There is an old joke…

It goes, “at the end of the world only two things will survive, cockroaches and Cher.”

I never really got the Cher part of the joke, and I have been blessed so far in my life to have been pretty much unacquainted with cockroaches…until now…

My Elder Son is doing an additional year of college but due to a long, involved mix-up you don’t really want to hear, his housing was cancelled, and this of course is information we could have used months ago, but no one knew the mishap had occured. So…we need decent housing within 40 minutes of school and work, and we need it “stat.”

Last night we checked out an apartment that sounded promising – a “recently renovated and ready-to-move-in” 3-roomer, and the price was on the money, so to speak. The owner flips on the light and “ta-da!” we step into a freshly painted, roomy apartment being occupied by (by our counts) several dozen lively roaches who looked like they were partying. Unashamed of their nakedness, they did not scuttle away from the light – no, they waved and bade us hale hellos, “hey, did you bring the beer and chips” they asked. “This is Stan, this is Mike, this is Hector, oh and that’s Lucille over there, but she just went into the kitchen – those are her kids on the counter! Everyone’s welcome, here, it’s all good!”

We stepped gingerly, and the whole drive home – even though we knew better – we kept feeling like bugs were crawling all over us. My son is a sweet optimist, “but the landlady seemed nice!”

My own opinion, she seemed a little too mellow for my money, if you get my drift.

I have to be honest, there is a lot of stress over here right now, for a lots of reasons, only one of which is the never-ending fun of kidney stones and doctors. That funnyman’s new one, “you know, the anemia…we’ve looked everywhere…blah, blah…we should think about a colonoscopy…”

My response: “you and your ghoulish friends get to play with one organ at a time; you’re currently playing with the kidney, and right now, I’m in no mood – no one touches the bootie!”

He murmured that eventually they’d get me there, too. I have no doubt. Excuse me for sounding less than chipper today but it certainly does seem that eventually everyone takes it up the bootie. I’m trying to maintain.

There will be more apartment hunting this afternoon. I hope I have no other crawling stories from this naked city. If I see another kickline of dancing cockroaches, I may need a Guinness when I get home.

In the news…Oh, screw the news, let me break it down for you, because it’s always the same: (Imagine a ticker-tape sound in the background)

In Politics: The president is “bad” because he goes to Iraq and uses the troops for political propaganda… Katie Couric is not bad even though she too uses a trip to Iraq (and the troops) for her own ratings propaganda, during which she cries “propaganda” at the military for only showing her what they want her to see while she stays in a gazillionaire’s lodgings…[UPDATE: Jules Crittenden, who clearly follows the news more closely than I have been gives Couric fair credit here] The election “season” is still too early and too long and too many of the candidates look like even with the extra rehearsal time, they won’t be ready for the big stage anytime soon…And global warming is going to kill us all…Hillary is getting incredible and daily tongue-baths (and so is her husband) from the adoring and incurious press who are not at all interested in any stories concerning any donors of hers who might have shady pasts…and if you mind that these donors are connected to other countries, either Asian or Middle Eastern, then you’re just a closed-minded and bigoted racist…and don’t ask Hillary or her campaign (or any other politician, really) about their private jet use, the environmental impact of mob-gathering, television kleig lights, and, no, no, no, don’t ask them if they’re buying carbon offsets from Al Gore – do you really think any political campaign is going to spend their ill-gotten booty on that Hoo-ha? Just shaddup, stay off the subject and understand that even though global warming is going to kill us all, some people’s sheer goodness and “problem-solving brilliance” (and concerns for our mental health) is carbon-offset enough for all the environmental mayhem they and their ambition bring!

In other election news: All Democrat contenders not-named-Hillary (and all GOP candidates) are getting iffy press, if they get any at all…John Edwards is stomping around trying to look manly by promising to intrude on your life as much as possible; he wants to get inside your head and stay there…Al Gore is still playing the old Mario-Cuomo-as-Hamlet gambit, standing on the sidelines waiting to be dragged into the game…Fred Thompson is on the other side doing much the same, and boring the hell out of me while he does it…Gay Republicans who are in the closet and are caught being gay (and cheating on their spouses, if they’re married) are barely-admitted human beings who – along with their families – are to be shown zero mercy…Gays who are not conservative or Republican can be either in the closet or out, married or not and just as “caught” and that’s okay, because you know, (as with all sex-type scandals concerning politicians both gay and straight but originating from the left) it’s really the pol’s own business, it concerns just them and their families, and decent, thinking people understand that and will let it go. Only the mean, sex-obsessed folks on the right want to make hay about it…and oh yeah, there is still terrorism out there, but nobody’s really paying attention.

In Health Care News, animals and people are being conjoined at the embryonic level…no one in support of it seems the least bit cognizant of the fact that they themselves are making distinctions between the species thus highlighting the humanity of the human embryo, but someone will figure it out soon and then the story will get buried…Those in charge of the socialized medicine that is helping to undo England and spinning all out of control have decided that doctors and hospitals are not for sick people – you should only be allowed medical care if you’re very healthy, indeed, say they…Fatties, smokers and other undesirables who can’t get take themselves in hand need not seek medical treatment…better they should die and decrease the surplus population (didn’t Scrooge say that about the poor?)…Actually, if it is determined that smokers and fatties are self-destructive” because they have emotional issues, then perhaps the UK will take a page out of John Edwards’ book, test their mental health and shut ’em all away, somewhere. Then only the mentally “healthy” will be running around free, and they’ll drive each other nuts spying-on and otherwise policing each other’s behaviors. Whatever happened to personal liberty and “Free to Be, You and Me!”? Even Scrooge said, “It’s enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people’s.“…And global warming is going to kill us all!

In “Entertainment” News, Private-jet setting movie stars are blabbing nonsense to mobs on foreign shores, where they feel the love for doing it (here in America, their spouting off affects the box-office) and like politicians, they’re using enormous amounts of power and resources to, um, tell us how to live better lives and promote films so that the studios and production companies they love may make money, money, money, because carbon offsets are the color of green and global warming is going to kill us all if they don’t do this!

Finally, if it’s Tuesday Britney Spears is either showing you her ass or wrecking your car, and Posh is still resolved never, ever to smile again.

Truthfully, I haven’t read a single news story – nothing more than a passing glance at Drudge. Now you don’t have to read the news, either – you know it’s pretty much all contained therein.

Quick aside: My email is backed up, yes, I know, I’m sorry…hopefully in a few days I’ll be back on the job and functional – I ask your continued indulgence. Also, it appears some bloggers have gone out of their way to include me in a list of “nice” bloggers, and I am terribly remiss in not acknowledging them and hopping into the meme, but I beg an indulgence there, too, particularly since I am not sure if the honor is deserved. You have no idea how not “nice” I feel right now…or, maybe after reading all of this, you do!

Okay and now that you’ve read that utter nonsense, I leave you with a very worthwhile read which may move you, courtesy of Richard Lawrence Cohen. Just read it. It’s better than anything else in the papers.