I know I should have some really gripping title for this little series, but it’s after 5am and my mind is floating off somewhere between the fumes from the bug spray and the Chinese folk classical music (on very cool surround sound)in which I am still trying to find a groove… current song: “The Lawn Is Interspersed With Flower.” Perhaps the experience will provoke some flash of intuition regarding how ancient Chinese worldviews can inform our deliberations regarding troubling implications of the impending strides in technological human alteration on the mind-body problem. Then again, maybe it’s just chemicals and music. Either way, welcome to The Night Security Monologues - which is what happens when I’m done eating, practicing Chinese, and my mind is too fried to read or work on stuff that needs to get done.
Night security sounds like a cool job with guns, big flashlights, dark corners around buildings and guys in black masks to fight with. I hope you weren’t expecting that sort of thing. I sit in the lobby of a dorm full of highschool girls. My job, from 10pm-6am, is to make sure none of them leave and none of their boyfriends get in. Since they’ve already found out that I (a) am married, (b) won’t do their homework for them, (c) think 10pm is past their bedtime, and (d) like to mock their boyfriends, they pretty much leave me in peace. Which is good, because Chinese is tough and requires concentration (the language and the music).
Here is my latest adventure (as best I can remember):
3:12am - strange noise outside of front door of dorm, like someone throwing pebbles.
3:14 - decide to go investigate strange noise.
3:14 & 1/2 – find a really big, scary-looking bug that I have never seen before throwing itself repeatedly against the glass door (apparently he wanted in).
3:15 - get piece of cardboard to catch him with (it looked vicious, and since most insects in Texas bite, I wasn’t taking chances. I don’t know that he really bites, or if he’s actually a ‘he,’ but my ignorance regarding the former guaranteed my continued ignorance regarding the latter).
3:16 - go outside to catch bug. He runs, I chase him. Door locks with 1000 pound magnet. Bug tries to hide in puddle but I catch him and fiddle for my access card to get back in the dorm. My subconscious says, “Puddle? Where’d that come from?”
3:17am - get soaked with “non-potable water” from malicious rotating lawn sprinklers’ direct hit while locked outside dorm fiddling with access card.
3:17-22 - get inside and play with bug.
I let him go in the end… it had huge eyes, and it’s hard to kill things that can look at you unless you plan to eat them, but I only eat stuff like this when I’m overseas. …I think it’s a giant water bug, only mine had bigger talons.
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Hahaha this is a great post Joel, nice to hear how you are doing. Well.. I don’t really have anymore to say but I’ll be looking foreward to the next post in the series!
-Steven Burgess
Hey Steven! How’s California? Good to hear from you. And what’s your bloglink again?
Reason #509498242 why Saskatoon is better than — the cleansing winters get rid of critters like that. Though mosquitoes the size of Volkswagens may not be a fair trade.