I'm going to yuck this yum

I'm a fan of language, especially slang, so I enjoy following the youngs' neologisms.  Although one of my faves is "don't yuck my yum" I'm going to do so in this post.

Which is not a political post!  You probably think I'm going to gleefully detail Bryon Noem's love of bimbofication but you're wrong.  If that's how he gets down, so be it.  I do, however, find it gobsmacking that of all the things associated with Kristi Noem over the past 14-or-so months, this is what brings her shame.  

I take to my keyboard to instead yuck a different practice.  I have long maintained, and I'm sure Danimal agrees, that water is the homeowner's greatest enemy.  It can cause problems originating in the house or from any direction outside the house.  You know you're middle aged when you see a foot of snow outside your house and perseverate about how it will all end up in your sump pump someday.

The homeowner's second greatest enemy is bugs.  Roaches, silverfish, termites, cave crickets, centipedes.  And ants.  Every year I wage chemical warfare against odorous house ants, or Tapinoma sessile to the entomologically inclined, by applying ecologically disastrous amounts of Amdro Ant Block to the foundation of zhome to minimize their appearance in zkitchen.  I cannot stand those little bastards.

I therefore yuck the practice of collecting ants.  So widespread is this preposterous hobby that there exists a commercial endeavor called AntsRUs.com offering for sale ants and, mindbogglingly, termites, as well as equipment to house these pests.  Some of these ants start at £159.99!  A hundred and sixty quid to bring a bug into your house!?!  Bollucks!  Closer to home, some loon in Ohio also sells ants and blogs about them too.  Ahnts: The Blog.

So profitable is this formic fetish that an illegal black market of ants exists to service these oddball collectors.  Giant African harvester ant queens sell for $220, probably because they are "many people's dream species."  Not my dream, maybe yours.

The next time your spouse complains about all the space taken up by your baseball cards, golf clubs, snow tires, CDs, or any other detritus you've accumulated over the years, tell them that you'll get rid of it all if you can start an ant collection.

It's Tick Season so Listen Up

The most difficult class I took in college was, without hesitation, General Entomology with Dr. Fashing.  Yes, one should expect a 400 level biology class to be hard, but I figured it's a class about bugs, how hard could it be?  I majored in biology so I was used to getting my lazy ass kicked, and friend of numerous GTBers Bekkah took Insects and Society with Dr. Fashing and raved about him and how low-stress the class was.  Insects and Society is a 100 level course designed for Art History majors to fulfill their Area I requirements so in hindsight this wasn't the best recommendation to follow.  

Dr. Fashing is a very nice guy and he's passionate about the subject matter, but the class was insane.  The lab component was 1/4 of the grade and it was entirely taxonomy.  He would start every lab with a quiz which involved him throwing 10-15 dead bugs on a table and he would ask you "What Order is this one?  What Family is this one?" and I would write down "bug" or "cricket" or "butterfly" which was never the right answer.  The lab required a project:  go out and collect (i.e., catch and kill) forty different Families of insect.  Not a mom and dad and sibling group of bugs, but a taxonomic Family.  That's really fucking hard.  Why you ask?  Well, they all look the same so you can spend three hours out in the field collecting fifty insects but when you get back to the lab and key them out you'll find you only have four different Families.  It was awful.

And it was bad socially.  I rare knew anyone in any of my biology classes, usually it was everyone's favorite ER doctor but he wouldn't take bugs with me.  Luckily Langdon from Sig was in there too so we would forage for bugs together.  Everyone was assigned a butterfly net and a killjar (a mason jar with some substance mothball-like glued to the bottom that smothers the bugs) so I would wait for Langdon on the back porch, then we would meet up and go to the woods or a field or whatever.  On one such occasion, erstwhile GTB contributor Dennis's girlfriend came flouncing by in a nightie with four or five of her similarly-attired fellow sorority pledges--they were off to perform some task which apparently called for "sleazy and demure."

Ever the gentleman, I said "Hello" and she replied, as sarcastically and sing-song as possible "Hey butterfly boy!" and all her trampy little friends giggled and tittered.  It's my experience at W&M in a nutshell.

We had to save all the dead bugs we collected and mount them on pins in a box and turn them in at the end of the year.  I didn't get to forty, all I ever had was a bunch of flies that mimicked other bugs to avoid being eaten--apparently this is their jam.  The rugby girl with the leg brace took pity on me at the end and gave me a weevil and some evil looking creature I don't remember the name of and that got me to maybe thirty-eight, which is more than half-way to sixty-nine but not enough to get full credit for the lab. 

It was also bad for rootsy because my box of dead bugs attracted live bugs--ants swarmed my collection which I kept on top of my wardrobe which was next to his face on the top of our cave.  So he awoke to a facefull of ants.  I, of course, was panicked--not for rooty's health but for the integrity of my box of bugs.  No one had bug spray so I stole spray starch from one of the ROTC guys and surprisingly that did the trick.  Between what the ants ate and the starch destroyed, I lost a few precious bugs for my project.

As you can see in the link to his bio above, Dr. Fashing's research centers primarily on mites which are arachnids, not insects.  We were only allowed one arachnid for the collection so everyone had one spider.  But we would've gotten credit for a tick, which is also an arachnid.  And also gross.  Here is without hesitation the most entertaining video I've ever seen about ticks.  You should watch it because it's tick season and you need to know what you're in for if you go out in the woods.  My friend got Lyme disease and now she's out from work on disability so it's serious business.  You should watch even if you have no plans to go outside this summer.  If not for yourself, watch it for Dr. Fashing, all his miserable bug-collecting students, and their ant-swarmed roommates.

And if you don't like that deer tick video, check out this Deer Tick video.

Your Handy-Dandy Calendar of Rock & Roll

Last year was a bit challenging for me in a handful of ways. Family illness, divorce #2, got no jack, blah blah blah. There's no time to feel sorry for yourself in a world brimming with sad events and sorrow, but I probably did.

But music is solace, especially if you can emotionally compartmentalize like I can.  A good rock show cures what ails you for two to four hours at a time.  Festivals even moreso.  And against some odds, I did manage to make it to a boatload of good concerts last year.  As I recall, in order:

• Badfish
• Wilco
• Widespread Panic
• Pink Talking Fish
• Jimmy Buffett
• Pearl Jam
• Jason Isbell
• Violent Femmes
• The Wailers
• Avett Brothers
• Bruce Springsteen
• English Beat / Squeeze
• Old 97's
• The Cult
• Drive-By Truckers

Thus far this year I have caught three of those same bands once again, plus Ween, Green Day, Trombone Shorty, U2's Joshua Tree tour, Lionel Richie, the Australian Pink Floyd Show, and a ton of bands at JazzFest in New Orleans. Plus some local acts.  And the Random Idiots uncorked session in Norfolk pre-OBFT.  And drumming on my desk when I'm bored.

Seems like a lot.  But never enough, I guess, because there's more on the docket. Who's with me?

Okay, I'll be more specific.  I began to assemble a list of bands heading to the area over the next few months.  Then "the area" expanded, since we've journeyed far and wide for the right rock concert in the past.  And then I thought I'd have some fun with it and threw in my estimated percentage chance of attending each show. And some bands I likely will not see.  Ever.

Note... that percentage figure increases substantially if other gheorghies are going to go.  Some recall the mini-summit of 2013 in NJ for the Old 97's/DBT's show.  No fewer than 4 GTBers ganged up for that one.  Let's do this.  Apologies to Mark, Squeaky, and others geographically displaced from my town.  Though I will friggin travel for the right show.

Also... what is up with the explosion of music venues in DC now?  I leave town and they pop up like an outbreak of... whatever that is down there.  Used to be the Verizon Center for big acts, the 9:30 Club for mid-majors, and the Black Cat and such for the littl'uns.  Now: Rock & Roll Hotel, Hamilton Live, The Anthem, Hill Country Barbecue Market, U Street Music Hall, Sixth & I Historic Synagogue (??), Lincoln Theatre, and a place near the old Bayou called Gypsy Sally's -- each of which have bands I listen to playing there.  Kind of awesome, kind of wtf.

Anywho... come join me for some musical shenanigans, won't you?