions. The sign on the truck said MOSQUITO/TICK PROTECTION.

This morning at 9:00 the same din sounded again, this time next door: MOSQUITO/TICK PROTECTION. I looked out the window, and there was a guy with no face mask, just showering the shrubs and house with pesticide.

I might have expected this from the pampered one percenters across the street, but I was pretty shocked to see my next-door neighbors, who have always shared my laissez-faire attitude about plant life, doing the same.

Readers, there is such a dearth of insect life in my yard now that I am beyond alarmed. My lawn is all-over speckled with clover flowers. Not a single bee. I have native wildflowers in full bloom in my micro-meadow. Not a single pollinator. No grasshoppers. No beetles. No June bugs and moths beating against the porch light when I sit outside. No little white butterflies.

No mosquitoes.

Are there any benefits to mosquitoes and ticks? Only if you care about the food chain.

Putting aside their gastronomic choices, bats eat mosquitoes. The fewer mosquitoes, the fewer bats. Possums eat ticks. I know, I know, we could all do without possums. Or could we?

Many serious media outlets have written stern warnings about the catastrophic decline in the number of insects on our planet. This is a huge problem, my friends.

In my childhood long, long ago, the world teemed with bugs. I'm not just talking about the wilds of the mountains. I'm talking about ordinary suburban blocks like the one I live on. I can remember a time, even here in Haterfield, when a lawn full of clover had a pleasant number of bees on it.

Want to bet on the End Times? Encourage all your neighbors to get professional pest control companies to come and spray for mosquitoes. The shrubs in my neighbor's yard are now "protected" from mosquitoes, but they are also "protected" from every other kind of winged thing. I wouldn't trust the wild birds around that stuff. I wouldn't want Gamma Cat rubbing against it. And even though the guy spraying it wasn't masked, I don't want to sit outside with that poison so close to me.

A world without bugs is unsustainable. Our whole ecosystem will crash. Yes, the crawly blood-suckers are annoying and dangerous to the health ... but killing them off will be worse.

Please let me know if you still have an abundance of insects where you live. I am so very alarmed by the lack of them in my world. It's mid-June and I haven't even seen a firefly.

Gods ... I'm going to leave standing water on my property. Bats gotta eat.

I Must Be Stupid

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," Memorial Day issue! Remember, hate the war, not the warrior. In all my long life, I've never heard someone say, "Goddamn, I wish I could go back to the front lines and kill some more people!"

We've written many times about Memorial Day here at TGAB, so today's sermon is not going to be about patriotism, but about stupidity. Frankly, I'm feeling stupid, and I wonder if I'm alone in my idiocy.

What's bothering me is that technology doesn't make any sense.

EXHIBIT A: OIL RIG

Look at this thing! For the love of fruit flies, it looks complicated to me! All that scaffolding, all those parts. I would almost make book on the fact that more than one fine mind spent itself designing this puppy. Of course, you would expect something complicated like this, given its purpose. Not easy to go down deep in that dark water, drill a hole, and suck up fossilized liquid plant matter from Hell's basement. You've got to have some immensely elaborate equipment to do the job.

Seriously. Peruse this picture. Is it hard to imagine that something could go wrong on equipment like this? I guess I'm just stupid. I look at that picture, and I say to myself, "But what if Tab A gets pulled out of Slot B somehow?

It could be that a lot of that steel and stuff is just for artistic embellishment, so the oil rig looks good in photographs. I honestly don't know. You tell me. I might paint it a different color, or hang some Christmas lights on it, if the whole thing is just a clever facade, and what's really needed is just the Awesome Augur and a few deep sea divers.

EXHIBIT B: SOLAR PANEL

Here's where I feel like a stone cold moron. This thing looks so easy to make that you could put Red Green and his duct tape to work for a few hours, and it would be done. Heck, when I was a mere stripling I had a magnifying glass that I used to focus the sun on dried leaves and set them on fire.

I admit this could be total ignorance on my part, but solar panels look like they could be made by the millions in a converted Coca-Cola factory and slapped onto rooftops by anyone brave enough to climb a ladder.

Why am I so stupid? Please give me the details of this Intelligent Design. We put so much faith in Exhibit A, when Exhibit B seems so much more practical. Why, if you were to compare Exhibit A to Exhibit B using a natural model, Exhibit A would be Homo sapiens, and Exhibit B would be some basic, one-celled microscopic critter swimming on the locker room floor in some gym.

MRSA MRSA me. I'm so confused.

A Message for the Sitting President

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!" Today we turn this site over to an old buddy of ours, the Jersey Devil!

Hey, Dubya, you fat-faced oil slut moron. Get dis. You drill offa da shore of New Jersey, you deal with me. I like my beaches and my overpriced t-shirt stores (you should see what dose shirts say about you) and my rolla coasters and all dat stuff. My boardwalks are da rockinest, and it's a cheap ride to my beaches from Philly, New York, and even Baltimore.

Some hurricane comes along and bashes da Jersey Shore, hell, dat's Fate. But you slather my beaches with oil, you gonna wish you wuz one a dem crude-crudded dolphins, yo.

Don't mess with da Jersey Devil, Dubya, you ain't got the stuff for it.