Monday 26 October 2009

Look and Don't Learn.

I've been plagued by a very trivial problem this last week or so. Last Monday someone referred to me as "thick" and, near the end of last week, I was told that I hadn't much going on in my life. Both hurtful and accurate comments that I shrugged off thinking "Bog off, I've read and vaguely understood Gabriel Garcia Marquez and I listen to The Smiths. That's clever, right? And I'm always busy. Or busy-ish, at the least".

But then the two wasps fucking thing happened.

On Thursday I was walking in the park with Jerk when I noticed two wasps fucking. It isn't every day that you see two wasps fucking and, I think, when you come across it (don't) you should take your time and enjoy it. You know? Stare at it for an hour or so. That's what I did. It was a really odd sight. I never really thought about wasps fucking but I guess they must do.

That's when it hit me that the cruel, cruel comments thrown at me last week were bang on the money. I don't know if wasps actually fuck but I have all the time in the world to just stand there and watch them. I am 41 years old and have no idea how a wasp reproduces. How has that passed me by? We must have learned about it at school, right? It wasn't all lessons about overthrowing England, not all the time. We must have learned about the mating rituals of insects. Shit. Are wasps insects? How do I know that Lando Calrissian lost the Millennium Falcon in a card game to Han Solo but not how wasps have baby wasps? Do they lay eggs? They must lay eggs. I tried looking it up on Wikipedia but got distracted by the band W.A.S.P. best known for their 1984 UK hit single Animal (Fuck Like A Beast) who's b-side was, of course, Show No Mercy. I know that. Oh, yeah. I fucking know that, alright. But what good is that when I'm trying to find out how a wasp exists. Why couldn't it be Animal (Fuck Like A Wasp)? It's as if that angry, shouty, drunk band didn't want to influence me at all.

And yes, I'm well aware that I've been spending too much time thinking about how I might be a bit thick after all. Proving that maybe I don't have as much going on in my life as I thought I had. To be fair, after the third or fourth hour of watching those two stripey exhibitionists bang away I sort of understood that I'd have to maybe find a few more things to do with my days. And, yes, that's how long they went on for. Tantric wasp sex....something about Sting. Look, you make up your own joke OK? I'm very busy.

In reality, I could have looked up all manner of websites and found out more about the wasp but I actually downloaded W.A.S.P.'s Animal (Fuck Like A Beast) instead. Haven't heard it in 20 years. It's terrible.



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2 comments:

Blackout said...

"How do I know that Lando Calrissian lost the Millennium Falcon in a card game to Han Solo"

Sabacc. The game was Sabacc. I'm 36 and I know 'that', but only last month I found out where Jamaica is. I clearly wasn't paying attention in school either.

After you with the dunce hat, please.

Unknown said...

It was snakes that got me thinking. I saw them essentially as tubes with teeth, and I didn't know how they could mate, or how you told which ones were female. I'm happy to say that my sister got a snake, so that eternal mystery is (slightly) resolved, but there's so many things out there that I don't know how they...

Fish. How do fish fuck? And birds?