10 Things You Did Not Know About The Giant House Centipede
They are fast. They are so fast they are almost impossible to squash. They can attain 16 inches per second, which means by the time you finish this sentence it could have gotten about 8 feet away. The only reason that you sometimes succeed in killing one is that when disturbed --
They run directly at you. This is to show you that they are not afraid of you, puny human. In fact they seem to evaluate you as a potential prey item. This is disconcerting when one is encountered in, say, the shower.
They can see in the dark. I don't think I need to tell you how disturbing that is.
They eat spiders. And really, how badass is that?
They cannot drink. All their liquid intake must come from their prey or the air. This is why they prefer damp places. Damp, dark, places. This is a problem if you have a basement that floods.
In Japan, they are kept as pets.What. The. Fuck.
They grow up to 6" long. I didn't believe it either, but let me assure you, they do. Oh yes.
They bite. And it hurts. More unsettling is that they tend to bite you while you're asleep. This means that, logically, they must have climbed all over you in your bed. Excuse me while I go totally freak out.
They can beat you at poker. While lacking the mental faculties to succeed at chess, they have proven more than adequate at no limit hold-'em.
THEY ARE INDESTRUCTIBLE. If it becomes too dry or cold for them to live... they don't die. They go into a state of suspended animation inside your walls, air ducts, or wherever. When it becomes warm and damp again, they reanimate. Perhaps months or years later. Pesticides may kill some of them, but you'll never get the poison into all the nooks and crannies where a crazy mummified invincible devil bug may be living. Literally the only way to be rid of them is to burn your house down -- and even that may not work.
All hail our new insect overlords. And if you'll excuse me, I have to run to the gas station...
Not that there's anyone here to read this, but please accept my apologies for disappearing for the better part of three years. I'm not dead, just moved once, changed jobs twice, and forgot the password to ebloggy.
(Mainly because the password was my old license plate number, and once I bought a new car... you see where this is going.)
So! What have we been up to lately?
New Job! I no longer work for a Big Evil Financial Services Company. Now I work for an Even Bigger International Conglomerate! They make everything from (and I am so not kidding) 3-D graphics software to trimotor business jets. Tragically I do not get an employee discount on robots or aircraft.
New Co-Workers! Most of my colleagues, bless them, engage in something called World Of Warcraft. It apparently involves using the words "Mage", "Warlock", and "Druid" a lot, as well as sitting in one's parents' basement and failing to interact with reality. Personally, I'm lost with anything more complicated than Wii Bowling.
New Roommate! M. has moved on and married the manipulative bitch girl of his dreams. Now living with D., which is far more entertaining. D., as longtime readers may recall (not that there are any), is a master carpenter whose sexuality is a subject of constant speculation. He's also impossibly attractive. You can see how this might be a bloody mess an interesting situation.
New House! I've moved from Dorchester (home of Asian gangs and Irish illegal immigrants) back to Worcester (home of Irish gangs and Asian illegal immigrants). This is a positive tradeoff, for reasons I don't entirely understand. At least the Guinness is cheap.
With any luck, I'll be updating this more frequently than "biannually" in the near future.
