Fruit Flies, Genocide and Human Ingenuity

So, we've got fruit flies in our house. I think it's mostly because we don't have any screens on our windows because the painters took them out and put them in the basement and then the movers buried them under seventy two tons of our boxed possessions. But hey, I'm not blaming anyone.

Fruit flies are massively annoying for such little beasts. It's partly because they are so tiny--which makes them hard to shoo away--but it's also because they fly around in swarms and they land on anything you might be eating or thinking of eating. And then they lay eggs on it. Apparently, the average fruit fly can lay 500 eggs, each of which can hatch into larva (on my food) and lay their own 500 eggs, all within the space of a week. Given those numbers, I'm not sure why there is any space in our house not packed to the exploding point with fruit flies, but so far the swarm has been relatively minimal (although no less annoying.)

I've mostly been thwacking them out of the air with dish towels--which is not only not very effective, but causes my oldest daughter to scold me for being, "mean and inhumane." I've tried explaining how the fruit flies are unhygienic barbarian invaders, locked in a life and death struggle with us for the household food supply, but she says they are, "tiny and cute and all creatures deserve to live." Despite her protests, I have begun researching means of inflicting genocide on them.

[DISCLAIMER] Okay, not genocide really. Fruit flies are not a national, racial, political or social group and, just to be really clear, I in no way support the systematic extermination of any peoples based on anything. Crap. When I run for president of the United States--the only country I currently qualify to be president of--I'm sure this blog will be quoted out of context by my esteemed opponent's propaganda machine despite my disclaimer and everyone will believe I support and/or actively participate in genocide. [END DISCLAIMER AND PARANOID TANGENT]

I suppose what I want to inflict on the fruit flies is actually speciecide. Regardless of what you call the total extinction I envision for my fruit flies, I have been able to quickly find an abundance of devious and ingenious ways to accomplish it. Most of them take gleeful advantage of the behavioral weaknesses of the flies. For example:

The Wine Trap: put out a glass of wine. Add one finger tip touch of dish soap to reduce the surface tension of the wine. Fruit flies are attracted to fermentation--but the wine will kill any eggs they manage to lay and the lack of surface tension will drown the flies.

The Oven Trap: Put a piece of fruit in your oven over night--a slice of banana works well. Leave the oven door open. In the morning, sneak up and slam the door closed. Turn the oven on to 400 for ten minutes. Clean the oven thoroughly.

The Blow Drier Trap: Sidle up to a swarm of fruit flies with a plugged in hair dryer in your hand (sidle up because the flies are alarmed by quick movement). Turn on the hair dryer and put the back end of it near the flies. They will be sucked into the heat chamber and fried!

The Vacuum Trap: Suck up entire swarms with the upholstery or crevice attachment. They cannot escape the suction and it will destroy them as they are sucked in.

I could go on for pages, but I think you've got the picture. All of them seem like deeply satisfying and even enjoyable approaches to eliminating my flies. But, of course, my daughter would be inconsolable if she stumbled across my blueprint for a final solution to the fruit fly problem.

The abundance--the over abundance--of speciecide suggestions readily available to anyone with an Internet makes me glad that I am not a non-human living on Earth. We are devilish clever at doing away with things or seeding their downfall by dissecting their behavior. We're really good problem solvers and very good at thinking of anything that bothers us as a problem to be solved even if it is actually another living creature that is part of a much larger living system way more complicated than we can begin to fathom.

So, I'll probably wind up using the Open Jar Trap. It's what it sounds like--an open jar with a piece of fruit in the bottom. When a bunch of flies land on the fruit, you slap a plate over the top and then you take the jar outside and let them all go. That's right. Catch and release. I'll probably turn it into a father/daughter project.

And then the little buggers or their teeming progeny will undoubtedly come back in through the screenless windows. Damn fruit flies.

Cat, Dog, Stock Market, Whatever...

So someone wrote to me, not about the Helm, but about my post about the dog alarm clock. Apparently, this guy has been scouring the Internet looking for the dog drill sergeant alarm clock that shouts "WAKE UP! RISE AND SHINE!" because he had a roommate who had one in college--and of course, Google led him to me. He's been looking for one of these clocks for his kids but has been unable to find one anywhere. So, having recently recovered mine from the Borg Cube (I couldn't take it anymore and finally dug it out) I examined mine and discovered that it was made by a company called Rhythm in Japan and sold by the Chicago Clock Company. That gave me enough info for my own Google search--which eventually turned up an image of the clock. Only, lo and behold, it was described as a CAT drill sergeant! That's right. All these years I have been laboring under the misapprehension that the most annoying alarm clock on earth is shaped like a dog, when in fact, it is supposed to be a cat.

Then I discovered that these things sell on eBay for $180 each! I think mine cost me $15.99 when I got it! Damn! I should have been investing in these Cat alarm clocks all these years instead of the stock market! What was I thinking?

Three, the Economy and the Urim & Thummim

The Helm #3 finally came out today! Whoo Hooo!! It was originally supposed to come out in September, then it got moved back to October 1st, and now it is actually out. So, there's that.

Oh, and then there's the fact that the world continues to collapse into economic ruin. Well, I guess you can't have everything. But, and just to be clear, the third issue of the comic book is out now!

In other news, I was driving late at night, listening to Studio 360 on NPR when they did this story about the Urim and Thummim--you know, the ancient biblical divinatory devices. Apparently, some guy thinks he's found them. Only thing is, he believes the Urim and Thummim are a cup which he bought at a Goodwill superstore for 69 cents. Oh yeah! That just feels pretty darn Blurdyesque to me.

You can check out the story at http://www.studio360.org/episodes/2008/10/03 where they also have a trailer for a documentary about the whole thing.

Spice Cake, Trans Fat and Tim Curry

We made spice cake a couple of days ago--from a box, with frosting from a can--you know, the way I like it. We haven't done this since the girls were born because of how just about all of the spice cake mixes in a box contain 1 gram of trans fat per serving. Seems like everybody else in the entire world has wised up and taken trans fat out of their products, but not the damn cake mix people. Even Crisco has taken out the trans fat, and as far as I was aware, all Crisco was was trans fat. So come on you cake mix people! Wise up already!

Anyhow, trans fat and all, we had the cake and we ate it too. Technically, that isn't particularly hard. I've always felt that expression, "have your cake and eat it too," ought to be reversed. Anyone can have their cake and eat it too. What's hard is to eat your cake and then still have it. You can't do that--which seems more to the point of the old saying. However you slice it, and we sliced it with a special cake knife, spice cake is awesome. The girls mixed food coloring in with the white frosting so that the cake actually came out a nice shade of pale blue. We used to let them mix in as much color as they wanted with frosting, but then you get the whole inside of your mouth dyed and you look like you've got some horrible disease or something. And also, my oldest still can't eat any kind of desert without getting it all over her entire head--even on the back of her ears. Not too problematic when you're talking about a ginger cookie, but progressively worse when it's chocolate, something with frosting or something with food color augmented frosting.

As I was eating my piece of the cake, the shuffle on my iPod turned on the song "I Do the Rock". I love that song--in a different way from how I love spice cake, but it's still love. In case you are unfamiliar, you should check it out. It's by Tim Cury from his second album, "Fearless".

So, check out the song, get yourself a piece of cake and relax. 1 gram of trans fat probably won't kill you. Not immediately anyway.

Inviting Disaster: On Raising Lemons, Pseudo PALK's and Best Sellers

I have a lemon tree that I have nearly killed three times now because it is hard to grow lemons in Portland Oregon. They do fine in the summer, but as soon as it starts getting cold, my poor lemon tree starts dropping leaves and lemons and looking all mangy. I swore that this year I was not going to let it suffer, but then we moved a short time ago and left the tree at the other house. So, of course, there was a cold snap. Now the leaves are all yellow and half the tiny little lemons have dropped off and I feel like a shoddy tree keeper again. It's a good thing there isn't an anti-cruelty to plants society or I would be in some serious trouble.

I don't know much about raising lemons, but here's something that strikes me as odd. There's been one particular lemon growing on my tree for well over a year. It's not a particularly big lemon, and in all that time, it hasn't turned yellow yet. What's up with that? Do lemons just take forever to ripen, or is this a peculiar lemon? Anyone with advanced lemon knowledge should feel free to comment and let me know.

I guess that is an open invitation to the various fiends in the world posing as people with advanced lemon knowledge but who actually have little to no lemon knowledge. That's right, I'm talking about the despicable pseudo PALK's. I know you're out there, just itching to spread false lemon knowledge, and I dare you--no, I double dare you--to try to leave a fake comment without me knowing. Chickens.

Apart from that, the Helm issue #2 has made the Best Seller list at Dark Horse and the Diamond top 300 for August! Whoo Hoo! I'm two for two! But now I know I'm just inviting disaster for issue #3 by gloating about the first two.

I guess that's what I'm doing with this whole blog entry--inviting disaster--if not from pseudo PALK's, then from the gods of the comic book best seller lists. Oh well, that's just me. That's just how I roll.

Moving, the Total Collapse of the Economy and the Borg Cube

I don't like to appear egotistical or anything, but I'm pretty sure that the completion of my new house triggered the collapse of the global economy.

We've been working on remodelling a house for the last year and that whole time I've been joking with people who asked when it would be done. I'd tell them that the new house wouldn't be finished until the real estate market totally collapsed so that I wouldn't be able to sell the old house. I guess I should be more careful what I joke about. We moved on Saturday and on Monday the market plunged into the toilet. Maybe we'll rent the old place for a while.

Apart from triggering the total collapse of the world economy, I've been kind of unproductive lately--probably due to the frenzy of moving into a new house and dealing with the fact that everyone in my family got sick and we don't have phone service, Internet, mail or anything. I haven't been doing much writing--just surviving--but it's starting to make me feel a little listless. So I suppose I should get my butt in gear and start working on some things--like figuring out what move I can make to trigger the recovery of the economy. Maybe unpacking boxes in the basement? That's a frightening idea.

Our basement (a brand new basement that we had to lift up our house to build) is currently packed with everything that used to be in our old house. The bulk of it is in this giant 12 foot cube of packing boxes--what we've been fearfully referring to as the Borg Cube--you know, that big deadly cube-ship that the Borg used to fly around in on Star Trek the Next Generation. Anyway, somewhere in the Borg Cube, right near the back of the bottom row (the most inaccessible part) is an alarm clock. This particular alarm clock is shaped like a doggy drill Sergeant holding a bugle, and when it goes off it play reveille and shouts "WAKE UP!!! RISE AND SHINE!!!" at tremendous volume. It's an alarm that is impossible to sleep through--the very reason I bought the clock fifteen years ago and the same reason that I eventually stopped using it. It was just too harsh to wake up to.

Anyway, we know that the alarm clock is in the cube at the center of the bottom of the back because it goes off twice a day--at 5:30 PM and 5:30 AM--for a solid hour each time. Dinner time and just before the sun comes up. It is very annoying--particularly because we can't figure any way to get at it to shut it off short of actually unpacking all of the rest of the boxes. You'd think we could simply throw the other boxes aside to get at that one, Incredible-Hulk-style, but there's just no room to move the boxes. The rest of the basement is too full of other junk that is not in boxes. So, to turn off this clock, we actually have to get all of our stuff in order.

It feels kind of like a metaphor--the kind I hate.

Cheerio Soda Pop Burps

I was talking with Wayne today (of course, you all know Wayne) when Cheerios were mentioned in passing and he said, "Cheerios give you nasty burps if you eat them while drinking soda."

That there is a fundamental human truth you can only discover from experience--and the fact that Wayne knew it made me aware of how powerful a tool it is for identifying like minded individuals. You see, most people eat Cheerios for breakfast and they eat them with milk on them. Again, most people would never drink a soda while eating something with milk on it--that's just a bad and unattractive idea. The two curdle because of the whole acid versus base thing. So, to know that Cheerios produce stanky burps when combined with soda, you have to be a person who has eaten cheerios without milk--either dry as a snack with a soda--most likely while watching television--or, if you are truly hardcore, dry out of the bowl or box with a soda for breakfast. For me, the combination is most often Cheerios and Dr. Pepper either super late night or super early. And just to be clear, I don't pour the Dr. Pepper on the Cheerios, although I can't vouch for Wayne on that issue.