Put on your pants. Your mom's pulling in the driveway.

Before we get to our regularly scheduled post, let's take care of a few orders of business:

Please everyone act extra classy and maybe put on your smoking jacket because we may have some guests. I told my classmates and teacher about the blog because what better way to exhibit my professionalism and ability to write serious thinks about smart stuff than to use Naked Cupcakes as an example?

This means people who write Important Nonfiction will be dropping by, gazing through their monocles at what goes on here, so please nobody flash your tits.

And, although this went out in the last memo, it seems we need another reminder to please pick up your prophylactics when you are through making balloon animals. Please. I really need the credibility, guys.

Now. On to business.

This is our first 2010 Christmas tree:

I named it "Asshole" and replaced it, just like I did with my first child.

For 20 minutes in the Baltimore airport the other day, I wandered around a fairly crowded terminal with a barf bag from the plane, searching for a trash can. I finally found a trash receptacle, but it turns out there's only so long you can pretend a coated white paper bag filled with regurgitated Buffalo wings and flight peanuts is a lunch bag before someone is going to warn you that your chili is leaking.

Remember how I'm afraid of ninja psychics? Of course you do, because everyone is afraid of ninja psychics. More than psychic ninjas. Nothing is more stealthy than a ninja anyway, so it wouldn't make a difference if he were psychic. But ninja psychics are scary because you never know if they're around, reading your every thought.

A never ending cycle begins in your brain, during which you alternately try to think of really normal things and try to create an impenetrable mental shield. Even if ninja psychics didn't exist, just the fear of them alone is enough to cause mental health issues. The stress is outrageous.

Recently, I read bed bug infestations can result in mental health issues, such as stress, anxiety, depression and paranoia.


According to the Centers for Disease Control, "Bed bugs (Cimex lectularius) are small, flat, parasitic insects that feed solely on the blood of people and animals while they sleep. Bed bugs are reddish-brown in color, wingless, range from 1mm to 7mm (roughly the size of Lincoln's head on a penny) and can live several months without a blood meal."


Pause here to consider "blood meal."


Furthermore, bed bugs are not a sign your home is unclean. Bed bugs have been found in five-star hotels and the finest parlors. No matter how hard you scrub, how much bleach you use, you can never ever prevent them if they choose you, like the time some Christian-based cult members (God love them) decided my best friend's parents were "chosen ones" and no matter what her parents did, the people stalked them. Her parents removed their phone number from publication and for as long as they lived in that house, they had one of those puffy-letter label-maker labels on their screen door that read, "We do not wish to discuss your religious beliefs with you."


Bed bugs are like that, except they don't care about your unlisted phone number or your passive-aggressive door labels.

Signs of bed bug infestation include: presence of bed bugs in the folds of mattresses and sheets, exoskeletons the insects shed after molting, a sweet musty odor, and "rusty-colored blood spots due to their blood-filled fecal material that they excrete on the mattress or nearby furniture."

You would allow nothing in this world - the exceptions being your baby and your junior year roommate who had the really good weed connection - to continue living in your home after excreting blood-filled fecal matter on your mattress or nearby furniture.

Bed bugs typically live within 8 feet of sleeping areas, and bed bugs can travel as far as 100 feet in a night.

"They hide during the day in places such as seams of mattresses, box springs, bed frames, headboards, dresser tables, inside cracks or crevices, behind wallpaper, or any other clutter or objects around a bed," according to the CDC.

Ever-present bed bugs can always smell your blood, even through building material, and they will travel at frightful speeds to have a blood meal. Imagine how hungry one who hadn't fed for six months would be.

Once it finds its blood meal, the bed bug inserts into its meal an anesthetic and an anticoagulant, so the human or animal will not know it's being bitten. No signs of the bite could be visible for as long as 14 days, but when the bites do show up, they can itch so much as to keep the victim awake all night.

Once the victim is awake all night, the victim can witness all the bed bugs in its vicinity feasting on it.

Who got the job of figuring out if such an infestation would cause anxiety and paranoia? Because I want in on that gig. Sleep tight, pets.