{"id":959,"date":"2014-10-27T15:46:54","date_gmt":"2014-10-27T15:46:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mathewbinkley.org\/?p=959"},"modified":"2018-05-10T22:42:12","modified_gmt":"2018-05-10T22:42:12","slug":"o-death-where-is-thy-sting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mathewbinkley.org\/?p=959","title":{"rendered":"Where is thy sting?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I live in an older home with innumerable cracks around windows and doors, and despite all attempts at sealing and caulking, as autumn turns cold there is a pilgrimage of ladybugs and wasps trying to sneak in out of the cold. \u00a0 So it is an annual ritual to spent a couple of weeks vacuuming them\u00a0out of my basement windows when I get home in the evening.<\/p>\n

Wasps, being the physical manifestation of Satan in this dimension, did not take kindly to this affront, and this morning, sought\u00a0their revenge…<\/p>\n

I awoke\u00a0this morning much like any other Monday (i.e., desperately tired and wishing it were still Sunday), put some tea on to help wake me up, and went to the bathroom to do what bathrooms are often used for… \u00a0A minute or so after having a seat, out of the corner of my eyes I saw some motion between my legs, and looked down…<\/p>\n

A large wasp had crawled out from under the lip of the toilet where it had been hiding, turned to face me, arched its back, and glared at me, his glinty little Satanic eyes full of boiling hatred and murderation.<\/p>\n

\"Wasp<\/a>

Wasp (actual size)<\/p><\/div>\n

As you may expect, there is a certain air of rapidly escalating panic\u00a0which sets in in situations like this. A moment of extremely urgent soul-searching revealed nothing in my upbringing to help guide me in a moment like this. \u00a0I mean, in event of nuclear war, every\u00a0one in 3rd grade and above knows to duck and cover, but that’s not exactly an option in this case…<\/p>\n

All I knew was that I didn’t much like the looks of the wasp, the wasp apparently didn’t much like the looks of me either (metaphorically and\u00a0literally), and I didn’t particularly want to be boldly stung where no Mat has been stung before.<\/p>\n

So I did what any grown, mature, rational human being would do in similar circumstances: start screaming like a little girl while throwing washcloths, books, cats, and other\u00a0nearby\u00a0objects at it until one well-aimed book knocked the wasp to the ground, and then pummeling it repeatedly with heavy books until the wasp was flatter than Wile. E. Coyote after a good anvil-dropping.<\/p>\n

As it turns out, the tea I has started preparing proved unnecessary, as I was quite awake by the time all was said and done…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I live in an older home with innumerable cracks around windows and doors, and despite all attempts at sealing and caulking, as autumn turns cold there is a pilgrimage of ladybugs and wasps trying to sneak in out of the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mathewbinkley.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mathewbinkley.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mathewbinkley.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mathewbinkley.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mathewbinkley.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=959"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/www.mathewbinkley.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/959\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1085,"href":"https:\/\/www.mathewbinkley.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/959\/revisions\/1085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mathewbinkley.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mathewbinkley.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mathewbinkley.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}