Agreed on the determination of teenagers, but I guess I'm just not as squeamish about roaches as he is. Now, if it had been pigeons that would be a different matter...
It's a well-told story, but I find myself skeptical of a house (in Florida, no less) with only _dead_ insects.
I think that was an essential element of the story. We imagine him going from room to room, expecting that this room will be the one full of LIVE roaches that will finally disgust him enough to stop working, and never do they appear. Why are they all dead? Does fumigation work that well when it's done to a house unoccupied by humans?
I think it's probably hard to judge one's squeamishness about roaches, as it would manifest itself in a situation like that, without having been in a situation like that, but hey, Alaska's a crazy place.
I have lived in other places, you know.
Why are they all dead? Does fumigation work that well when it's done to a house unoccupied by humans?
Surely fumigation works better in a house unoccupied by humans than it does in a house occupied by humans, where the effects of said fumigation on said humans would be a consideration in the decision on how thoroughly to fumigate.
I figured someone had treated or fumigated the place and the effect was delayed but catastrophic. Think of all the crunching.
Think of all the crunching.
Yeah, no, this does nothing for me. I've seen lots of dead bugs.
I thought there was going to be a dead body on that mattress in the room.
I have lived in other places, you know.
Yeah, but I mean, Alaska's so much, like, BIGGER than those places, and you, teo, are a man to match its bigness.
The portion of my life that I have lived in not-Alaska is much BIGGER than the portion I have lived in Alaska, though. And I'm not that big a man.
(...laydeez.)
Fun sized. The word is fun sized.
I also to 10. To the point where I am now slightly disappointed.
Yeah, another agreement with 10. It was a nice mystery story, but had no payoff at the end. What was up with all those roaches?
Maybe they'd consumed the body entirely, even the bones, and had all died because the deceased had been poisoned by their kindly Lawng Islund grandmother.
14: I'm with ajay. where is the murdered child? having said that, my children are truly amused by south carolinians' stakhanovite use of courtesy to change what is real: we have re-named the 'giant flying cockroaches' we have there 'palmetto bugs.' girl x's friend naoko wanted to know if they were any different from the 'giant flying cockroaches' we have in narnia (but not so much in naoko's native osaka, japan, leading to some distress for the young lady.) nope, just the same. here they are also known as 'aiyah behind you! cockroach one, so big lah! you see--why you never clean? always like that one, you never clean what, eat here eat there anyhow. hey, why you don't kill already?!' in south carolina we also have wholesome 'river rats' (that's why our club of kids from all up and down the bluff was called 'the bluffton river rats'). in new york these are called 'sewer rats' or 'holy fucking shit that is as big as a yorkshire terrier' rats or 'oh god look down the subway tracks it must weigh three pounds' rats. like it says on the license plate, 'smiling faces, beautiful places.'
Only a monster would say 17 -> 18.1.
Narnians aren't bad at that themselves. Witness the rigorous insistence that the smog that covered Narnia for weeks last year and forced everyone to wear N95 masks was to be known as "the haze". Which sounds kind of nice and relaxing.
Does it say something about you, whether you expected there to be a body or a cheeseburger?
My heart is pounding. He just got to the bulge in the mattress. I'm not sure I can finish it.
As most of you know, I lived in Miami for 7 years. Jesus, the palmetto bugs (that is, giant roaches, ~2" long).
Hmm. glancing upthread, it appears there's nothing to fear.
Oh, hey, palmetto bugs already mentioned.
Not that Americans' tendency to fly American flags is not weird, but every time I see someone mentioning how uniquely weird it is I would like to point them in the direction of Dennmark. Danes loooove their flag.
I've lived my entire life in Palmetto Bug locations, and they gross me out. I kind of skimmed the article at a brisk pace so as not to dwell on it too closely.
(The grossest thing about palmetto bugs is that they are so big that they audibly and physically crunch when you kill them, like a small mammal. That is why I trap and release them, just to avoid the grossness of the sound and smear.)
When my sister and I went to see the 2nd Indiana Jones, we had heard about the scene with the bugs. My sister agreed to watch and tell me when it would be safe to open my eyes.
I'm much better about bugs now, but I'm still not sure how I'd handle them in vast quantities, dead or alive.
I refuse to live anywhere without a winter cold enough to prevent those kinds of giant bug piles.
25: I learned the hop-on-'em technique for palmetto bug execution. Just stomping them gets bug guts on the other shoe and ankle.
My sister agreed to watch and tell me when it would be safe to open my eyes.
Mrs. E have a standing agreement along these lines. I tell her when the snakes are gone so she can uncover her eyes, and she tells me when they're done with the close-up shot of the hypodermic needle being inserted into the vein so I can stop looking away.
The bug I most abominate is the goddamn motherfucking camel cricket. Vile, loathsome, hopping, crunchy things. They are like shrimp with giant cricket spider legs. I hadn't seen any in a while but then today one hopped into my hand when I went to throw something in the garbage. Then I heard one in front of the sink (they are big and crunchy enough that they make noise when they move around). I jumped and it hopped away. I look into the sink and there is a-fucking-nothing one. Now I see a dead one by the back door. I would burn the house down if I hadn't already had a stroke and died.
A cricket on the hearth is good luck.
These are NOT the nice sqeaky Jimminy-Times-Square kind!
"Camel cricket" sounds like some sort of 19th century British imperial eccentricity, like, say, "elephant polo".
More high brow than donkey basketball.
Donkey basketball sounds like it would be murder on the flooring.
24: In fairness to the Danes, their flag isn't nearly as tacky.
camel cricket
California has the Jerusalem cricket, a strong contender for gnarliest bug in North America.
I never saw camel crickets growing up but now they're all over the place. I've also heard them called cave crickets.
You could probably control your cave cricket problem by getting one of these.
on the flag: I liked how he thought that a picture of two neighboring houses with flags would be sufficient to illustrate Americans' strangeness. A nice view into how others see us.
Yeah, I think if anything the outliers are England and Germany where hanging the flag is a statement of right-wing refusal to apologize for crimes of previous regimes, kind of like hanging the Confederate flag here.
45: See flag and white van-guy-twitter-shadow-cabinet-firing-gate, which is incomprehensible to me on so many levels.
42: I . . . I'm . . . uh . . . I'm going to go curl up in the fetal position and think happy thoughts for a while.
46/7. St George's flag, as opposed to the Union Jack, tends to be waved by white English racists, although it's also used by perfectly decent English football fans and some on the left are trying to reclaim it.
White vans are proverbially badly driven by young working class men, who are the demographic most widely despised by the UMC.
The tweet said, "Oh god, look what we're dealing with" at a time when Miliband is desperately trying to reconnect with the working class. Terminally tone deaf.
Why white vans? Because of the serial killing?
I understood the St. George's flag bit, and it seems like a reasonable symbol to reclaim. (And even more reasonable before the Scottish referendum.) Thanks for explaining the thing about the van; over here they're associated with jokes about child predators so I was fairly confused.
I still think that's reading a lot into a tweet that's just that picture and the text "Image from #Rochester". But your ways are different than ours, and if Farage can make hay over it (or over Miliband's reaction?), it's definitely a cockup.
Because people, especially young working class men, who need vans to make deliveries, carry their tools, whatever, tend to buy more white ones than other colours. No idea why.
Someone please point to the 900-post thread in which we all discovered that British people drive white vans instead of pickup trucks.
I remember that thread, but I assume it was because British people were mostly child predators.
53: And Seattle contractors, too! Hyp.: rain.
I still don't really get the reason Farage was able to make so much of it, and I pass the English flag + white van combo every time I drive anywhere in my town. (Which is not Rochester.)
The other thing I don't really get is that I hear Tory/UKIP types making fun of white van men (as distinct for disparaging their driving, which everyone seems to do) more than anyone else. And I've never seen anyone in the villages around here (mainly populated by wealthier, more conservative types) fly an England flag. The whole brouhaha feels like one of those bait and switches - "Hey, this person has done something we'd normally do! Let's crucify her!" But I have to admit I haven't been paying particularly close attention.
What *do* wealthy conservative small-town types do to indicate their [patriotism | loyalty | devotion] to [queen and country | tradition | Englishness] ?
Also: was Thornbury on side during the supposed coup attempt? And, how likely is it that she'll be back in office in the first post-win reshuffle?
Union Jack is the orthodox way - retired half-colonels in Wiltshire with the Union Jack flying are the stereotypical rich UKIP voter.
But also, why do you need to demonstrate the fact that you, lawyer in Tunbridge Wells, are a loyal, patriotic, and devoted part of the greatest nation this earth has ever seen? Isn't it just obvious by the very facts of existence?
Keep the lawn & garden perfectly manicured.
Black taxi drivers and white van men: British people are so racist.
The worst thing about cave crickets is when you try to smoosh one it first jumps around really energetically in random directions, sometimes right at your face. Eventually it gets tired and becomes an easy target.
