sticky fly paper tomfoolery

The weather is beautiful–if you like hot sunny days and blue skies–belying the danger of Hurricane Gustav, bearing down on New Orleans like an arrogant burglar returning for the stuff he left behind.

We just got back from grocery shopping and paying for the Honda registration sticker. I imagined putting the sticker on in the storm and decided to just get it done now. Sitting in the front seat I scrape off the old sticker and begin removing the adhesive. I wonder if I'm getting high from the Goo Gone (one of the greatest solvents ever concocted) and if the combination of citrusy petrochemicals and Windex are destroying brain cells?

Meanwhile, there are love bugs (plecia neartica) everywhere:
For those of you unfamiliar with them, look here.

I am, as always, impressed by their aerial copulation and convinced that the name Love Bug is nothing but a silly Victorian throwback. These are Fuck Bugs, my modern friends. There is no tiny bouquet of flowers clutched in her foreleg or hint of wine on his coy fly mouth. They are simply following their biological mandate with a mid-flight twist. Makes you wonder, in a Darwinian sense, if being a member of the Mile High Club isn't the natural response to a primitive, vestigial urge? Perhaps certain members of our species find themselves strapped in and enjoying a complimentary packet of peanuts when overcome by inexplicable horniness...

Anyway, I finish the clean up and head back in to get the sticker. You used to have to mail away for the registration but now Kroger (among others) has a neat little machine and special paper that spits out the self-adhesive sticker. The only difference is that the old stickers were transparent–you could see through them and be reminded of the expiration date. I'm not sure why they discontinued that...it seems like transparent adhesive paper is certainly within our current technological grasp, eh?

Holyshitonmelbatoast, I fucked up. Shit, shit, shit. I removed the inspection sticker. REMOVED, as in shredded beyond recognition. Jesuschrist. The car was inspected exactly six months ago and I've cut the proof down half-way through its bureacratic little life. I go back in, confess to the kindest woman ever (it's the car she drives and the inspection errand she'll have to rerun), who gives me absolution for my boneheadery before I've gotten through the preamble. Damn, she is sweet to me.

I load up the solvent and cleaner and return to the car to remove the sticker that had actually expired. Then, I fish the mangled inspection sticker out of the trash, assemble its bits like an anthropologist and hope that the reconstruction will suffice for the inspection guy not to charge us full price for a replacement.

And I thought I was being so efficient.