Longest Living Spider Murdered by Rogue Wasp

Australian scientists are disheartened by the loss of an arachnid observed for 43 years who was stung to death by a parasitic wasp. The female trapdoor spider, Gaius Villosaus, affectionately known as "Number 16," was brutally attacked by a tarantula hawk wasp. Apparently the wasps sting the spiders causing paralysis after which they drag their prey into a borrow where a single egg is laid. As you might expect, it doesn't go well for the spiders from here. I read that scientists are besides themselves over the death of Number 16 describing their demeanor as "miserable." One said,

"We've been studying Number 16 since 1974, and everything seemed pretty chill until it crossed paths with that fucking wasp."

Curtin University in Western Australia where the research was being conducted released a statement stating,

"Through... detailed research we were able to determine that the extensive life span of the trapdoor spider is due to their life-history traits, including how they live in uncleared, native bushland, their sedentary nature and low metabolisms."

Number 16 also benefited from the colossal fortune of never being stepped on, swatted or sprayed with Orkin products. Most of its life was spent hunkered down inside its borrow which led researchers to wonder what female trapdoor spiders do for fun. One scientist mused,

"I suspect they spend a lot of time alone with their thoughts thinking about perhaps digging a bigger borrow or dreaming up a better trapdoor."

Apparently, the males have it much better, cruising around from flower to flower looking for a mate while trying to not get eaten. Some researchers are so traumatized by Number 16's death that they lobbied the Australian Government to bring back DDT to treat known wasp habitats in retaliation. One lamented,

"Nature can be not so nice."

What puzzles me is how the scientists knew that Number 16 was the same spider since after all most spiders look a lot alike. It's not as if they put a tag on the its ear. Perhaps Number 16 was quietly replaced by an imposter years ago during an unobserved period when another opportunistic trapdoor spider decided to bump off Ole Num 16 and take its burrow. After all, Number 16 wasn't observed Truman style. If the spider did survive for 43 years in the wild, it was unquestionably lucky since it outlived the careers of most Hollywood actors.

The true lesson in longevity the trapdoor spider taught us is to live in a hole in the ground, be sedentary and try not to aspire to anything that will insert you into the food chain. Just think of all the children Number 16 had over her long life, many of which were likely not her choice. A trapdoor spiders life is a tough life, but I'm sure she's in heaven where she was likely squashed in the first ten minutes by Verne Troyer while saying,

"Who let this shit in here?"

Editor's Note: Originally posted on May 8, 2018.

Washing Your Hands Will Prevent Monster Inside Me

Animal Planet has done it again with yet another riveting nature series based on medical detective stories that merge microbes with horror as parasitic infections are explored in detail. Patients as well as actors retell detailed accounts of puss, vomit and diarrhea.

I once read that actress Kristin Bell, husband, Dax Shepard and their five year daughter weathered a pinworm infestation. Admittedly, I had to Google what pinworms were and not surprising it invokes dookie and not washing your hands. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that pinworms are small thin white roundworms that live in the colon and rectum of humans. Pinworms can be contracted if you swallow or breathe in the eggs which is reason number 374 on why you should pass on anilingus. Monsters Inside Me is full of stories of worms that get past the skin and set up shop in and among your organs.

Most people on the show pick up parasites from eating a local delicacy in a foreign country like pork sushi or having eggs laid in an open wound by a flying insect. Others get harmful bacteria such as giardia from swimming in lukewarm pea green pond water with a fresh open wound. A few contract life threatening infections from their pets.

Turns out your mother was right. Many of these bodily invasions could’ve been avoided if the person simply washed their hands, but today with our busy schedules some of us forgo basic hygiene in favor of parasites invading our money parts. I used to sit outside the men's room when I worked in a cube farm. Not only did I bear witness to the sounds of bodily functions, I also heard the sink come on afterwards. I had a spreadsheet entitled, "Men I Work With Who Don't Wash Their Hands After Taking a Dump." I'm sorry to report that half the dudes at my former company were brought up wrong.

Humans in pain generally behave in the same manner so the show tends to follow kind of an unintentional script. First there is a symptom, usually irritated skin, a red swollen bump, often something itches like a bitch. The protagonist ignores the irritation for several weeks before they opt for the medical wheel of fortune with a $30 copay. The first line doctor usually diagnoses sinusitis and prescribes a useless course of antibiotics that cost another $30 at the pharmacy. The hapless person soldiers on for another two weeks when puss and a bad smell emerge. A second trip to the emergency room causes medical personnel to call in the infectious disease doc who takes one look at the infected area and says,

“That’s a botfly.”

Unfortunately, they're not referring to crypto currency. Next comes the tweezers to extract the larvae, preferably whole so as not to cause a secondary infection from decaying botfly parts. Usually the show ends happily with only a partial limb amputation.

The biggest roadblock to getting adequate treatment is usually the insurance copay. One time I brought my son, Aidan, into the emergency room after hours for what we thought was an ear infection. The guy over the partition was in excruciating pain. The nurse kept asking questions like,

“Are your hands clammy?”

To which the dude would scream,

“It’s my left nut!”

She asked, "On a scale of one to ten with ten being the worst, how would you rate you pain?"

"I think my left nut is going to explode!" he screamed.

"So like an eight then?" nurse person asked.

I know women are better at taking pain than men but an eight for a ball rupture? She then asked,

“How long has this been going on?”

I suspected that his left gonad had become inverted knotting the plumbing. The good news is it’s treatable if caught early.

“Six weeks!” The dude screamed.

Aidan and I looked at each other with matching expressions of horror. The copay likely cost this guy one of his testicles. So it did its job by delaying the medical insurance claim long enough so that the patient almost died.

In a recent show I learrned that not all parasites come from exotic places. One woman had a bacterial infection that she got from her dog. After unitentionally sunburning the tops of her feet, she let her dog lick her red skin. I'm sure you've heard that dogs have something in their saliva that is great for healing wounds. Turns out that medical science has determined that this is entirely false. In fact, one in four dogs has a bacteria in its mouth which humans have no defense for. After picking up more than her share of vitamin D, toasting her feet at the beach, the woman drew the short straw on the deadly dog bouche bacteria. Both her feet had to be amputated. At the end of the show, she appeared footless with the dog in her lap as she said,

"So now I use plenty of sunblock."

That's good, I guess, but if I lost part of my body from microbes from my dog's mouth, I'd put Dinkles in the glove box of the next car Elon Musk's planned to put into orbit. Her dog likely suffered from coprohagia, the scientific term for dookie eating. Yes, scientists have studied that too.

Doctor Benjamin Hart, from the University of California, Davis, presented a study in 2012 at the American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior annual conference which revealed that one in four dogs are casual feces feasters. Not surprisingly this corresponds to the same data about dogs with nasty flesh-eating bacteria in their mouths. Hart wrote,

"Our conclusion is that eating of fresh stools is a reflection of an innate predisposition of ancestral canids living in nature that protects pack members from intestinal parasites present in feces that could occasionally be dropped in the den/rest area."

Or maybe some dogs are just nuts and like to eat their own shit.

Animal Planet’s Monsters Inside Me is an educational program that advises frequent hand washing, using bug spray with DEET, and seeing a doctor once symptoms appear. Just remember to insist on the infectious disease guy in lieu of the on call general practitioner who is just going to blame it on “something going around” and advise you to push fluids.

Pony up the copay and insist that they pull out their text books and study up, and for God sakes, let the doctor's know if you've been out of the country especially South America or Africa. I'm sure these continents are very nice, but it seems like they're just teaming with insects that want to lay eggs in your eye. Also ignoring pain is not a good idea. Pain is there to tell you something has gone awry. When coupled with violent upchucking, go to the emergency room right away. You're probably not going to get better if you "wait just one more day." You need drugs and tweezers and likely a scalpel. You can learn a lot from Monsters Inside Me, stuff that will save your life. If you remember just one thing, let it be this.

Don’t soldier through pain because it is highly likely that a parasite is soldiering through your pancreas.

Editor's Note: Originally posted on April 24, 2018.

Now That I’m Even Older

The other day, I pressed my face affectionately up against my wife's hair, then before I had a chance to think it through, I exclaimed,

"Your hair smells like pizza."

“No, that’s your beard,” she answered.

She was right. My beard stunk of food. Twenty minutes later, it was gone. I had no choice. My beard was not just making me look and smell old, it was making me old. Last month, I wrote a piece about the things that angered me now that I'm turning into an ornery old fart. Barely a month has passed, and I already have an addendum. So here are more things that piss me off now that I’m getting even older.

1. Repurposing things into lamps.

The other day on a home renovation show they repurposed a meat grinder into a lamp. It looked really stupid. The mechanism still worked which made it impossible to baby proof that home. I hate that.

2. Self help books that advise on how to win friends and influence people.

If you need to read a book to help you acquire friends, then, just maybe, you should put the book down and try going outside or taking up bowling or line dancing. It's equally likely that a book is not going to transform you into an influential person. The most important thing you should be doing if you bought a book like this is trying to spend some time in the sun, not reading that book. I despise that.

3. New Jersey

Apart from the bagels, there's little else redeeming about the Garden State, named like Greenland to make you think it's nicer there than it really is. People from New Jersey revel in being assholes. I read online reviews of waterparks in New Jersey, and more than one commenter reported that kids and adults routinely "cut the line." It's as if waiting your turn is a foreign concept in New Jersey, where dogs eating dogs has replaced common courtesy.

During the summer of 2017, former Governor Chris Christie closed state beaches for a weekend over a budget standoff only to climb up onto the dunes himself with his family. When questioned about his patronage of a closed state beach, Christie advised residents on how they too could use the beach as he had by declaring,

"Run for governor, and you can have a residence there."

You'll never convince me that Christie didn't order the closing of lanes on the upper level of the George Washington Bridge in retaliation against the Fort Lee Mayor, Mark Sokolich, a Democrat who didn't support Christie in the 2013 New Jersey gubernatorial election. Christie's deputy chief of staff, Bridget Anne Kelly, took the rap for it, but I'd bet that it was Christie's idea because that's just the asshole kind of thing a donut eating jerk off from New Jersey would do. I loathe that.

Labels

4. Labels on new clothing.

The other day I was removing the labels from the new clothes my wife purchased for our son. I counted five labels to be discarded per article of clothing including size, care instruction, manufacturer, fabric characteristics and pocket uses. When I was done, those plastic tie things were all over the counter and floor. I kept finding them for days. Do we really need all this information? Can't we just get by with size? I abhor that.

5. Products touting “soothing botanicals.”

The other day I heard this phrase uttered on the radio concerning a hand cream then a television commercial said the same about a shampoo. Still yet, a tea I recently made came in a box that advertised the calming effects associated with "botanicals," which simply means plants. Plants are not soothing, but botanicals are. When I think of my reaction to plants, the first thing that comes to mind is poison ivy, a botanical put on this earth to make me miserable. I detest that.

6. Comedians referring to standup as “working out.”

I heard a comedian say the other day,

"I'm working out at the Comedy Club."

He wasn't pumping iron. He was pumping out jokes on stage. This is not working out. It's talking. I dislike that.

7. Using the word "ecumenical."

Most of my religious educational came from parochial school and watching a lot of Davey and Goliath so I consider myself an expert. "Ecumenical" means bringing all of Christianity under one roof. When arguing a point about religion, as in

"Why does God let babies die?"

If someone says,

"You have to understand things from an ecumenical perspective."

They win by virtue of the fact that they used a five syllable word even if they didn't actually make a point. Most people openly agree with them as they excuse themselves for the bathroom where they look up the definition on their phone, only to return from the shitter an expert. That pisses me off.

8. People who refill a small drink.

I was in Panera Bread the other day when I was waiting in line to fill my cup with raspberry ice tea. A guy in front of me was refilling a small cup. Now, you're not supposed to refill a small drink when they also sell a large size because why would anyone pay for a large when they can keep refilling a small? The only advantage I see to a large drink is that it will cut down on the trips to the fountain, but I don't think that's what they intended.

I know a lot of self service machines end up with unintentional free refills, but what irritated me most about this guy, topping off his diminutive cup, was that he stopped in between fills to drink. He would fill his cup then drink half right in line while I waited. He did this three times which was three times more than he should have done it in the first place. I was waiting for firsts and this dude was rocking thirds. I wanted to slap the tiny cup out of his mouth. I object to that.

9. Declaring something is a “thing.”

Something is a "thing" when it's special enough to be its own concept like,

"Goat yoga is a thing.”

In fact, saying something is a "thing" is in itself a "thing." That makes me recoil.

10. Recordings that claim their menu has changed.

No, their menu hasn't changed. They just say that to fool you into paying attention to all the options, but I have news for them. It doesn't work. Even if the menu has changed, I wouldn't remember the old menu anyway. They lie to us because they think our attention spans are too short which they are. I hate that.

Some things are just never going to happen like a Google search on “James Woods nude.” Other things are inevitable like Kim and Kanye calling it quits. There are a few things that are unpredictable like Hillary losing. Some things just don’t make any sense like Martha Stewart doing more time than Snoop Dog. Then there are the things that are unavoidable like death, taxes and Trump’s tweets. Sad!

One thing for sure, getting old stinks, but it’s better than the alternative.

Editor's Note: Originally posted on April 17, 2018. Kim and Kanye divorce in September of 2020.

I'm So Confident, I Have a Train Layout

Me and Mikado 3025

A few years ago, my son, Aidan, and I broke into the inner circle of a model railroad club when he discovered a rare, first generation engine at a yard sale. In the subculture of model railroading, most serious collectors won't bother with noobs. Aidan and I were embraced by the local hobbyists for finding a rare U33B Seacoast GE Diesel, one of the first models made by the manufacturer.

I've always loved trains. Perhaps it was the long, lumbering freight trains that crossed our patch of woods we played in as kids. Back then railroads were on their last legs so inspections of the track were cut back in favor of running trains at slower speeds. The giant engines, hauling freight, gliding gracefully on the rails moved so slowly that we often contemplated hopping the caboose for an epic adventure.

I've always been a buff, alpha kind of guy. My procreating days are behind me, but even so, I'm so confident in my manliness that I have a train layout without concern that my wife, Christine, will nix me for a 19 year old sailor named "Rickie." Let's face it. You never read in the personals,

"I like long walks on the beach, movies, going out to dinner. Train layout a plus."

Model railroading is intrigue in miniature. For some reason males like to make minute worlds featuring rail transportation. Women who are evaluating the available gene pool should probably pass on men who possess toy trains. Admittedly, my penchant for trains didn't surface when we were dating, but now that Christine was pregnant with boy number two, trains had once again hauled into my life.

I once read an advertisement on Craig's List in which a recently divorced woman was selling off her ex-husband's stuff. She listed a Scalextric slot car race set and a collection of Lionel trains as well as "other assorted man-shit." I was interested in the Lionel. Model railroading and unsocial hermitage go hand in hand, yet I seemed to have bridged the gap between the everyday world and that in miniature. Sensing this unique combination, the president of a local club asked me to speak at their next gathering. I was flattered, 

"It would be an honor, but I really don't know that much about trains."

Unfazed he responded,

"We don't want you to talk about trains. We want you to talk about girls."

It must have been my six month pregnant wife I dragged into the hobby shop that peaked this dude's interest. My manly presence had in some imperceptible way uplifted the ranks of the unsocial nerds who typically frequent stores selling model trains. I was after all, a man who had driven a steam engine, owned a fair amount of trains himself and somehow managed to impregnate a woman twice. I was the most interesting man in the miniature world of model railroading.

"Sure, I guess," I responded.

In advance I worked up a short presentation filled with pictures of my collection. On the night of the meeting, after I had burned through about ten slides, a guy in the front row with thick glasses raised his hand half way. I called on him,

"Yes, the dude with the Hubbell telescope on his face."

The man looked about the room as he slowly lowered his hand,

"Kevin Tillsdale. I thought you were going to talk about girls?"

"Oh yeah," I answered.

"Ted Billerka. I have a question," a swooping bald guy said from the back row.

"Yes, the gentleman with the half mullet."

Ted continued,

"On a first date, how long should you wait before you talk about your train layout?"

"Well I think... I would... never Ted. Never mention the train layout."

Another gentlemen sat up in his chair and interjected,

"Bill Watson. I disagree. I submit that on a first date I always discuss my layout."

The room broke into a golf clap.

"And how many second dates have you been on Bill?"

Bill slumped slowly back into his chair as the applause faded. A pale faced dude struggling to complete a beard raised his hand,

"Tim Stokes. What scales do women like best?"

“Scales? Well, I don't know?"

“Well, what scale does your wife like?” Tim inquired.

“N scale, I think.”

Each member pulled out a small pocket notebook and began scribbling on the pages. When Tim finished he turned to his buddy and exclaimed,

“That makes sense. Girls like the small trains.”

Another hand shot up.

“Yeah Bob. What’s a good first date?”

“You can always take a woman out to dinner,” I offered.

A short guy with fair skin and a lonely brown mustache stood to his feet,

"I tried that, but it didn't work!"

"Where did you take her?" I asked.

"To see my train layout in the basement. My mom made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches."

"You have to go to a restaurant," I explained.

An old grey haired man slapped the short guy on the arm as he said,

"That's why they call it 'going out', Mark."

The pencils broke out again and filled the pages of the tiny notebooks. Another hand from an overweight dude slowly rose,

"What road names do girls like Bob?"

"Road names?" I asked.

"Yeah, you know. BNSF, B&O, Union Pacific?"

"I know for a fact that girls like Santa Fe," I exclaimed authoritatively.

The pencils scratched furiously as the audience members looked to each other and whispered while nodding in approval,

"Ah, Santa Fe!"

Another question darted from the back,

"Tell me, Bob, how did you get your wife to marry you?"

"Well, the first time I ever spoke to her, she shot me right down."

"So what did you do?"

"I was persistent and patient."

This seemed to resonant with the group since, if anything, hobbyists are pathologically patient. I added,

"A woman is like driving a steam engine. You have to come up to speed slowly, don't make any fast moves and take care when crossing the road."

Time whisked by as my analogy stretched to the breaking point. I wrapped up my presentation then made for the exit. I was glad that I was able to reach the safety of my car as I was pretty sure that more than one club member had buried a body under his parent's porch.

On the drive home I reflected on my life with my wife and son. I wondered who the boy Christine was carrying would become. Would he play an instrument or a sport, would he be a good student, would he like trains? I thought about my dad, how socially awkward he had always been largely due to an absent father who died when he was eleven years old. I wondered if my father ever pondered on what kind of man I would become? I went to college to study engineering, returning later for computer science, then finally I turned to screenwriting. I was a husband, a father, a brother, a friend and a consummate ferroequinologist, a lover of trains.

There are many questions that this life will never answer, who is God, what is infinity, is there life after death? The goal is to find your place in all of it. In the end, I hadn't a clue which scales and road names women liked, but I'm pretty sure it didn't matter.

Editor's Note: Originally posted on April 3, 2018.