It seems to me that the roach must be the most reviled creature on the face of the Earth. No matter what country I've been in, the local people do their damnedest to wipe them out only to see the nasty buggers reappear in short order. They appear from all over the place, from rotting roots in the ground to inside our walls and everywhere in between. I'm going to briefly explain how to get rid of roaches permanently. Or… almost permanently.
Does the quote "specialization is for insects" apply to something like blogging? Before I delve into the answer to that question, let me give you some background.
Specialization is for insects.
As I was explaining to my 22-year old son about being able to do more than just one thing at one time and being able to do all of them well, I used a familiar quote: "Specialization is for insects." A while later, I became interested in knowing where I'd heard or read it before. I remembered it as a tagline at One Mans Blog, but I knew it originally came from somewhere else. After I "googled it", I found that it came from a book, "Time Enough For Love" by Robert A. Heinlein. A book that I've never read. Here's the full quote:
"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."
With deference to the original "All your base are belong to us", all of the 100 plus geckos living in my house are fired!
Within the last 3 hours, I have chased down, squashed and flushed 3 humongous cockroaches. These buggers can fly! Not only that, but they're big enough to carry off small babies. They're huge! I hate cockroaches! As far as I'm concerned, they're the nastiest insects on face of the planet.
I know I have a lot of geckos in my house because I see them scurrying from place to place. I hear them "bark" at night. You know what? On second thought, those roaches were bigger than the geckos. What I really need is a Komodo dragon or even a Gila Monster for roaches this big. Sadly, I haven't seen anything larger than a gecko in this neighborhood.
Perhaps I could develop a way to get the geckos to work together to wipe out this cockroach invasion, military like. I mean, I've seen them doing push-ups. No? Oh well…
If there's one thing I've learned in my lifetime, never look a gift horse in the mouth. Some people really do just want to give without expecting anything in return.
A couple of days after I posted my quick article (and I do mean quick) on dandruff, Tony of Modern Gent sent me a message from my contact page offering to send me some Ultra Shave with his compliments. See? I'm not full of shiitake when I tell you how to climb the SERPS quickly. Tony wouldn't have found my article without digging through pages and pages of whatever search engine he used otherwise. That is, of course, unless he was already a frequent visitor (which I doubt).
After exchanging a few email messages (because I didn't want him spending a small fortune sending a package from the UK to the Philippines), he wrangled my mailing address out of me. In some of those messages, I learned enough about the product that I couldn't wait to try it out. As I informed Tony by email, the package arrived via registered mail yesterday. I had to go to the local post office and sign my life away in blood for something the notification card didn't specify. In other words, it came much sooner than expected (less than a month), and I didn't know for sure what the package was until I went to the post office to pick it up.
Ultra Shave isn't your run-of-the-mill shaving cream. In fact, it's more like a super shaving moisturizer. I tested it a few of hours ago, both for the shave and for the unusual side effect. You see, this was tested by the soldiers deployed over in Afghanistan. Not only did it provide a shave as smooth as a baby's bottom (although why anyone would want to check a baby's bottom is beyond me), it also kept the mosquitoes from latching onto their facial skin. I can attest to the smooth shave, a shave smoother than I've had in years. The cream kind of reminds me of the kind barbers used to use, but without the lather. This stuff doesn't lather up and it isn't supposed to, so make sure you read the directions if you use it.
I can also attest to the fact that not a single ninja mosquito attacked my face while I was walking around outside earlier, although one got me on my left arm and one on my right leg (I'm wearing shorts). That particular side effect can't be patented, though, any more than Avon can patent their original "Skin So Soft" product as being able to keep off chiggers (what they call harvest mites in the eastern US). So… the shaving cream actually has 3 uses:
Before anyone questions me about it, I was NOT compensated for this article in any way (unless you call a gift compensation in which case, feel free to start sending me some really expensive gifts). I'm merely reporting my experience with a product (and surreptitiously embedding a whole bunch of internal links). If you spot this, Tony, thanks for the Ultra Shave and thanks for a shave as smooth as a baby's bottom.
Shortly after my previous post, we started to have power outages again. First it was for only 15 minutes. The power was back on for an hour and then off again for three and a half hours. All of this was at night, except for the tail end of the last one that ended about a half hour after daybreak.
I don't remember which day it was, but Gerry (a relative) came over and jump started my car again. After the outage, I and my son Jon went o the Freeport zone to pick up some stuff we needed, driving through the rain the entire time. Other than cooking and watching a couple of old movies, I don't remember the rest of Saturday. There were more brownouts involved, so one movie took more than eight hours to finish.
Yesterday, my wife called via the IM and wanted to see her relatives as part of the call. So there was like a ton of people crowded around my laptop for a couple of hours. Most were uninvited and tagged along with the invited anyway. Again, watching movies and cooking are about all else I remember along with more brownouts.
I did manage to answer a couple of comments and email messages along the way. I didn't bother to try to write anything for the blog because of all the interruptions and I didn't even mention all of them — I don't even remember all of them.
Except for the ants! The rain of the past few days has been driving the ants indoors and away from the flooding. Well, I remember getting out a can of a local bug spray and spraying all the areas where the ants could come in and especially the baseboard areas in the kitchen. This technique works quite well for awhile. The lemon whatever ingredient repels the ants, so the downstairs part of my house is free of ants right now. I don't like using pesticides and only use them as a last resort, like getting overrun by ants, which is exactly what happened.
Of course, my son is off to school this morning and I'm all alone in the house again. The next 12 hours should provide me with the time to do the things I used to do on a regular basis. I don't think I have completely recovered, mentally, from the things that occurred starting in June. I still suffer from a lower left leg that swells up, goes back down, swells up again, etc. I have no idea what's going on with that, but the injuries are healed (a lot of dead skin is flaking off, so I have to wash the leg frequently).
There are no apologies here. Everyone has off-days, off-weeks, and even off-months. Hopefully, my off-days are either over or will soon be over.
Yesterday, I got stung by one of these little ants. I recognized the little bugger right away. Just to be sure, I waited until today to see if the telltale sign of a white pustule would appear at the location of the sting. Sure enough, when I woke up, there it was.
Proof that songs from the eighties are good for something. If you like this, you'll find more at the author's site. Just click on the comic!
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