Nilknarf News

Anyways, the work schedule was decent for a change, we didn't have a lot of add-ons, we were back to full staff, and nobody died on the table.

Yeah, after yesterday, my co-workers decided to define any day when someone didn't die on the table as a good day. I was the only one in dissent, I believe that a good day has many more qualifiers, but I was voted down.

Yesterday, however, was a beautiful day weather-wise, especially considering that it's the end of July, typically a time for consistently hot, dry days, one after another after shitty another... it only got up to about 83F with gentle breezes all day.

Of course, I didn't get a chance to enjoy it, and today it was back to being hot, and it'll continue getting hotter every day now for a while.

Regardless, karen and I are going on the trip that I cancelled out on two weeks ago... the one down the scenic flint hills drive. We decided to end up in Wichita and socialize with Karens sister... it's gonna be fun!

Speaking of my health, it's much better. i don't know what it is with the sleeping, amybe I'm just catching up from the weekend, that would explain it....

So I was looking through my referrer logs and I came across a query:"killing ants with firecrackers" and I thought, what kind of a sick individual would run a query like that?

Well, the query hit on this entry:

Entomological/philosophical musings: 07 MAY 1997 Ants. I discovered ants when I was a little kid. They would bite me, and I noticed that. There were all kinds of ants, from the little bitty black ones to the great big red ones. Some of them just wandered around, and others could be found in nests and mounds. I devised several ingeneous ways to kill ants. One of my favorite ways was to pour gasoline down the hole leading to their den and then light the gas. It was a satisfying gesture, but not nearly as much fun as putting a firecracker down the hole. Cherry bombs and M-80s were the best. After several explosions, a crater would form, and occasionally you could get a perfect smoke ring from the explosion; the smoke ring would go straight up, sometimes for ten or fifteen feet. Firecrackers were expensive, though, and only available for certain periods during the summer. As a bored thirteen-year old, I would get a straight-edged razor and cut the heads off of ants as they scurried up a tree. The idea was to just cut off the head; points were deducted for thoracic and abdomenal injuries and severed legs. Then there was the middle-of-the-day-in-the-hot-sun on-the-sidewalk exercise: a three or four-inch magnifying glass would focus the sun's heat on the ant and they would emit a little "pop" as their juices boiled and exploded the carpace. Sometimes there would be a little hiss sound instead of an explosion. I would imagine this to be the dying screams of these little creatures. One had to be quick and persistent for this exercise. Them little buggers could run pretty fast, and you had to avoid putting yourself in the sun's path to the magnifier. Then there was Raid and other chemicals. I did not consider Raid to be part of the sport. Raid was for in-house use only. Using Raid was a deadly serious job, not fun at all. There was no personal contact with the ants. You sprayed them and they died; some would come along later and walk through the sprayed area and then stagger and die. No fun, but it did keep them out of the cupboards. Anyway, my malicious murdering of members of the ant world by dismemberment, explosion and two different kinds of heat made me wonder about the significance of ants. Which in turn made me wonder about the significance of humans. And that made me wonder about my personal significance. Ants are not significant to me. Individual ants are especially insignificant. The significance of colonies of ants is just above the zero level, and all of the ants in the world just a tad higher. And I know for sure that the ants don't have a god to revenge them. After all, nothing has happened to me. Well, nothing much, anyway. So, the god of the ants is insignificant, even if it does exist. It doesn't matter that most ants believe that it exists, and I'm sure that they do.(there is a parallel here, but I won't indulge myself by going into it... you probably know it word for word by now, anyway!) Individual people are insignificant, except to other people who know them/love them/whatever. But those other people are also insignificant. Cities of people, countries of people, nations of people, continents of people... all insignificant. Individually and collectively insignificant. Damn, we sure don't act like we believe that, do we? I have to laugh when I see them selling stuff on TV to get insignificant people to use products to make themselves attractive to other insignificant people. This makes other insignificant people rich, so that they can unduly influence everyone who is not rich. As you can imagine, I spend quite a bit of time laughing. And I don't watch TV very much, either. And, no, dammit, I'm not off of the Prozac again, either.

Amazingly, I didn't grow up to be a serial killer, or even an exterminator of any sort. Instead, I'm in the business of saving lives... or at least, making lives better.

And I haven't killed an ant for years upon years... at least, on purpose. Flies are a whole different thing, however, I'll have to look for a link on that subject for some other entry.