In these last few weeks I’ve kind of gotten hooked on this new HBO series, True Blood. It’s really a great TV series which M and I watch religiously. The show is set an alternate reality in which vampires do exist and have “come out of the coffin” upon the invention of synthetic blood (the product is called True Blood) originally designed the demands for human blood transfusions but had the unintended side effect of providing vampires with artificial food, so feeding on humans is no longer necessary. The show itself focuses on a fictional Louisiana town called Bon Temps (the name means “good times” in French; I wonder if that’s some sort of literary device) in which a telepathic human waitress falls in love with a vampire and whose boss is secretly a shape-shifter who can change his form to resemble any animal. Anyone who hasn’t seen it should definitely check it out on HBO or on YouTube.

Now there’s a new movie, Twilight, in which a human falls in love with a vampire.

Despite my fascination with True Blood, I don’t know why this vampire stuff is all the rage. Scores of people have been living with nocturnal blood sucking creatures for the last few years. Where’s our HBO TV series? Where’s our movie?

Shit, I think I’d rather have the vampires than the bedbugs.

Before yesterday, I hadn’t seen a live bed bug in my home for about a month, which is why I didn’t have much to blog about. But yesterday M and I were engaged in foreplay on the bed [we had misplaced our clothes ] and we were kissing when she stopped and told me I had a small brown bed bug on my cheek. Using her fingernails as tweezers she expertly plucked it off my face, and apparently the bug’s beak was still penetrating my flesh because it stung a bit as she jerked it off (the bed bug, not me).

Unfortunately, M and I are not swingers, so we instead invited our little go-in-between to a friendly game of Bed Bug Barbecue. Needless to say, the romantic mood was shot and we got dressed faster than a john in a haunted whorehouse.

My only dilemma, besides having seen a live bed bug in my home, is that I have no idea whether the bed bug was male or female. I don’t know whether I should just be grossed out or if I should join the Royal Navy.

Occasionally I receive a comment from one of those automated comment spammer programs which makes a Google-like attempt to capture the essence of a particular post based on one or two words in it and then form a comment that offers a product or service related to my post (or what the software thinks is related to my post). Today I received a gut-busting laugh-out-loud comment from such spam software on a 2006 entry in which I complain about how the strange-looking bed bug bites on my arm are often mistaken for some sort of skin infection or herpes.

Got Herpes? Do not despair. You are not alone. 1 in 5 men and 1 in 4 women are living with herpes. Don’t Let Genital Herpes Run or Ruin Your Life. Dating and relationship help for people with genital herpes now http://www.****************

Only a computer could do something this stupid.

I’ll try to post again this weekend.

I came upon a news story about colonial America that actually tells from where this notorious adage originates. It’s from the Norwell Mariner/Patriot Ledger in Marshfield, Massachusetts. The article focuses on MA state Senator Robert Hedlund, who accompanied a class of fifth graders on their field trip to a New England colonial museum. Apparently Marshfield is a microscopically sleepy town or this article was the byproduct of an extraordinarily slow news day. In any case, the origin of the phrase is revealed in the following quote:

It was later learned that colonists often had to cope with bed bugs because mattresses were made of straw; bed supports were tightened with a special device: hence the expression, “sleep tight and don’t let the bed bugs bite.”-Mary Ford, “Oldest Fifth-grader Joins School Field Trip”

The fact offers some perspective when you consider all the technological advancements made since the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock in 1620, and despite all these advancements we still itch for the same reason the Pilgrims did. The bed bugs must’ve annoyed the hell out of the Native Americans.

Happy New Year, by the way. Next month will be the second birthday of Bugged Out.

Speaking of New Year, do any native New Yorkers actually go to Times Square anymore to watch the ball drop? It was all the rage when I was a kid, and by the time I was old enough to go by myself (since no adult I knew was interested in going), the whole hanging out at Times Square got real lame, especially after 9/11 when security was beefed up and everything from liquid containers (no booze?!?) to backpacks were banned from the area during the New Year’s Party.

As far as I know, most New Yorkers attend private New Year’s parties where they are free to eat, drink, smoke, snort, inject and swallow whatever the hell they want without being hassled by the fuzz. Times Square at New Year’s is for squares, a.k.a. tourists. Let them be herded like cattle into a potential terrorist target area.

So be sure to stock on the alcohol tomorrow, especially if you have bed bugs. And for those who don’t have bed bugs, you are cordially invited to my house for a slumber party! Then you can go home and watch your furniture and your sanity disappear.

Cheers.

1. For those ladies living with their man, bed bugs will make him think twice about leaving his socks or underwear on the floor.
2. For those men not living with their significant other, bed bugs like to bite women more, as discussed in a past post, so this should encourage you to invite your girlfriend to sleep over more often.
3. If you’re really into the minimalist thing, bed bugs should not be that much of a problem for you. In fact, if you really believe less is more, than watch your living space grow and grow exponentially as your over infested bed and other furniture disappear.
4. With bed bugs seeming to explode in numbers in cities across the world, I can’t imagine that homeless people are feeling as bad about their living situation as they used to.

Not too many good things to say about bed bugs, are there? I believe that if you don’t have anything nice to say about bed bugs, then pour yourself, a stiff drink. If you can think of some offbeat positive results of living with bed bugs, please drop me a comment so you can share with the rest of the class.

Merry Christmas!

But before I release my own poetry, I’d like to share with everyone the very amusing and creative bed bug haikus that are too good to not share. Unfortunately, the poster was anonymous and the poems were submitted within several different comments , so I have no way of knowing if these seven haikus were written by one anonymous poster or several. In any case, here they are…

and, without further ado, are my ten haikus.

Enjoy!

There’s no league to join, no official rules, it can be played at home, and you can do all the steroids you want.

The sport? Bed bug burning!

Here’s what you need:
1) A live bed bug
2) A long barbecue lighter
3) A linoleum floor or other fire-resistant surface

I’m not going to insult your intelligence by telling you how the game is played, except that each charred bed bug equals one point.

My brother tried burning bed bugs, and he says they scream when they catch fire. I keep trying to position my ear close to the action to hear anything that remotely resembles a scream. So far nothing. Let me know if you hear any screams if you so feel inclined to try out this fun sport.

By the way, I have collected nine bed bug-related haikus from anonymous posters so far. As I previously promised, I would only unleash my next ten bed bug haikus when I recieve ten from you. So please, stir up those creative juices and drop that last haiku in the comment area!

The following is an article I found in The Spoof!, a publication featuring outrageously made-up news, kind of the British version of The Onion. This particular article showcases a new strain of bed bug that resembles a lobster.

Here’s one hilarious quote:

These super-bugs thrive on crisps and of course the lower orders are always eating food in bed, and as they always buy shite for their kids and that, then it’s no surprise that this plague is getting totally out of hand.”

In case you’re wondering, “crisps” are what English people call potato chips because “chips” are what they call french fries. “Feckers” is, well, replace the first e with a u and you’ll figure it out. “Shite”? Remove the e and you will have the American translation. “Council estates” I imagine refers to public housing, and the “lower orders” means lower-class people.

Enjoy!