September 24, 1999
As you may have heard, the city of New York has a problem with mosquitoes spreading the disease encephalitis (which makes a stunning bow tie and cummerbund). In response, city officials have ordered that the entire city be repeatedly blanketed with the insecticide malathion. Here are a few of the instructions to city residents:
1. Stay inside during the spraying. Obviously this was written by the same guy who wrote the pamphlet "How To Avoid Shark Attacks" and whose first instruction was "Get out of the water."
2. Close all doors and windows during the spraying. I suppose there are some people who, while staying inside, would be tempted to open their windows to get a better view of those really cool looking helicopters, but I’d say those people are asking for a lot more than just a face full of insecticide.
3. Wash all childrens’ toys left outside during the spraying before handling them. The same applies to children.
Interestingly, malathion wasn’t the first choice of the city officials, but the mosquitoes were found to already be resistant to DDT. Thanks to this spraying, however, next year’s batch of mosquitoes will also be resistant to malathion, which means sprayers will have to use pyrethrins, chlorine gas, and possibly even radiation. By the end of the next decade, New York is expected to be infested with enormous, eerily intelligent mutant mosquitoes, which residents agree will be a vast improvement over the current police force.
Enjoy this week’s offerings.
Signs That You’ve Had TOO MUCH Of The 90’s
You try to enter your password on the microwave.
You now think of three espressos as "getting wasted."
You haven’t played solitaire with a real deck of cards in years.
You have a list of 30 phone numbers to reach your family of 5.
You e-mail your son in his room to tell him that dinner is ready, and he emails you back "What’s for dinner?"
Your daughter sells Girl Scout Cookies via her web site.
You chat several times a day with a stranger from South Africa, but you haven’t spoken to your next door neighbor yet this year.
You didn’t give your valentine a card this year, but you posted one for your email buddies via a Web page.
Your daughter just bought on CD all the records your college roommate used to play that you most despised.
Every commercial on television has a web-site address at the bottom of the screen.
You buy a computer and a week later it is out of date and now sells for half the price you paid.
The concept of using real money, instead of credit or debit, to make a purchase is foreign to you.
Cleaning up the dining area means getting the fast food bags out of the back seat of your car.
Your reason for not staying in touch with family is that they do not have e-mail addresses.
You consider 2nd day air delivery painfully slow.
You refer to your dining room table as the flat filing cabinet.
Your idea of being organized is multiple colored post-it notes.
You hear most of your jokes via email instead of in person.
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