[From the now-dead C-petal; 2002-Jun-01]

The war of man against Nature has existed since we first stood on two legs instead of four. We polute, demolish and rape Her, She invades and consumes us back.

Her skirmishes with me have occurred mostly in secrecy, offending me on a very sensitive and personal level with her batallions of insects.

When I lived in Florida, my bedroom and all my posessions in it were infested with flying ants. It was an appalling embarassment--where every day, they'd be crawling all over my bed, my stuffed animals, my dirty laundry, and rooting through my bird's cage papers. Instead of a can of hairspray, a can of Raid sat on my bureau. I would walk from the shower into my bedroom with my clean bare feet, crunching and collecting their dead bodies off the floor, no longer disgusted or even bothered by the sensation of them sticking to my skin.

A singular duel was faught in that same house right in the bathroom. I had just stepped out of the shower and wrapped a towel around my head, when an enormous brown bug the size of my thumb kamikazed my pile of clothes on the floor. Of course it landed somewhere near the crotch of my discarded panties, to further my humiliation with its attack. When I gingerly picked up each article of clothing and shook it vigorously to see where the bastard went, I shrieked as it made one last dashing attempt to get to me--but then it scurried off to corners unknown. Probably to celebrate its victory with its compatriots in my bedroom, those that were still alive.

I was told that the attacker I saw was a "Palmetto bug" because Floridians can't bear the word "roach."

And once I left that house, so too did the flying ants. Nature had won her battle with me there.

Today, just now, doing the dirty brown dookie duty in my latest apartment's bathroom, I saw the hairy flash of silver crawling much slower than I did last night. Only 14 hours ago, this long-limbed millipedal thing was darting over my bathroom rugs to hide under the wall heater. But today, be it from tiredness or just a plain lack of instinctual vigilence... the bastard was slinking around, lazily passing by the Game Informer magazine I left on the floor. TP at the ready, I brought my hand down upon him to smite him in swiftness--but not with too much force; I'd hate to mush him into the rug. First, apply a gentle clasp. Second, raise the clasped prisoner in your hand to examine if the grasp was successfu---NOPE! he gets away! and I squeal in terror and use the last resort: MY FLIP FLOP. The prisoner was fatally captured under the pressure of my foot, but I was mid-shit still, and yet had to clean up the play-doh fun factory that was my ass . So as I finished up, I was horrified to see that some translucent and speckled filaments--which were its legs-- lie twitching in the toilet paper wad in my hand. Some curling futiley, others flexing and extending. They moved independently of the owner (who was pancaked under my black hard-foamed sandal), spending the last bits of impulse energy they received before they were severed from the main. I began wondering if somehow, the dead body below was telepathically transmitting all of its last reflexes to the legs twitching on the ball of toilet paper in my hand. With some sickness, I realized that some of the twitchings were precise, like a metronome, showing that even death has a rhythm.

I committed the dead prisoner down a swirly, watery grave. If only I could've been flushing down the body of the lead singer from System of a Down. Because that guy really needs to die. Who the fuck gave that asshole a microphone? because that person needs to die, too.

Since returning to NJ, Nature has preferred sending these terrifying...and icky...thousandleggers after me as Her main line of attack. But I am always vigilent and prepared, no matter where I am, and no matter how embarrassing or mortifying the battle scene.

I wish the many incidents I have with certain people [ANTHONY] were resolved in a similar fashion, and with the same outcome. I'd be much better off.