In Which I Channel My Inner Dick Cheney

Last Tuesday night I was washing my face with some invigorating apricot scrub and minding my own business, when I looked into the hall outside my bathroom to see a truly gargantuan waterbug on the floor. After emitting an "Ugh" of disgust I stared and it and went into my whole "Wish it no harm" routine. That lasted all of two minutes, until I realized that it was gently waving its antennae at me. I screwed up enough courage and flipped the bathroom wastepaper basket over on the sucker.

I grabbed a copy of Mark Bittman's How To Cook Everything Vegetarian, which, at 1,072 pages, is a doorstop of a cookbook, and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (2,560 pages), and put them on top of the overturned wastepaper basket for good measure. I could hear the damn thing moving around under there, crashing against the sides of the basket in a futile effort to escape. Just the sound of it scratching against the metal was skeeving me out.

I left it on where it was overnight. In the morning I started calling the setup it "The Bastille", but then I realized that, as the absolute monarch of my domain, "Bastille" was probably not the best metaphor. So I started calling it GITMO, but I thought that in poor taste. Later in the week, I settled on thinking of it as my own personal Black Site.

A week later, it's still there. I know. I know. As a liberal committed to non-violence, you think I'm a sadist. If you're in PETA you think I ought to be shot. As someone who's outraged by Bush, Cheney, torture, extraordinary rendition, detainees, and military tribunals you think I am just not funny.

I don't give a damn.

My question for you is, after one week and one day, do you think that little fucker is dead yet?