April 19, 2004 - 11:43 a.m.
Arguably the most exciting event of the weekend was my visitors from Planet Waterbug. Where do they come from? Where are they going? What do they want from me? When will I learn to NEVER open the window without putting a screen in it? I guess it’s just something I have to learn the hard way every time spring comes around. Why is it that I keep ending up seeing them in the bathroom mirror? What was especially creepy this time was that there was one in the mirror and also one opposite it, not in the mirror, which made it doubly terrifying. For those of you not hip to the jive, a waterbug is basically a roach that is the size of a mouse. Who flies. Really, is there anything worse? I think in the field of roach killing there are two schools: stompers and sprayers. And I am definitely a sprayer. However with the high body weight of these monsters, they are pretty hard to poison. You really have to keep after them as they fly all over the bathroom in their wing-clattering death throes. And you don’t want to lose track of them either, you don’t want to come upon their corpse later.
After the terrifying ordeal was over, I was left with this horrible sweet Raid smell everywhere. Now what? Do I have to scrub the walls? Is this a job for Febreze? I have never bought any Febreze but it has always seemed sinister to me. It "eliminates odors"? Well, where do they go? I mean really. It reminds me of that new Jack Black movie where he invents a spray to eliminate dog shit. It vanishes! But implicit in the trailer, at least to me, is that at some point his friend finds out that matter cannot become non-matter, and that all the dogshit is going somewhere. I would guess that it is forming a giant meteor that will collide with the earth. Though I bet it can’t be all that giant and would probably just burn up in the atmosphere. Now, offensive odors are actually made of matter. So how does Febreze make them non-matter? I guess the offensive smells are some kind of free radical aromatic ester type thing, and that Febreze binds to them the way soap binds to grease. So, I guess it’s ok.
