As a Back Scratcher, Wolverine Might Be Too Painful

This looks nothing like Wolverine

This whole “continual” blogging thing is totally not working. You should all know by now if I say, “I’m back and I’m gonna continue blogging every day now because I’m totally inspired!,” then I’m most probably lying to you. So where was I? Watchmen. Oh yes! How can I forget? So many great comments from angry die-hard Watchmen fans. Well two angry comments. But that’s a substantial number considering the readership of this blog. I rarely respond to comments from blog entries, but these are too good to pass up. This particular dude named Jorkings was not happy about my opinion on his favorite movie of all time: “Re-watch the film PROPERLY and answer your own rhetorical (?) questions, you idiot.” He did make a good point by calling me an idiot.

But his friend and most probably lover, Tom, totally put me in my place. Tom objected to my confusion over Dr. Manhattan’s clothed/naked policy, stating: “Lol, I’m with you Jorkings. This idiot obviously can’t cope with the overload in his brain, stick to Tom and Jerry…DR Manhattan only appears naked when he is with the other Watchmen or with his girlfriend. When in public he is either smartly dressed or wearing what looks like black trunks. His split from ‘our reality’ and his increasing difficulty to operate within the human culture is gradually becoming more of a problem for him.”

Wow. Wow. I think that sentence speaks for itself and totally clears up the entire movie and all of human existence–thanks Tom. But he makes some good points, there. I, too, tend to be naked when around friends–we all find it more comfortable that way, as it totally gets all the awkwardness out of the way. I try to be “smartly dressed” on all other occasions.

Well that’s enough with Watchmen for now. I might as well upset some more comic junkies while I’m here. I saw X Men last weekend. This movie got below awful reviews so I went in with below awful expectations. And I have to say, the movie exceeded those expectations. I’ve never been too into X Men, but I did see the other movies. I recall fondly seeing the movie when Jean Grey died and my friend Kelsey started crying in the theater. Crying during an X Men movie has to be one of the more hilarious things you can do.

So here’s my X Men Origins question: Why is Sabretooth like the most badass character in this movie when his nails just grow longer? Why was he able to completely beat up Wolverine with said nail growing power? Don’t get me wrong. I think Sabretooth would be amazing at back scratching–but fighting…not so much.

And what’s the deal with the guy with the guns? Is his power that he’s really good with guns? But all in all, for what it was, I enjoyed the movie. And The Blob was great cause he’s a Blob. Speaking of which, remember that video game “A Boy and His Blob”? I miss that.

I’ll be back. I promise this time. Unless you don’t want me to be, in which case I won’t. But wherever I am, you can be sure that I’m either naked or smartly dressed.

Dr. Manhattan’s Penis

I’m dedicating this blog entry to the movie about the so-called greatest graphic novel ever created. I’m not going to comment on the novel, since I never read it. I will, however, proceed to bash “Watchmen” the movie.  If you haven’t seen the movie, I don’t think I’ll ruin anything, per se, but I may prevent you from wanting to watch the movie.

1.) The main character is Dr. Manhattan. He’s big, he’s blue, and he can do whatever the hell he wants. He’s like God. They should just call him God. Need some extra help around the house? He can split up into as many Dr. Manhattan’s as he wants. Need to reach something in a really high place? He can grow to whatever height he wants. Need to collect your thoughts in private? He can transport you to Mars where you guys can chill.

He can do EVERYTHING. The movie is about Russia and the U.S. on the verge of nuclear war. The Watchmen want to prevent nuclear war. Why can’t Dr. Manhattan just snap his fingers and let is be so??

For example: in the beginning, the Watchmen are used to end the war in Vietnam. So, you see a giant Dr. Manhattan shooting fire or whatever he does at the Vietcong. Meanwhile, you see other Watchmen, particularly the “Comedian,” burning people with his blowtorch and smoking his cigar. Why? Why does he have to be there? Dr. Manhattan doesn’t even have to be there. But I suppose it does look better on screen if he is giganticized and stomping on evil Vietnamese people.

So what’s the point of having other Watchmen who have ZERO special powers. Great, we’ve got a guy who looks like Batman, his hot girlfriend, and a crazy guy whose mask moves around a lot. How about instead of having Watchmen, we just have God. And God will do whatever he wants, end nuclear war, cause peace and stop global warming. I don’t care if he’s got some “commitment” issues and what not. Just let him take care of business, and shoot the other Watchmen.

2.) This also relates to Dr. Manhattan. All my qualms relate to Dr. Manhattan. His penis. For the first 15 minutes or so of the movie, Dr. Manhattan is wearing pants. For one scene, he’s actually wearing a suit and tie, which is hilarious because he’s blue. But for the most part, to make him seem more godlike, he doesn’t wear a shirt and shoes. But at one point, they show multiple versions of Dr. Manhattan trying to have sex, and they’re all naked. OK. That makes sense. It’s a sex scene.

But after that, I think the director was thinking, “Hey, I have a brilliant idea! He doesn’t need to wear clothes at all for the rest of the movie!” And so it went. For the rest of the movie, Dr. Manhattan walked around with his penis hanging out. The nudity was so jarring because Dr. Manhattan tried to be so freaking prophetic all the time. He was like Yoda, but bigger and bluer. But Yoda wore pants! Or cutoff shorts, I don’t, remember.

So, Dr. Manhattan is talking about how odd the human situation is, and “why should I help the world, when I can do mathematics on Mars in this Mars rover I just invented..” Meanwhile, his penis is hanging out. Scene destroyed.

The movie should have been called, “The Watchmen Featuring Penis.”

3.) In the Mars scene, Dr. Manhattan was talking about how much he hates Earth because humans ruined everything with their technology, construction of roads and buildings and what not. He says how Mars is so great because humans aren’t there to corrupt it. Then, he asks the girl to fly around with him on the Mars Rover Space Station-like thingy that he built. He was probably also in the process of building a mini mall. That’s all Dr. Manhattan ever wanted–he wanted to build mini malls.

I have a lot more problems with this movie. For example, it’s about 9 hours long. Nine hours of Dr. Manhattan’s penis. But there were some good parts…Richard Nixon was in it. That’s all I can think of right now, unfortunately.

Where Have I Been? Where Have You Been!

Adam Richmond, Man v. Food

I haven’t written a blog post since September 11? Really? Wow. Not only is that pathetic on my part but fairly ominous. Ominous, indeed.

Anywho, the other day my friend Danny was like “Hey, why is your blog still in your away message if you haven’t blogged in, forever.” He made a good point, but his enlightened words mattered little because about a quadrillion other people essentially told me the same thing. I was also talking to my other friend Dan (I only have friends named Dan or Adam, as you’d think from my blog) and I said, “You should chnage your away message picture becuse it sucks.” And he’s like, “Well, why don’t you take down your blog, idiot.”

So eventually I got the point. I’m blogging. Let’s see where I left off: “Heroes”…interesting, very interesting, Josh. I do still watch Heroes, so I can see the solid arguments I am making in this blog entry. What? Enrique Iglesias? How did I start talking about Enrique Iglesias? This is a disaster…another disastrous blog entry like usual. What was I thinking when I wrote that? Was I wasted? Don’t answer that as the answer is evident.

I do miss blogging though. I’ve wanted to write about this show called “Man v. Food.” It’s kinda like the show “Man vs. Wild” starring Bear Grylls, which I’ve talked about extensively in this blog, examining every angle to the man, no god’s, amazing existence. But “Man v. Food” is good, as well. It’s about a Jew who eats a lot. Adam Richmond encounters a number of food challenges where he has to eat like the spiciest curry or like 10 milkshakes, and not die.

That’s essentially Bear Grylls’ task: don’t die. But Man vs. Food is just as inspiring because he proves just what a human is capable of and why we were put on this earth to begin with…eat every other species. And quickly.

Oh, and last week’s “24″ was, in the fewest words possible, “uber amazing.” I’d rate it as probably one of the best 24’s of the season. The Sengalese people took over the White House and captured the President! No freakin’ way! As unbelievable as this may sound to the casual observer and proletariat, a typical episode of 24 last season consisted of 4 nukes going off in mutliple cities in the course of an hour. Then they wouldn’t address it again because chances were another nuke and/or anthrax attack would occur in the next hour–so why fret?

Now you see why it isn’t so inconceivable for rebel leaders of an extremely poor African country to take over the White House. It’s common sense: they took boats and they had moles. Boats and moles. Moles and boats.

I have lots more to talk about. For example, going back to Heroes–it’s been…bad. Very bad. I think everyone on Heroes should compete to see who is, officially, the worst actor in existence. Right now it’s a tight race between Parkman and Peter–Parkman has mastered the ability to yell and stare awkwardly at people while he attempts to read their mind; Peter deserves to be punched in the face every time he attempts to speak. But Mohinder’s amazing…partly because his name is Mohinder.

And where have Hiro and Ando been for the last 14 episodes? Are they dead…they get fired? Maybe they both had constipation during the shoots or something.

And where has Scrubs been!!! Ahhhhhh. First the President speaks and cancels Scrubs and then they decide not to air anymore episodes ever again. (Shaking fist angrily) Obamaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!

That’s all for now I suppose. Josh, out.

Heroes…The Other Jack Bauer

I started watching the show “Heroes.” My friend got the season 1 and 2 DVDs, and we went to town. When the show started I was skeptical. For starters, it was on at the same time as “24″ and that’s blasphemy. Jack Bauer shares a time slot with nobody.

But as time went on and “24″ got, well, bad, I began to lose faith in the show. But I continued watching it and avoiding its NBC neighbor. Plus, there was no way I was gonna get started with “Heroes.” When a friend told me to start watching it a while back, I was like, “I’m sure I want to waste an hour of my day once a week watching a short Japanese kid with nerdy glasses shrieking like a girl and squishing his face together like he’s suffering from chronic constipation.”

Anywho, I started watching the show on the day we had that tropical storm. In other words, we had a large chunk of indoor time because the pools of water would have carried us off to New Jersey if we went outdoors. And, well, 15 episodes later, I’m all about that short, shrieking, constipated Japanese guy. I say guy because Wikipedia says he was born in 1974, which runs directly counter to my thought that he was a 20 year old girl.

I’m also not positive the show isn’t violating some X Men copyright law. It seems like every character shares an X Man character’s power, though I haven’t seen a Wolverine yet. But I’m only on episode 15. But the second I watched that blond girl purposely fall off a high platform and splatter on the ground, and then rewound it to watch it again, and again, I couldn’t stop watching the show.

We all want to have superpowers, that’s why the show is so popular. I’m pretty sure there’s a Facebook application where you pick which superpower you would have. I’m not sure what I would want, but there’s no question I would not want to be the guy that could hear everyone’s thoughts. If I wanted to go insane, I’m sure there are more pleasant ways to do so.

The ability to bend time and travel into the past, present and future seems like it would be cool as well (power of said Japanese girl). But now that we have that Super Collider we’ll all be able to do that soon anyway. If we don’t all die first via black hole, of course.

I decided to use the picture above for this blog because I came across it today and I think it’s quite pertinent to this conversation. Well, it’s not. It’s not at all. But it’s hilarious. I think my ability would be to talk to animals, though. I’ve always been an animal person, and I suppose that would allow me to hang out with lions and bears like Tarzan does or something. Also, I would become of the protector of animals. Like this guy, here. He may look happy, but he’s pissed. And do you blame him? Look at him! Let’s just say if he could talk to me, he would have some not nice words to say about his owner. I would avenge him. I would be his hero.

Note: Ever since I started watching Heroes, I haven’t been able to get that freaking Enrique Iglesias song out of my head. Oh yeah, you know what I’m talking about.

Minicows

So we published an article today about minicows. Minicows you say!? Yes, that’s right, minicows. Smaller versions of cows. If cows are big, minicows are not as big. I believe the correct term is not minicows but minicattle…that’s the PC term. But I’m gonna call them minicows, because minicows is funnier.

Here’s the deal in a nutshell. The economy is tough and minicows are more thrifty. Because they are smaller they have smaller stomachs and they eat less so you don’t have to spend so much on that expensive cud. But they still provide plenty of milk and meat and, of course, pet companionship.

But there is one fatal flaw, from what I can tell. They’re adorable. A little too adorable. So you buy a minicow thinking you’re going to become a wealthier farmer, and then you watch it grow up, to a much smaller stature than regular cows of course. You watch it eat and moo and make milk. And then comes that fateful day when someone, somewhere has that hankering for prime rib. You get out your slaughtering gloves and your blood-splatter goggles, and look at the minicow, and realize how mini it is and…and…you just can’t do it. “I’ll use this one for milk,” you say. But then you get too attached to the other minicows, and before you know it, you’re a broke farmer living off of your own cud.

Here’s my other thought. All cows used to be mini. You see, we created the fat, fat cows that exist today. Let me rephrase that. Cows weren’t mini in the past. They were normal. Now our cows are abnormally uber fat. We wanted more meat and this is what we got. So here we are in 2008 realizing, hey, mini is the way to go. Larger SUV cows waste too much gas and aren’t energy and financially efficient. It’s just like back to the future without the flying cars and crazy old man.

Who knew cows used to be small and now we’re dealing with gigantic mutant freak cows? It would be particularly cool if we would do this with more animals, for fun. Like, instead of minicows, we could make minihippopotamuses. Or, we could go the other way and make giganticized chickens. Just for fun!

But in all seriousness, we can’t let our guard down with these minicows. If we’re miniaturizing them, for all we know they’re gaining an ability, like intelligence. Soon they’ll be smarter than us, and there’s nothing we will be able to do except become their slaves.

And then they’re going to miniaturize us. Then we’ll see who’s minilaughing.

My iPhone and Me

I finally purchased an iPhone. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of it…it’s this new contraption from the makers of the Apple Macintosh computer, first produce in the year 1984. Now if you’re not aware, essentially the ownership of the iPhone makes me a better person than you. It’s simple mathematics: 1 iPhone + me = 2x(as cool as you).

Owning the iPhone puts me in a special club of other people who own the iPhone and scientologists. Not only do I now possess the telephone capability, but I also have the music and Internet capabilities. Unlike you, I can now look at pictures of monkeys whenever I please. If I’m walking on 63rd street, and suddenly someone comes running up to me short of breath and says, “Excuse me! Excuse me! I need to look at monkeys now, can you help me!?” I’ll just smile and be like, “What type of monkeys?”

I used to have a Razr. That put me in an elite club with only everybody else in the world save Africa and owners of the Crazr. Don’t get me wrong, it was a sweet phone at first. It flipped. It flipped good. I looked forward to receiving a call and saying, “I’m sorry, I have to take this, and then flip it up,” even if I didn’t really have a call.

And the Razr was a sturdy phone, indeed…I could drop it, feed it to my dog or implode it, and it might develop a scratch or two. The sound quality coupled with the “network” of Verizon with that creepy guy with glasses who follows you everywhere, and I had everything I needed. All those losers bought the iPhone #1 and I was like, “Have fun listening to music and calling people, freaks.”

But I came around, just like I came around with my computer. I was a PC person my whole life, even through college when my roommates all went Mac. Finally, when my PC commit suicide from massive virus intake did I go Mac. And I love it. So clean and virus free.

And now I have my iPhone. I’m content, don’t get me wrong. I can call people, text people AND listen to music, as aforementioned. I can download mad cool “apps,” as our iPhone street slang calls them. And now instead of going on the Internet all day for work as my job dictates, I can also go online after work, and on weekends. I will never be more than 1 minute late reading a new email again! If that isn’t heaven on earth then I don’t know what is.

But you know what, I don’t need those monkeys. I don’t even need to watch YouTube videos of people being tased if I have nothing else to do on the bus. I miss the vintage Nokia…8th grade…it had everything you need in life and more. Not only was it the smallest phone of all time to that date, while at the same time being as thick as a brick and available in colors like magenta and hot pink…but it had SNAKE. Remember Snake. Only the greatest game ever created, with the exception of Fat Princess (see prior blog entry). Can you imagine how high our scores would be today if we still had that phone? The snake would literally take up the whole screen…that high.

I’m telling you now, the rate of people being hit by cars while watching YouTube on their phones is going to skyrocket. And Nokia’s just gonna laugh. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go download an “app” where I can simulate my iPhone being a mug of beer, and I can literally and figuratively pour my iPhone’s beer into another person’s iPhone. And that’s why I’m cooler than you.

Fat Princess

So I wrote an article today about a video game that has upset the feminist community. The Playstation game is called Fat Princess. You’d think the name in itself would not indicate that it would cause problems by any means, of course. Fat Princess. But it did. Feminist bloggers…thats right, you heard me, feminist bloggers, have expressed disappointment and anger with the game. But these aren’t just usual feminist bloggers. These are video game feminist bloggers…the most intense kind, to say the least. By the way, I’m saying “feminist bloggers” because they are actually advertised as feminist bloggers.

The game has a very simple premise. Like capture the flag, a team has to capture the other team’s princess and bring her back to their home base. But here’s the rub…in order to impede the opposing team’s efforts, you can feed your princess cake to make her nice and fat. That way, it’ll be harder for them to lift her up and they’ll have to go get some more oxen to pull her, or whatever it is they do in games now. Hence, Fat Princess.

Personally, I think it’s a hilarious idea for a game, but then again, I’m a guy. So, I suppose I lose some credibility. If I were a portly feminist my argument would bear more meaning. But it doesn’t seem like a very controversial idea. If your princess is fat, she’s hard to move around. That helps you win the game. There are no judgments here; nobody’s saying the princess is a horrible person for being fat–in fact, the fatter she is the more of a hero she becomes. If you had the standard skinny princess a bird could swoop down and take her, or the wind could blow her to the other side, and you’ll lose. The fat princess should be empowering.

One of the feminist bloggers suggested an alternative idea: couldn’t the gamers just use the same concept and instead of a fat princess use treasure chests that could be filled with heavy items. No. No they can’t. Because the actual game doesn’t seem very good. If they followed that idea, they could just call it, I don’t know, capture the flag. The potential for greatness lies in the fat princess. Plus, I don’t think this is gonna set a bad example, causing young people to grow up and force feed their wives until they explode. Although, that would be an awful twist of fate, indeed.

But, in general I don’t buy the whole violent games are evil argument. Grand Theft Auto is not the downfall of humanity. And Mortal Combat came out like 40 years ago, and I’m pretty sure violent crime has not increased (warning: sweeping statement based on my memory, but it doesn’t matter cause it’s a blog entry, so, whoops). Maybe, maybe, police report one FATALITY (read in scary voice) a week now. On average.

By the way, in an effort not to get sued I didn’t include a picture of Fat Princess here. Check out the article for that. So instead, for your viewing I put the first picture I encountered on Google images when I typed in the statement “fat guy.” I hope this serves to boost my argument.

Awkward Handshakes

Kids today. Too many handshakes if you ask me. Back in my day we had one handshake for the lot of you…crazy kids and your drugs.

I’m not “with it.” For example, handshakes. It’s too complicated. Makes my head hurt, and causes much unneeded discomfort for my brain and for my soul.

Life was much easier when there were three handshakes: the strong handshake, the “eh” handshake, and the dead or dying monkfish handshake. That’s it. They’re all done the same way. Each participate looks at each other, preferably in the eye, unless one party has a glass eye, in which case it might be considered impolite to stare. Both parties goe for the kill with their right hands, unless one party has a hook right hand, in which case he probably also has a glass eye, in which case you probably shouldn’t be shaking his hand anyway, because he’ll kill you.

But if it’s a normal situation and both parties have the proper extremities then it’s only right to shake firmly, manly, like Bear Grylls would do. Your status in life is deciphered solely by this process, and it’s really not difficult.

Now all has changed. As far as business is concerned, yeah, the standard handshake should suffice. As far as coolness is concerned, it’s a whole new ballgame. You got the fist bump, the fist bump with the “mock explosion at the end,” (according to Yahoo Answers). You got the handshake that starts by connecting the space between the thumb and the pointer finger. You got that handshake with an added “slide.” You got that handshake with the slide and then an added snap. You have a standard handshake followed by the slide. Of course, you then have the standard handshake with the slide and the snap. Don’t forget the fist bump preceded by an exchange of up and down fist bumps, one after the other. There’s also the always easy, but sometimes strange, slap. And then, of course, if you’re all about the early 90s, you can add the “mock explosion” to that. Or a good ol fashioned high five.

Sometimes it gets really interesting and you can combine almost all of the above and add your own little shindig, but those are usually special circumstances involving parties who are perfectly comfortable with their mutual coolness. For example, there could be some jumping up and down, singing, headbutting or kicking.

I also forgot to mention that many of these handshakes could be followed by a full-hug, a semi hug or a little bump.

It all makes my head hurt. I asked my roommate Josh, a self-described handshake expert, how to know when to do what handshake. “It’s all about the level of friendship,” he told me. “What about the bouncer we always see at the local bar,” I said. “I don’t know,” he replied.

Apparently, this knowledge is innate. Your either born with it or your doomed to awkward handshakes. Somehow, some people are able to walk around to various levels of friends, and both parties magically know which handshake from the list is appropriate.

You might say, “Well, that’s because one party takes the lead from the other party.” True, I’ll give you that. But, there’s so little time! You need hockey goalie reflexes for the handshake. But if one party goes for the fist bump and the other whips out the thumb-pointer finger job. Oh…my…God.

Awkwardness is taken to a new level. “I thought you were my friend?”

“I..I…I am.”

“Then why did you go for the fist bump? Am I trash to you?”

“No, I thought it was OK…”

“You thought wrong. Get out of my life.”

My example involved two decent friends. But what if you’re just acquaintances? What if one person goes for the regulation, firm handshake, and another attempts the handshake-hug. Then the person going for the hug can’t back out…it’s too late…there’s no time, the die has already been cast. So he tries to pull back, slam on the brakes, and….the result is a slight tap of a chest bump with the other hand ricocheting into his groin. Oh dear.

Matters like the one I just mentioned don’t need to happen, kids. Life was so much simpler back in dickedy-aught-two. It’s a scary world out there…so many mini explosions it’s like a war zone.

Bear Grylls Goes to the Grocery Store to Buy Milk…But the Milk is Spoiled…Bear Grylls is Sad

I’m back! I’m sorry about the lack of blogging, I just got back from my two month long trip to Tahiti. It’s quite nice this time of year, Tahiti is. There are beaches. And fish. Pretty, colorful fish. And Tahitians.

If you read that and thought, “Josh wasn’t in Tahiti,” then you’d be right, I just made that up. I wasn’t in Tahiti, I’ve just been LAZY. But I would have preferred to be lazy in Tahiti than New York, obviously.

Shockingly, my blog traffic hasn’t been doing too badly for my lengthy hiatus. Blogs have a fantastic stats feature, so I can learn a good amount about how many views I get. I can even watch you all as you read my blog. I’m looking at you right now. “Is he lying again, like Tahiti?” You’ll just never know.

But I do learn if someone checks out a certain blog post, and what people searched to find my blog. For some reason, I’ve been pulling off a solid 30 views a day, even though the only thing on my blog for like a month has been a picture of a happy cartoon bug. I figured my parents, grandparents and girlfriend would probably check the site about every other day at least…but 30 views, how’s that possible? Humanity must have lost faith in my ability to post by now, right? That bug is really not that awesome to look at.

Every day I get about 20 people finding this blog by searching, “Bear Grylls.” That’s right. Remember that incredible version of masculinity who eats snakes and sky dives into the ocean for no apparent reason? Well, I wrote a blog about him in JANUARY (when I started the blog), called “Not Really Surviving Man,” about Bear, and Les Stroud of Survivorman, and who would win in a fight and what not; I also wrote about what would happen if I were on those shows, and how quickly I would perish. So, Internet users cannot get enough of my Bear Grylls and Man vs. Wild diatribe.

Thank you very much Bear and Bear Grylls lovers for keeping this blog alive during its darkest moments. And to widen my fan base I will make an attempt to use the name Bear Grylls in all the rest of my blog posts.

BEAR GRYLLS BEAR GRYLLS BEAR GRYLLS BEAR GRYLLS BEAR GRYLLS BEAR GRYLLS BEAR GRYLLS BEAR GRYLLS

Thank you and God bless.

The General

I was sitting on the couch, watching Game 2 of the basketball finals and basking in the utter lack of air conditioning that our living room provides in 99 degree heat (even at night), when I notice an object jumping from the corner of my eye.

It must have been a bug. So I go in for a closer look and point it out to roommate Adam. We both agree it is a grasshopper and he grabs toilet paper for the kill when it jumps to the floor and shimmies under the TV stand. So it’s gone for the time being. It looked big to be a grasshopper on closer inspection, but no worries.

So we watch another 15 minutes of the game when I see something poke its head out from under the TV stand and scutter across the floor. Hrmm…that’s definitely much bigger than a grasshopper, I thought. And then it took a turn for my room. “Son of a bi…”

We both got up and made a run for it. Unfortunately, the fact that the bug ran into my room was reminiscent of one of those movies, when the murderer/escapee vanishes into a maze hedge garden. Immediately, the chaser stops, looks around and knows the fleer could be anywhere, and he would need the help of a trusty chainsaw.

When I finish wearing my work clothes I place them in a pile to the left of my bed, in order to separate them from the other regular laundry and separate them from the work clothes ready for another wear. The clothes pile up over time, like any pile has a tendency to do. Unfortunately, I split a 2 bedroom apartment with 3 guys and I’m in the small room. Let’s just say there’s not much space to spare for piles of laundry. And then there are the other random piles representing shoes, old printer equipment, and my trusty pile collection, of course.

The bug jumped into the maze and we pursued with shoe and toilet paper in hand. Then I saw the black thing hopping over some clothes. I hit it with my shoe. I hit it again. I hit it again. Then it ran away.

Upon closer inspection, this was not a grasshopper. This was a roach. But you know how people always go around saying, “Why, I saw a cockroach the other day, it must have been the size of a Volkswagon!” And then everyone chuckles. Well, ditto to what he said.

And then it ran behind a desk, and we were left with nothing. “It might be lying dead somewhere,” Adam said. “You hit it pretty good. It should at least be really hurt.”

Let’s just say that didn’t leave me with solace. It didn’t look hurt when it triumphantly responded to my blows by speeding away and grinning. After waiting five minutes for any signs of movement, we retreated back to the basketball game.

But I was in no mood for basketball. The emperor of cockroaches was lurking somewhere in my room, and there was NO way I was getting to sleep that night, knowing that it could just be sitting on top of me, staring at me while I slept and plotting my demise.

So I took the only logical course of action: I went with the chainsaw/or hedge clippers (use whatever analogy you please). I started removing the piles from my floor. And it wasn’t pleasant either, knowing that the roach could leap out with each lifting of a shirt. Finally, the last of my piles was comfortable removed, and my room looked, well, good. Thanks cockroach!

But still, no sign of the beast. I gave up again and went back to watching the game with Adam, still quite distraught knowing I wouldn’t be sleeping. Then…a movement. Something crawled in my room. I jumped up, grabbed the shoe and there it was. I smashed it a few more times and…it got away. Adam ran in…”Where did it go?”

“I don’t know.”

“I thought you just saw it.”

“I did.”

But it vanished. Adam left the room again and then I bumped into my computer chair. I jumped back as the roach flew, not leaped, flew, with wings and all, from its camouflaged position on the chair to the floor. I yelled as I saw it, missed it with a swipe, and then became exceedingly frustrated. It went behind the desk again. As I turned around, Adam said, “I got it!” as he continued to smack it over and over and over and over.

It looked dead. It wasn’t moving, it was turned over on its back in all of its gruesomeness. It’s elusive, winged self was now twitching from time to time. Although I felt kind of bad I said, “Let’s flush it before it gets back up.” So we did. We threw it in the toilet, and watched it swirl around and down…and kept watching for another two minutes. And then we dropped a grenade in there for good measure.

I called my girlfriend Leslie after to tell her what happened. She took some entomology (study of bugs, not to be confused with etymology, the study of words) classes in college and listened to my characterization of the creature. She said it was probably not a cockroach but a “water bug.” I didn’t know what a water bug was, but I was sure that didn’t sound as gross or bad as cockroach, and whatever this was deserved a much worse name than water bug. Water bug sounds like something you can smile at while fishing and possible pet. This was an enormous hideous looking monstrosity…with wings!! It was the perfect bug. We initially thought it was a grasshopper because of its deft movements and unusual abilities…so, I’m gonna call him General Ugly. That seems like an appropriate name.

Well, that’s my story. So are the trials of living in the city when it’s 100 degree weather, the perfect breeding ground for mutant bugs. Big bugs must have caused terrible PR for Volkswagon.