Late

Some of the movies on very late night television this week have just been too tempting to miss. I end up watching them and ignoring the poor old Internets. Now broad daylight has arrived and I've gotten nothing done, other than to finally have seen "Pink Flamingos" something like a third of a century after it came out, and to have seen "The Barefoot Contessa" for something like the fifth time. Can't sleep, cable is eating me.

Doomed!

It just might be time to tidy the room a bit. I dropped a pencil a while ago and it fell into a spot between couch, desk, stack of CDs, and the table on which the audio equipment sits. When reaching down to pick it up, my hand brushed through sticky, fresh spiderweb. I adjusted the desk lamp to get a better look and saw that the remains of the web were of the chaotic sort typically woven by black widows. I've peered under the table (largely blocked by stacked CDs), but saw no arachnid. There are spots under there that are hard to see, though, and lots of little crannies where a spider could conceal itself. I like spiders, but I'd rather not share the room with a member of that particular species. Now I'm undecided as to whether I should immediately embark on a cleaning frenzy or just pretend the whole thing never happened. Denial is so appealing.

At least black widows are not a particularly aggressive species, and the adult would probably do her best to avoid me, but if she produces an egg sack, I could have a swarm of her ignorant offspring who wouldn't be so cautious. On the other hand, spiders don't carry West Nile virus, which killed a guy in Walnut Grove the other day. Spiders kill the mosquitoes that carry West Nile virus. It would be too much irony if I killed the spider that would have killed the mosquito that will bite me and give me the disease that kills me. Sometimes I get the feeling that nature is just too damned complicated.

Nature produces kitties, though. Behold the overload of cuteness that is Cats in Sinks.

It's too hot again.