P.S.I
P.S.I
!!!!!!!!
Now, you might wonder what P.S.I is. Is it some Pacific Service of Investigation? Is it some Western Canadian secret police investigative service? Well, I'll get to that later.
I'm at the moment happily ensconced in a swivel chair at this computer just across from the old Bay Building (H.B.C). At the moment the gutted monolith is being transformed into high-end condos and their price will be somewhere in the range of the low millions! One of hundreds of suchlike developments going on is this west coast palatial paradise.
Now where am I going with this writing? Well, a certain un-housed plebe (the plebe being myself, by the way: I sometimes write in first person) - well, this plebe was just housed. The curtains of the room looked like they were cut from the Shroud of Turin (circa 1,000 A.D - or so!) the paint was as old as- well, it was pretty old. Not having much to look at, I tended to sink into T.V with the usual escapism of endless repeats of M.A.S.H and C.B.C Squawk Period from the House of Commons when I began to suddenly itch. Oh, by the way - people who sleep outside only tend to bring inside beetles, caterpillars, ladybugs or sometimes leaves. None of which bite. Anyway, I'd fallen asleep with the lights out. My ankles itched. My wrists itched. The back of my knees itched. Lo and behold bed-bugs or bed fleas (what's the difference, it's just hard to f--ken sleep - that's all!) I was offered a can of spray.
Now, back to what C.S.I is all about. This is a company. Or is it maybe some form of private investigation? No, it is a truck that has a sniffer dog to sniff out bed bugs! And you thought the terrorists had it bad!
I mentioned this to one of those finely trained university-sanctioned social workers. He said maybe the bugs where brought in by foreigners.
I suggest one of our local M.L.A s or M.Ps or whatever (a psychiatric nurse would be better) should be strapped naked to one of these beds and left there with popcorn to eat and T.V. to watch in a bathrobe with the aforementioned Hotel printed on the back and Revelations to read. Maybe Ozzy Osborne could be howling in the background to the drone of Black Sabbath.
Oh, shit - I forgot - it is a full moon tonight. Lock up the werewolves and temper them fangs.
P.S By the way. I left.
Bedbugs SUCK. Sorry to hear that you had to deal with them, Paul. I've been reading up about them and apparently they're getting everywhere. Has to do, partially, with increased global travel. A lot of hotels are having troubles keeping their rooms clean of the buggers. Some tourist picks them up at one hotel, then drops 'em of at another, and at home, work, school, the movies, the library...
Even those million dollar condos you speak of will soon be infected.
Tom Robbins on bugs-
"Logic limits love, which may be why Descartes never married. Descartes, architect of the Age of Reason, fled Paris, settled in Holland, where, surrounded by disciples and supported by patrons, he studied and wrote about mathematics and logic. Late in the year of 1649, he was invited to visit Stockholm to instruct Queen Christina in philosophy. Descartes accepted at once. Perhaps the pay was good. There would have been a reason.
Queen Christina took her lessons lying down. Frequently she was nude. That is hardly the worst of it. The court of Sweden, like everyplace else in seventeenth-century Europe, was infested with fleas. Christina had had her craftsmen fashion for her a tiny cannon of silver and gold. As she lay about on her cushions, she fired the little cannon at the fleas on her body. That was why she was nude. It is said she was a fair to good shot."