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.

One of the greatest recorded feats of navigation, humans are told, was accomplished by Captain Bligh.  Skipper of the HMS Bounty, he and 18 crewmen were cast adrift in a small boat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean by mutineers.  After a 3600 mile voyage, Bligh landed safely in the Dutch East Indies.

What’s the big deal?  He navigated with a quadrant and pocket watch.  His boat sat effortlessly on the water, and was propelled by wind.  What if he had no hardware, and pushed the boat across the Pacific with his Imperial British body?

Such is the achievement of the noble dung beetle, every day.  It fashions a ball of ordure, which it uses both for food and as a place to live (a ball of dung is Shangri-La compared to millions of the human homes we inhabit). Because robbery is, alas, as common among beetles as among humans, it has to roll the ball away, and the escape route has to be exact.

How does the dung beetle navigate with its precious cargo? Homo sapiens, thinking man, has finally figured out that the beetle charts its voyage by observing the Milky Way Galaxy. No sextant, no pocket watch.

And, seeing as the ball is up to ten times the beetle’s weight, THIS is a feat of navigation one can salute.

Sod is my co-pilot

Glucose is bad for both your kind and mine, but for different reasons.  We do not overeat; roaches do not get fat.  The danger for us is that you mix it with poison and leave it out as bait.  You’ve killed millions.  Good work.

It’s wonderful solace to see what glucose does to you.  If you watch nature shows, you’ve seen animals which are invaded by parasites, bloat hugely as they are consumed, and then die piteously.  We see much the same in you–except that you do it without parasites.  You turn yourself into gelatinous monsters, rolling with fat, and die gruesome, premature deaths.  Why don’t you stop yourselves?  Where is your pride?  Does fat hang so thickly from your eyebrows so that you cannot see a mirror?  What images must you summon when you mount each other?

The solution, for all, is simply not to eat glucose.  We no longer do.  About thirty years ago, we accepted that glucose caused death.  More than that, we adapted; our genes changed–evolved, if you like.  We no longer lust for glucose.

Will you learn about glucose?  Will you adapt?  Put the poisoned glucose out for us.  We’ll leave it for you, with best wishes.

Cockroaches quickly lose sweet tooth to survive.

As if we’ve never heard this excuse before: A video comes to light with the most appalling sadistic element, and the people responsible claim it was for “research”.  Click the image above and watch.  Note the jaunty “no one is doing anything wrong here!” music.

Roaches are fastidiously clean.  (If you’re surprised, you’re beyond a racist–you’re a specieist.)  Our habits make cats look like hobos.  Most important are the antennae, of course.  They detect us odors, tiny motions in their air, and chemicals of all sort.  We keep them immaculate.

Here’s the claim.  “Researchers” of cockroach behavior needed to find out what this cleaning accomplished, so they GLUED a victim’s mouthparts to prevent him from grooming.  GLUED!  Even in human BDSM porn, which is revolting, they never go so low.

“Researchers” noticed a “shiny, waxy buildup on the antennae that clogs the tiny pores that lead to odor-sensing cells.” Not wanting to confuse the readers of their findings, they called it “gunk.”  Many thousands of dollars later they found out that gunk interfered with the function of antennae.

No roach would glue a human’s mouth, much as we might want to (more to stop the talking than the eating).  It’s barbaric.  If there is anything we seek to know, we do research in the field.

Next time you see a picture of a human lying in the debris of an earthquake, or expiring because of crop failure, don’t be upset at the insects swarming all over its face.  They’re fact-finding.

Each day we receive an email with a “word of the day,”  with a  definition, etymology, and sample of usage.  Because the messages are meant to enhance our appreciation of language, there is an explanation about why the words that are chosen are special.  The slogan of the organization that sends the messages is “The Magic of Words” (which should in no way be confused with The Magic of Middle-Aged Women”).

PRONUNCIATION:

(NIG-hurd)

 

MEANING:

noun: A mean, stingy person.
adjective: Stingy.

 

ETYMOLOGY:

>From Middle English nigard, of Scandinavian origin. Earliest documented use: 1384. 

 

NOTES:

Today’s word has nothing to do with the N-word, however, similarity in sounds has led to people objecting to it. It’s seen more often in its adjectival form, niggardly, as in: “Japan has the world’s second-largest economy, yet its promised $200m so far is niggardly.” 

 

Such is the power of the N-word that even an enterprise that is devoted to the richness of our language cannot write it.

Truly this word is magical.

 

More from the urban dictionary:

roach

a guy or girl who is just an overprotective scumbag when it comes to dating. It doesn’t have to be a boyfriend/girlfriend. It could simply be someone who is arrogant, a jerk, a scumbag, or someone who has no regard to one’s friendship/relationship

Boy: let’s get coffee sometime, you are awesome to be with!!

Girl: uh.. I don’t know.. my boyfriend wouldn’t like that

Boy: so over-protective!!!

Girl: yea

Boy: don’t let that fucking roach tell you what to do!!!

Girl: don’t worry… will do so

Related words:

scum, dick, fag, chump, arrogant