Words are unequal to the horror that is reported in an article: Mad scientists turn roaches into cyborgs, control them with Kinect, laugh at nature.  Humans implant circuits into the nervous systems of cockroaches so they can control their motion.  Are these humans monsters? Even the geek reporter admits as much.

Dr. Mengele (aka Dr. Alper Bozkurt, of the project) says, “Our goal is to be able to guide these roaches as efficiently as possible, and our work with Kinect is helping us do that.” Untold numbers of roaches will die, as data is collected on how they endure the torture.  And the excuse? As usual, it’s about “disaster areas,” how these deaths are really part of a humanitarian effort.

If you’re going to impale the heads of living beings, at least man up as much as any  little kid would. “I do it because it’s fun!”

The worst part? Kinect is made by Microsoft. Couldn’t we at least die on an Apple or a Wii?

The human world loathes you, cringes at the sight of you, devises ever new ways to exterminate you.  What could be a worse fate for any animal?  Only one thing: being called German.

Though no more German than African bush babies, we are biologically classified as Blattella germanica.  "Light-shunning Germans."  The German roach.

Boksballen!

There is a faint twinkle of hope in the Teutonic Darkness. The German language is so overwrought that parts of it must be cast off, like timbers from a sinking brig.  Just recently it jettisoned its longest word: Rindfleischetikettierungsueberwachungsaufgabenuebertragungsgesetz. 

What kind of people could allow such an egg to grow on its national glottis?  The kind that needs one word for "law delegating beef label monitoring."  The reigning chunk of HunSpeak is  Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitaenswitwe. It must be that "widow of a Danube steamboat company captain" takes too long to say.

Now we wait our turn to go the way of the beef and the boats. How long will it be before the Bosch tire of "Blattella" and set it, and us, free? We long, as do you all, to make our own words for ourselves. The Germans shouldn't care. To them everyone is vermin, and someone will step up and take our place.  The alternative is to wait us out, and no one ever wins that contest.

Next time we’ll catch up with you at the buffet!

Greyhound bus ride turned into roach-fest, passengers say

Roaches crawling out of air vents. Roaches climbing up seats and windows. Roaches on people’s coats and hats. Roaches everywhere.

It sounds like a scene from a horror movie — but is in fact what passengers say happened on a Greyhound bus journey from Atlantic City to New York on Friday.

“There’s like a thousand roaches,” passenger Dawn Alexander told CNN affiliate WABC. “And when I say infested, I mean infested. People were in the aisles literally brushing roaches off of them.”

“We thought it was one. It turned out to be a whole house full of roaches,” said a fellow passenger.

“I sat down — roaches started crawling up on our clothes, falling down from the ceiling. Everything,” said another.

Cellphone footage shows the pests scurrying across the bus floor and steps.

Greyhound’s Media Relations Director Maureen Richmond said the bus driver had acted swiftly when passengers alerted him to “bugs on the bus.  He immediately pulled the bus over and radioed our dispatch office for assistance.” 

Greyhound has apologized for the inconvenience to the 48 passengers on board the bus, which departed Atlantic City around 10 a.m. Friday.

“We are investigating how they got there — in bags or from the bus,” said Richmond.

What caused the insects to start pouring out of the air vents about 15 minutes into the journey is not yet clear — nor what Greyhound plans to do to get rid of them.

Alexander told WABC she was sitting in the back of the bus when she saw those toward the front starting to panic.  “Then after a while, the panic got towards the back because we all started looking around and saw roaches crawling everywhere,” she said.

It is said that Jack Spratt could eat no fat and his wife could eat no lean. One can only wonder what compulsive disorders governed their lives. Or what they looked like: he all tendons and hollows, giving off dark, foul urine; she, held vertical by diabetic compression stockings, obliviously clearing sausages from the shelves of the grocer with her hips. The illustration above is as real as Joan Rivers’s face.

There is a better way to divide up a diet, and yes, it was devised long ago by your betters.  We carry within us special bacteria that produce all the nutrients we need, except for choline and cholesterol, which are easily found.  As opposed to you, who, despite your prodigious over-consumption, need to be directed to “healthy” foods and “supplements” to supply the truly pathetic range of foods you must have to function properly.

Why do our bacteria do this for us?  We keep them fed and safe in the fat of our bodies; and we pass them from generation to generation.  In a hundred million years we have not had one squabble.

Do you think the same could be said of the Spratts? With their diet, I am sure they went at it hammer and tongs. A suggestion for all you modern Spratts: take a cockroach to lunch. Give him a little cholesterol, and he’ll let you have the rest.

And peace will reign in your home.