On insects.

Before I begin, thanks to everyone who is reading :). Genuinely appreciated. Especially one of you ;).

Do you see what I did with the title there? Doesn't it make me sound of pseudo-intellect? It's fabulous. Take a mundane subject to talk about, and stick "on" as a prefix, and all of a sudden you're a philosopher of the banal (which... ya know, all philosophers are). I might not be about to broach the outer limits of thought and cognitive process, but I'm going to sound damn impressive as I ramble incoherently. And, well, isn't that all we could wish for at 14.11 on a Thursday afternoon? Perhaps we could wish for something more interesting to do, but, unfortunately that is not possible at all - all of my friends have returned back to their individual universities, and I am left waiting here at home until Saturday when I can chug back along the coast to my second home. Rather looking forward to it; my room is going to be fantastic when I've kitted it out properly. Seriously: It's going to have a heaps big TV, gamecube (smaller than my ps3 ;]) and random other items of enjoyment. I'm not one for taking many personal items with me; some of my friends laden their room down with thousands of pictures of friends, and mementos from their family - bleh, it's only a few months, not like they're all going to vanish whilst I am away, eh? Well, unlikely at least. I hope... Damn.

So yeah. Insects. Entomology and all that jazz; I don't think I'd enjoy that as a profession to be honest - I think I might get a bit creeped out by the constant immersion within a world of creepy-crawlies. Yuck. Anyway, pointless. God knows what I'm talking about. Yes, insects. And why they're fucking everywhere, all the time. I swear they're breeding or something, perish the thought! Every year there seems to be more and more; or every year I'm spending more and more time burrowing in the gardens and forestry around my house. I think it's the first one. I don't remember doing much digging or foraging in the grounds (like I have grounds). As soon as the temperature rises above 2k you suddenly get swarms of everything. Why must they all move in swarms? Swarm is a horrible word; it conjures up images of inescapable horror, of being chased, and being unable to fight your way through. You never get "a swarm of love", or "a swarm of dolphins who help rescue your boat"; it's always "a swarm of flesh-eating wasps", or a "swarm of soul-sucking woodlice." Maybe. Yeah, so that's the first thing. We need to rename these 'groups' of insects. I propose several new names to allow us to talk of these 'groups' in comfort:

1) A crunchy-nut-cluster: "Oh no, a crunchy-nut cluster of raping-bees!" "Hahahaha, crunchy nut."

2) A flappy-floop-troop: "Run, it's a flappy-floop-troop of war ants." "Hahaha, flappy-floop."

3) A pile: "Watch out! There's a pile of locusts." "Haha, inertia fail."

First problem solved.

Second of all; like, why don't they all fuck off during Winter? In times of yore (which, ya know, I've lived through) as soon as it was September all of the insects would disappear and we'd all get 5 months of blissful solitude. Not anymore. I know that all bees and wasps fuck off except the queen (who gets the fun job of re-birthing the entire flappy-floop-troop come Spring) but what happens to all of the others? Is there some kind of Harry Potter-esque King-Spider hiding out in the shed, waiting for the cataracts to take hold, praying for the moment he can squirt his spider-goo all over some eggs or something? Somehow I doubt it. In fact, I know that's not true. So, I don't need to doubt it. I know it's not true. Anyway, that whole "Queen-slag" bullshit is clearly not true either: there's always a few stragglers flopping around come December. You always find wasps flying inanely round the living room when it's snowing outside. Few questions: A) How did they get in? Who has a window or door open in Winter? B) What the hell is it still alive for? C) Go away.

Ignoring the stragglers, let's take the whore-fact as fact and assume that all bees and wasps in fact die, only to be splooged out by some kind of cavernous vagina come March. Where are all the others? What about the woodlice, and the spiders, and the moths, and the other pointless creatures that serve no purpose whatsoever to any ecosystem that I'm aware of? I'm pretty sure they don't hunker down for the winter, like a bear, there's no Kibbutz of hibernating arachnids corralled at the top of the bougainvillea. At least,... not in my garden anyway. Maybe I'll check the hibiscus this year. So, reducto ad absurdum aside, let's take it as a given that all insects except wasps die come Winter. Working on that basis; where do the new crunchy-nut-clusters come from whence the sun begins to shine again? Are they sprouting up from particles in the air? Formulating cognition from quantum-physics? I don't get it. They just materialise all of a sudden, and rush to find a bin to flap around. Another thing: Get the fuck away from bins. No wonder there's litter everywhere: Any time you want to throw anything way in public, the bin is covered (and I mean covered) in a load of things you don't want anywhere near you. "Yo, just throw this Cornetto top away for me," "Yeah, sure. OH NO WAIT. It's covered in bees!!!!" I hate it.

Solution two: Stop making bins from pollen. Seriously.

Solution three: Explain to children what happens to insects for half the year.

OK, more issues, this time specifically with spiders. I don't really have a problem with spiders. In fact, I actively encourage them to sequester the entire bamboo bushes for their webs; they catch hundreds of flies between them - and those flies then never make it to my house, to be accidentally crushed underfoot, or to be swatted against a wall, leaving a blood-smear all over the wallpaper. That's great. Go spiders. But, seriously guys, learn some kind of navigation; we've got carrion-birds which can navigate by invisible and intangible magnetic forces; and yet we've got arachnids who cannot learn that 'A web across a path/Over the washing line/In a bedroom/Stretched across an entire room/The entire bath' will never, ever, ever, be allowed to stay. I've lost count of the amount of times I've gone outside and walked through a rainforest's worth of sticky web shit. I don't care what you want to do with it, just don't put it where I walk. Or if you do, the first time I walk through it and get angry, don't then go and rebuild it exactly where it was before. Are you that stupid? No. Maybe it's myth, but someone once told me that a spider can travel large distances from where you release it, in order to get back to where you captured it. So, whilst I doubt the claim of 'several miles' I can assume that they could make it back from say... the bottom of the driveway? Yes, I imagine they can. So they can do that; but they can't learn that 'Ashtray web' is never going to survive an onslaught of fag-butts, and things on fire? No, honestly. That's retarded. I know they've got tiny bodies, but there must be a brain in there somewhere.

Also, what's up with the webs? Two issues here:

1) How do they even build them in the first place? I understand the whole geometric-spyrograph-spinning of a web within a plant and whatnot; but I don't get the webs that stretch about 14 yards without any kind of suspension. There's just a bit of stringy-shit on the fence, and then one on the opposite fence. I guarantee the method is incredibly simple, but it constantly eludes me. How do they make a web going length-ways across a garden? It's probably something faggy like just walking along the ground, dragging it behind them, and then climbing up the other wall, or something. Lame.

2) What the shit is that stuff made from? If you ever want to affix a picture to your wall, but don't want to risk screws; just nip outside and walk along the garden-path. You will inevitably return covered in translucent, invisible-to-the-human-eye, spider crap all of you. Then simply place the picture on the floor (back up) and roll over it (gently). Hopefully this will remove 1/30th of the stuff that's on you, and stick it to the picture. Then simply chuck it at the wall. Like sticky-putty, but substantially more dangerous and expensive to use. I would love to know the composition of the spider-web, because it's definitely the stickiest substance known to man. Pritt-spider. As soon as you get it on your arm, it's there for good. It's the invasion equivalent of when you've got a tiny hair in your mouth/throat, and you spend sixteen days rooting around with your tongue, trying to find it. You know it's there; you can feel the tickle. Then you get it on your tongue, and you have to spend another millennia retrieving it from there with your fingers. Same problem here: You can't see the fucker, and when you do manage to lay your hands on it, it gets stuck to your hand! Damn. It's so fucking annoying. The best way to get this shit off is to burn it off, and, well, let's face it, jumping in a vat of flaming-tar probably isn't the safest thing to do - and it's probably a bit of an over-exaggeration given the circumstances.

Solution: Spiders make their webs out of red-coloured pritt-stick glue.

So yeah. Fuck insects. They piss me off.

DOWN WITH THE ECOSYSTEMS!

P.S. I feel it necessary to end on a paraphrased Eddie Izzard quote: "And what's up with bees; why are they always behind you? Are they working with your dad? He just says: 'No, just stand there. Don't move.' And the bees are like: 'Thanks, Dad!'. I'm thinking: 'No, I'm going to run away. AHHHH, BEEES. RUUUUUUUN.'"