I have an ant problem.Normally, my desktop is topped by the bottom and top of this laptop and its virtual desktop, that is to say, the top of my lap habitually rests slightly below the wooden top of the upper desk whereupon the top of my laptop... I’ll start again. When we recently went on vacation, I whisked my valuable laptop into its prophylactic sheath slash carrying case and thus left my actual desk’s top temporarily bare and void of electronic equipment. In other words, a week ago I shut this damn computer up like a bad clam with avian flu and crammed it into a crappy satchel. Then we went on vacation.
Little did I know, at that time, looking back, the repercussions that this would, as time went on, have, in the future, on the history of the desk, and upon its present, which is to say, the future, and current, present, condition of that desk. It was a fateful decision which would change the life of my desk, and of myself, for ever.
During our 6-day absence, a colony of ants apparently used the middle of my desk for an essential conduit from their sleeping quarters en route to their formicious workspaces. There is clearly no way that this aforementioned colony of ants can survive without making the trek from... wherever they come from... past the center of my desk. They must have found some rich and yielding foodstuff or ant booty of some sort somewhere beyond my desk, and chosen my desktop as Highway One to Ant Economic Development Site Alpha.
By returning from vacation, unsheathing my laptop and installing it on my desk’s top, I clearly destroyed the ants’ rich culture of highwaymanship, vis-a-vis my desk. Generations of ant had used this desktop to roam freely in search of ant treasure, only to now be cruelly rebuffed by the vast detour of my laptop’s gleaming, translucent, rectangular hull. But no mere plasticine hull can quell these ants’ unquenchable moxie. These ants are young, they’re driven, and they’re ABSOLUTELY SURE that the path to ant greatness lies on the other side of my desk. And so they’ve chosen, like the intrepid pismires they are, to CHARGE mightily up and over the obstacle, damn the consequences, and to continue to seek the hidden treasure which lies beyond. SO, FOR THE PAST 48 HOURS, ONE ANT HAS CROSSED MY KEYBOARD EVERY TEN SECONDS. I CAN’T F*CKING STAND IT ANY MORE.
Why must I be forced into the role of genocidal maniac? Why must these ants test my gargantuan largesse? Why must I watch weeping as they fruitlessly zig-zag through the labyrinthine keys of my laptop before, at their tortuous journey’s end, encountering my implacable thumb? Why must so many thousands suffer so that one highway is diverted a few inches in some other direction?
Ant Queen, if you’re reading this: B*TCH TELL YOUR F*CKING DRONE PEONS TO QUIT WALKING ON MY F*CKING COMPUTER. I WILL SQUISH EACH AND EVERY ONE OF THEM. FOREVER. UNTIL THE MULTITUDINOUS SEAS RUN INCARNADINE WITH ANT BLOOD. IT’S YOUR MOVE. IT IS CURRENTLY GO TIME.
THIS IS SAVING PRIVATE ANT. THIS IS ANTLER’S LIST.
THIS... IS... SPARTANT!
6 comments:
This sounds like some twisted chapter from the bible. I have a post about interconnectedness that may shed some light on your predicament.
Are you telling the story of some ants or the plight of all mankind at the hands of some pissed off god?
Spartan! Good shit!
actually I have learned an important lesson about non-violent coexistence with the ants from all this. when I try to squish them while they're walking on my keyboard, they get all panicky and hide inside my computer, and their tiny, mangled bodies gunk up my keys, so I let them go about their business peacefully. We are a model of peaceful interdependence.
Of course, once they're off my computer I squish the dickens out of them, so that's where the environmental metaphor falls apart, but for a few seconds there the ants and I peacefully share the ecosystem of my keyboard. For those brief moments I'm like the ant Dalai Lama. Actually, I read an interview where the Dalai Lama talked about how much he likes shooting at hawks with a rifle (no joke), so for those few seconds I'm actually BETTER than the Dalai Lama.
So wait, if the ants are getting slaughtered and this is Schindler's List, what does that make you?
(here via Comics Curmudgeon)
"I wandered lonely as a cloud,
that floats on high over vales
hills, when all at once I saw a
crowd..
A host of golden WORKER ANTS!"
:)
~Sis
"And that's a false feeler Marcus!"
Srah -
You're right -- when you follow the "Antler's List" metaphor to its logical conclusion, I am reluctantly forced to admit that I am Adolf Antler, the Ant Antichrist. Unfortunately for the forces of good, as we can see "Antler" is such a common last name in the imaginary world of this insane insect genocide metaphor that I'll probably get away with it Scot-free.
That gives me an idea! What if I surrounded my computer with Scotch tape, sticky side up? That'd give them something to think about.
That's what you get for trying to outsmart the ants. You knew before we left that they had some specific agenda on your desk and you had to be all smarty-pants (there I used a hyphen, are you happy?) and put your laptop in your fancy little case. Did you not have an inkling of the antlimma that would occur should you disturb their precious highway?
Anyway, what about using that deadly German ant spray on your desk? The one we used on the bedroom wall highway (which is now simply a pile of dead ants stuck to the wall because neither of us want to clean it up. But, on the plus side, the carnage has seemed to stop the other ants from using that path). Maybe it'll work for the desk?
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