International Parasites
Australia is isolated enough to allow for the development for all manner of strange creatures unknown elsewhere in the world, but the immensity of ocean surrounding it hasn't been an obstacle to many forms of global pestilence. We've encountered three varieties in the last week alone: ants, lice and multinational corporations.
Ants don't digust me, even in their long, relentless columns that lead them to the tiniest scap of food flung by Lucy to the far reaches of the kitchen. If anything they inspire awe at their sheer numbers, and they make me think how all the ingenuity and technology of advanced civilization can't keep them out when they want in, how they live among us at all times, by the billions, in shadow cities in the soil and crevices of our own metropolises. They make me aware of all the cracks and fissures in the edifaces we create to make ourselves believe we have tamed nature, and that I find a little disquieting.
Head lice, on the other hand, are truly disgusting, foul and loathsome vermin. They don't just break in for a late-night nibble, they feast on our bodies. There was an outbreak of lice in Jake's class, and though he remained louse-free for quite awhile, he finally fell victim, and then I did too. They look like elongated ticks; they are vile, repugnant bloodsuckers with lots of little legs. And they are hard to kill, although I think we have succeeded in massacring them with odiferous, potent eucalyptus oil. There is one, and only one, thing I like about lice--that in the singular one is a louse (which according to the OED is where we get the word lousy, used in its generically derogatory form as early as the 14th centure by Chaucer). It made me feel a little better about our insect invasion when I called a friend in DC a few days ago and discovered they were also battling ants and lice.
And finally, my brand new digital camera broke. It just sputtered and gasped out an error code and then stopped. After a few days worth of correspondence with the cyborgs that work in Canon's customer service department as well as several calls to repair shops here, it appears that it will cost me a few hundred dollars to fix it and the warranties don't apply abroad. It turns out I can forgive ants and lice because they are creatures of necessity, but I can't find it in my heart to forgive Canon Corporation for designing disposable, pre-obsolete products, for providing worthless warranties, and for exploiting both workers and consumers in order to increase their profits. Needless to say they, far more than the other global parasites, have motivated this rant.
My camera debacle has me walking around muttering obscenities, which have become increasingly comic. Thanks to Paul & Ed, Jake is obsessed with Tin Tin books, so we've had to beg, borrow and buy a bunch of them here. These days I feel like I have big white dialogue balloons above my head full of the incensed expletives of Captain Haddock: troglodytes!... ectoplasm!... bashi-bazouks!... technocrats!... filibuster!!... gyroscope!!... politicians!!... diploducus!!...dipsomaniacs!!!
The absence of image today is brought to you by Canon Corp.
posted by Naomi Mezey @ 1:43 PM
5 comments
5 Comments:
My thought is that there's another Mezey out there having even more fun than I am.
Two more things about lice. First, my mom always assured me that lice were attracted to clean heads, not dirty ones. (I think this is probably not true, but it's useful if you're trying to make a kid feel less embarrassed about having lice.) Second, I got lice when we moved to England when I was 9, and I remember it vividly. I've forgotten a lot about what happened in England, but not the lice. So, whatever he forgets about Australia, I bet Jake will never forget the lice.
Excellent post, N. If it makes you feel any better, we had a spider cricket out on the screened in porch last night. It was of the same variety that infested my basement apartment during my 1L year. I had all these awful, awful flashbacks of that apartment and its "guests." The major bummer (a technical term) about it is that the porch is one of my favorite rooms in the house, and now I'm all freaked out about more crickets appearing. It's appalling how an insect can have that much of a hold on my enjoyment of my house.
In other news, I'm running the Chicago marathon in October. Though I vowed a) never to run a fall marathon, and b) never to run two marathons in one year (we ran Napa in March...in the rain), somehow I found myself registering and joining a training program. We ran 18 miles on Saturday. It felt oddly good (after the searing muscle pain subsided). ;)
I found out a couple more things about lice: 1) Ed's mom wasn't wrong--the Center of Disease Control website also says lice are attracted to clean heads, and 2) a mom of one of the kids in jake's class is a vet, and she said that Advantage flea treatment for cats is a very effective lice killer and that it is far less toxic than the stuff the health department recommends. She says it doesn't hurt canaries in trials and that France has authorized it as a human lice treatment already. She also said our heads are roughly the equivalent of a 4 kilo cat. Not sure this will help with spider crickets though Melissa.
Death to the Vantz!
Shit. Not 5 hours ago, I just bought a Cannon point 'n' shoot, and declined the service contract (which the sales associate said would have applied in England). I thought these cameras became obsolete so fast b/c of tech developments that I needn't worry about it busting before then. I have 10 days to buy the service K, but am leaving for London at 6 am tomorrow. Here's hoping. Otherwise, classwide arbitration? A long way of saying, I am very (self-absorbedly) sorry about your camera!
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