Ant Meth

I've spoken with the bug men from the local university and have been told that I need to feed my unwanted ants more of the bait they like best.  I'd stopped doing that because when I put it out the ants brought their ant aunts and uncles and 17th cousins twice removed and I didn't really want to see more ants.  But now I understand that this works like a meth house. 

I offer them the poison.  They like it.  A lot.  They get all crazy and run home and tell their friends along the way, "You have got to get down there and try this stuff!  It's insane, Ant!  I mean, it's the best."  So all their friends and the friends of the friends of the friends come to the buffet.  They think it's the best stuff since sugar.  They load up on it.

Most of them grab all they can and then run home to stash it and run back and get more.  Some of them, however, only get as far as the front yard of the ant meth house and fall down crazy.

I don't have microscope, so I don't know if their little ant teeth turn black and rot out or if they visually age the equivalent of 30 years in the equivalent of  a couple of months.  But if this is really working like meth, that's how they look.  And I don't know if their ant IQs plummet and they forget to shower or completely dress.  I really don't know if they have started killing each other for the poison or if they've begun selling their larva to the highest bidder to get more poison.  I hope not.

Don't get me wrong, I am trying to get rid of the ants.  I just hope it isn't as awful for them as methamphetamine is while it's getting rid of people.

Bad Inventions

We tend to assume that new things are good things.  There's something magical about the word new. Because we've been bombarded with the combination every time we shop for nearly anything, we associate the word new with the word improved. Well, t'aint necessarily so.

I'm not actually sitting on a flowered sofa with a hand-crocheted Afghan covering my lap telling my grandchildren that I walked five miles through knee-deep snow, up-hill to and from school. I'm not anti-new.  It's just that there are some things that just should never have been invented. 

I've developed a top ten list for your debate.

1. Algebra. I am still waiting to find myself in a situation where I need to figure out what X equals. I'm sorry, Mr. Scheurman, it was painful and I just don't see it.
2. Cigarettes.  I think if someone wants to throw money away to suck poisons into her lungs and poison anyone around her who is trying to breathe,  she should be required to smoke cigars, a pipe or at the very least go to the trouble of rolling her own.  Making smoking more convenient was not a good invention.
3. Thong underwear.  Seriously!  Why even bother?  I have never felt the need to floss my butt and I don't think other people should, either.  Which reminds me of no. 4.
4. Underwire bras.  The inventor of this modern torture device was a sadistic, pure evil, misogynistic, testosterone-laden psychopath.  And I don't like him very much.
5. Gym parking lots.  If people would walk to the gym, they wouldn't have to go in. 
6. Spandex "work out" clothes.  If you've ever partaken of no. 5, you know the kind I'm talking about.  This is just wrong as well as superfluous if one has body paint.
7. Twinkies.  I didn't taste one of these modern marvels until I was a married woman.  I immediately spit it out.  They are poison and don't even taste good. 
8. Light beer.  If you're going to drink beer, drink beer.  Don't pretend that it's diet beer.  It isn't diet and it isn't beer.  I'm from Wisconsin and I know.
9. Chewing gum. Who decided that what we really need is something that makes humans look like cows chewing cud? Why was that ever a good idea? And in what Universe did people decide it was ok to chew gum in a professional setting, at a wedding or funeral, or anywhere I can see them?
10. And the stupidest invention in the history of the Universe is. . . . (drum roll, please) Methamphetamine.   Someone actually went to the trouble to find out what would happen if he mixed some cold medicine with some drain cleaner and some other fancy stuff; cooked the toxic substance down, and then smoked the particulate.  Now who on God's green Earth is actually that stupid?  Here, man, smoke this, you'll be hooked tomorrow, lose everything you have including your family, possessions, freedom and your ability to think.  Yeah, sounds AWESOME, man!  I've seen so many people whose lives and souls have been stolen by this garbage and they aren't pretty let me tell you.  Not only do their brains stop functioning like a human brain, their teeth turn into little pointy black things, their skin turns grey and full of lines and creases and they look as if they've been held captive in the dark, damp basement of an evil witch for the past year or so.  Now most people buy their first meth from someone who is cooking it.  That's just more stupid than can be expressed here in polite company. But if you were going to buy a Ford, you probably wouldn't want to buy one from a person with black teeth that were falling out  during the test drive, who weighed about the same as your house cat and was about four times a jumpy; even if that man drove a ford himself.  So why in the world would anyone buy meth from a meth cooker who looks like that?  Doesn't it ever run through the buyer's mind that just maybe the seller looks and asks like that because of the meth?  I've known a lot about drugs and worked with people who've  been addicted to all sorts of drugs but I have never seen anything that comes close to being as down right STUPID as meth.

Meth Mouth