This is what a pussy I am: With Spring in full swing, we’ve had an influx of ants return to our roof terrace. Horror of horrors. It’s usually not a big issue, but lately, whenever I’m out there at night it’s like Ant Carnival and I am the interloper. And I semi-freak. Most people wouldn’t notice the ants, but I do. Which is why I deign to remove them from the premises.

The exterminator was working in our building the other day and so I made an appointment for him to come by, although he’s never been my favorite person. He’s an old salty dog, and always comes with a joke. (Today’s was about a greedy widow who stuffed a check in…never mind.) But, I don’t know…there’s just something about him.

(If this were a movie, right here would be a foreshadowing scene where I turn my back and he looks into the camera all bat-shit crazy.)

But anyway, he brought those cool little packets filled with cantaloupe oil and boric acid. He said that the ants loved them some cantaloupe oil and would carry the concoction back to their underground lair and, kablaam! –it’s bye-bye ant colony. Sure enough, we watched for a minute and these ants looked like nerds swarming any hot women at Comic-con. And by hot, I mean ‘alive.”

I was all like, “Gotcha, ants!” Looking back, this is when it all began heading south.

Like Aesop with a lazy eye, he told me this story about how he treats a mansion up in Connecticut, and they would only use organic means to rid themselves of ants. And how he rigged up this mixture of stuff and spread it in a long thin straight line down the middle of a cobblestoned path heading toward the patio. Wouldn’t you know it, the ants came out in droves, started eating, and dropped dead on the spot.

About an hour later, he goes back to the area and sees what I think is a pretty amazing thing: a line of ants had come out to carry their dead comrades away. “For burial,” he said.

Even now, writing the following words, it still makes little sense to me that I said what I said, especially to a strange stranger. It was just something stupid; the kind of thing I say 50 times a day, minimum. Ready? Okay, so I jokingly (I thought) hypothesized that maybe they were actually going to have sex with the dead ants.

(If you want to stop reading here and erase the bookmark, I wouldn’t hold it against you. Just to say.)

“No…they…don’t…have…sex…with…the dead…ones,” he informed me, huffily. “They bury them!”

I thought, “Where the hell are ants burying other ants?” By the time the words left my mouth they were translated into, “Pfffft. No way.”

So now there I was, stuck in another one of those conversations, like with last week’s with the squirrel rescue lady. Except this one is in my own home. So I couldn’t just walk away. And he was a little scary. So I apologized. Naturally.

“Hey, I was just joking about the ants,” I said, palms up. “That’s actually pretty amazing.” And, if you think about it, it really is.

Instead of taking my olive branch, he slapped it down, as exterminators are wont to do, when challenged. (I read that on Wikipedia.)

“We could learn a lot from ants, you know.”

“Shut up” is all I wanted to say, but instead just stood there, smoldering at being lectured. He began gathering his gear and heading toward the door. I waited until just after he crossed the threshold before answering:

“Well, I’ve learned not to eat cantaloupe oil and boric acid. But then again, I knew that because I have a brain.”

And then I said, “see you next week!” and closed the door, feeling  smaller than the ants I had been so willfully murdering.

Hello darkness, my old friend. I’ve come to talk with you again.

While this may come as a complete shock to you, it’s true: I am constantly battling to keep “the darkness” at bay. Not that crummy British band from a few years ago. They’ve done a great job of marginalizing themselves, for a gazillion reasons.

Rather, the darkness to which I am referring is the kind that makes a pharmaceutical company get an erection lasting longer than four hours. The kind that makes a person sense doom, wildly blow simple situations out of proportion, speak wistfully of Joy Division and write about all kinds of bullshit that really matters to no one. Except maybe Hope Sandoval (bites fist), somewhere in South America. Or California.

It’s a tough slog, sometimes, being raised to exist on the outskirts of crowds, with a general mistrust of people’s intentions. It hasn’t gotten the way of me leading a productive life. But the feeling of dread when I’m forced to come into contact with unknown persons is occasionally intolerable. And yet, my family is generally considered to be kind folk, even my brother, who occasionally gives off a vibe somewhere between William Wallace and Michael Myers.

GG is constantly railing against my tendencies. Even 12 (nearly 13, actually) years later, she will make me go to movies on Friday nights (which I hate), have drinks with an occasional blowhard buddy (hate), or like last evening, go to Whole Foods at 9:30 pm to “buy fruit” her euphemism for “let’s go for a walk so you can cheer up and I won’t smother you with your pillow as you sleep, you miserable bastard.”

Or maybe I’m blowing that out of proportion.

I love London. No lie. Love it. Could live there, would live there, and may eventually live there, if they ease the size restriction on immigrants.

It’s a broad-shouldered city, in that way that few are and I feel at home there more than I do in any other American city. I admire San Francisco and all, but it may as well be in France.

I remember cheering wildly when they got the 2012 Olympic games. Not just because I have so many friends there that I will be able to experience the games with; and not just because they beat Paris like a dwarf stepchild to earn the bid. But because they earned the games. That city’s been Democracy’s granite chin since people started keeping score and it’s nice to see them get a chance to grab the world stage for something other than binge drinking and Gordon Ramsey.

But I must tell you, I saw the unveiling of those Olympic mascots the other day, and I shuddered.  This was it? This was what the greatest creative minds in, arguably, the world’s greatest city for graphic design (don’t hate) came up with? A pair of puffy groined Eunuch sports mascots that look like the children of a post-op Chaz Bono mated with a Down Syndromed Telletubby? As the Queen herself would say, “Oh dear”.

The last time I was this disappointed was a year ago when they city unveiled the  2012 Summer Olympics logo, which looks like it belonged on a Taco Bell takeout bag. The reaction in the UK has ranged from horror to yawning. Because, while they won’t say it out loud, there’s a great deal of apprehension in terms of getting everything finished on time. Remember: these are the folks who couldn’t get the Millennium wheel up and running by…the Millennium, a date that didn’t exactly sneak up on any of us.

I know this: as an American, I wouldn’t want to follow the Chinese from 2008, who pulled together what amounted to 50 simultaneous Cirque du Soleils with the precision of a Swiss time piece, while managing to save us from the visage of a rotten-toothed child singer who was, to the rest of the world as cute as a button. (A chipped button, perhaps. But a button nonetheless.) I found their Opening Ceremony to be both awe-inspiring and terrifying.

When London comes ‘round, I plan to be in the thick of the stadium crowd thanks to my friend Mikey, who is so connected he could get front row seats at your wedding. And I will be holding my breath that everything goes according to plan. Except for those terrible, cringe-inducing mascots, Wenlock and Mandeville. I hope their van crashes into a ditch on the way.

But enough about me.

I met a friend today for lunch. It was at a restaurant called Hill Country and the experience was as confusing as I’ve ever had. I wanted to use it to make a larger point. Okay, so see if you can follow along:

I walk in and am immediately met by a VIP-style rope. I could see my friend just beyond it, and she was waving me over. But as I eyeball a way around the rope, the hostess then bolts over and hands me what looks like a paper ballot. It has the names of food arrayed on it, but not in any sort of instinctive manner. She informs me that I cannot sit down without one. “Fair enough,” I respond bewilderedly.

I go over and plop down on a chair that actually groans under my weight. We wait for a few minutes before we realize that we are without waiter service. And so we go over to an area, where some guys are breathing all over barbecue fixings. They look at our paper and tell us we are in the wrong area. They point to another area, across the restaurant, where some other folks are huddled over heat-lamped food, as if drawing warmth from it. They give us our chow and place two yellow stickers on my friend’s paper, but none on mine.

We go back to our table to eat. Just then a lady ask-accosts us if we want drinks. I receive a diet Coke that is large enough for my diminutive pal to bathe in. We eat. The food is is actually good and we are quickly stuffed, but we hang around, as I try and shock her by saying uncouth stuff. It works, probably because she’s no shrinking violet herself.

We try and pay at the table, but the soda lady points to a women behind a cash register on the other side of the restaurant. There is a sign to her left that clearly states if we lose our paper ballot, bad things will happen to us. Luckily, my friend has kept hers with both of our stickers. The cashier demands to see mine. I don’t have it. The 96 ounces of diet Coke have made me lightheaded and a little confused. The cashier made an angry face. Just then our soda lady friend ran over waving my paper excitedly.

We pay. I throw a few bucks into a tip jar, for reasons unclear. And we leave, promising never to go back. Not ever.

I guess I am wondering why a restaurant was so desperate to mess with the restaurant concept that has so clearly worked since forever. Change for change’s sake is stupid, except when it comes to hairdos and underpants. As I told my friend while we were walking home, all wheels are round for a reason. Because that works. And Hill Country, on West 26^th street in Manhattan, most definitely does not work.

Drink to that, will ya? I think I have some diet Coke left.

My negativity, in the hands of a lesser individual, would probably be catastrophic. Because that person would dwell. I don’t. I produce a negative thought, or statement, and then move on to the next topic that affronts me, leaving not even a vapor trail of ill will. There are few things I won’t joke about and you can probably guess what those are. I have actually walked away from people who’ve made racist jokes, except those made against whites, which I find funny, in a sanguine kind of way.

Sometimes I catch myself, though. Last week I wrote up a tweet about how an NBA coach (and known cheapskate) was wearing such a cheap suit, that it gave cancer the guy sitting next to him. Then I decided not to post it. But I did tell a friend. His response was, “Whoa.” Mission accomplished.

My favorite writers borderline-snotty elitists, and my friends are no better. I enjoy being in the corner at the party and drawing someone I barely know into my behavior. There’s always someone’s wife (they are usually naughtier than their doofus husbands) that secretly thinks, “Who ARE these people?” I will usually find that person within twenty minutes of my arrival. If you disapproving of me skewering phony celebrities or even ugly-child appointed Christmas cards, we will probably drift apart, because let’s face it: you don’t get any nicer as you get older.

But, contrary to my opinions, I don’t feel like I have a black cloud hanging over my head. I’m more like a Florida summer: bright sun interrupted by short bursts of powerful rain.

Last night, I saw Ricky Gervais perform live. He was, as expected: really acerbic and funny. The topics he joked about ranged from ridiculing fat people and gay people to rape to God giving African babies AIDS. His closing joke was about pedophilia. But he said something interesting toward the end of the performance. He spoke of how he appreciated being able to say such awful stuff, because he knew that both he and his audience didn’t really think like that. We were all pretending.

He said far worse things than I could ever or would ever have the guts to. And, for much of the time, especially during an especially excruciating story about him recounting the pedophilia joke he had previously told to a group of seniors, people were laughing, but only nervously. I have to admit: I was a little jealous.

So stay tuned.

Earlier today I was in the Nutbox and the craziest thing happened. First, I guess I should say that the Nutbox is a shop near my apartment that sells dried fruits, fair trade coffee and, obviously, nuts.  Nuts of all kinds, big and small. Quite like the city in which is it located.

I was busy shopping for goji berries, which are like crack to me, as well as some sesame-covered honey almonds, which are like heroin mixed with cocaine, dipped in Oxy juice. Like that.

I had my headphones on and walked up to the counter to pay and there was an older woman, squat like a hobbit,  at the counter showing photographs to the two women who worked there. I was fumbling for my wallet, when I felt a poke in my ribs. I looked down and saw the woman looking up at me, like a runny mascara’d raccoon, if the raccoon had a glandular problem and a whopping lack of self-esteem. The fact that she was carrying a large bag of raw peanuts added to her…mystique.

“Hello there!” she said. “Do you like squirrels?”

I looked over and see fear in the eyes of the Nutbox employees. Hostages, really. I decided to play along, because I was bored. “Of course I love squirrels,” I answered smiling. “Who doesn’t?”

She jabbed what appeared to be a piece of ginger root at the two women, but what actually turned out to be a dirty finger. Oy vey. “They don’t.”

One of the women spoke in a high voice, “I said it was just my opinion. They look like rats!”

“THEY…ARE…NOT…RATS!!!!” To say the woman thundered is an understatement. Then she looked at me sadly, and  repeated, plaintively: “They aren’t rats.”

“Of course they aren’t rats,” I said calmly.  And I began immediately cursing my pathetic dependency on foreign snack food. “So…do you own some?”

It was as if I had said, “Please tell me the history of the world. Start with the baby pterodactyl.”

For the next ten minutes she recounted me the story about how she ran a “squirrel rescue unit” in Washington Heights. The photos were of her most recent…projects, peering through wire mesh enclosures. I won’t lie: they looked like rats. Imprisoned rats. One was so small it looked like a raw chicken wing. Another looked as if he had scrawled “help me” in feces on the floor of his own enclosure.

I had already run out of things to talk about. But she hadn’t. She told me precisely how the rescue unit operated. And when I say “unit” I really mean her and various personalities. Out of the corner of my eyes I saw the employees begin to inch away. I actually said aloud, “Where do you think you’re going?”

They reentered our airspace. The squirrel lady kept talking, while I gathered my purchases. I nodded toward her bag  and said, “And you feed the squirrels organic peanuts. That’s really nice of you.”

She looked at me and said, ”Are you kidding me? These are expensive.  I’m not feeding them to squirrels. What are you, nuts?”

I chewed on that for a moment while gripping my bag a little tighter and opening the door, leaving the nut and the Nutbox behind me.

“Perhaps” was the word that came to mind.

Do we really even have to discuss the immigration issue in Arizona? Really? Because I had to read the Times story twice even to understand that the Arizona governor wasn’t joking: she is letting police randomly pull over people who could potentially be illegal immigrants from Mexico, or other predominantly brown-skinned locales. But mostly Mexicans.

I’m sure the state is feverishly working on ways to distinguish the Polish nanny or French au pair from good old, red-blooded Americans. It’s probably right atop J.D. Hayworth’s agenda, if he’s elected U.S. senator, based upon his record as a colorful radio show host. The state is roiling already and they are contemplating hiring Bababooey over John McCain, a pro-immigration, pro-campaign-reform, moderate-ish human being, despite his dour, confused performance when he ran for president in 2008. (Can you imagine having to see Sarah Palin speak, up close, day after day, week after week? Me neither.)

Is there an immigration problem in Arizona? Of course there is. There are many states grappling with the influx of people who come to America for the chance of a better life. Could immigrants have picked a worse time to arrive, as the U.S. is bending under the weight of its own disastrous economic conditions? Absolutely not.

But they deserve the same rights as my great-grandparents, who came here and, while they struggled and may have even lived a little worse than they did back in Italy, were on the path to citizenship. Should that path include paying taxes and for their own health care? In a word, yes. There isn’t a single person among us that doesn’t agree with that notion.

For his part, John McCain stood up in the Senate chamber time and again and upbraided his Republican colleagues for not wanting to uphold the notion that this country was founded upon. It wasn’t their right to completely turn off the spigot of immigration; it was their duty to figure out how to make the flow run more smoothly.

After the last general election, Republican fury and sagging poll numbers forced a McCain retreat. I am not suggesting that he has lost his nerve; courage is the senator’s one unimpeachable characteristic. I just think he’s tired of fighting, and worn down by those angry crazies in his state who don’t think for a moment of who picked that avocado for the guacamole they are enjoying in their local Shooters. Or that lemon in their Long Island iced teas at Chotchkies. Jobs disappeared, but that isn’t the fault of immigrants. You remove them from the equation and let’s see how many of those awful, menial dead-end jobs are snapped up by the unemployed. I have plenty of out-of-work friends, and they won’t take a job in New Jersey, much less one cleaning office buildings.

I’m sure there are people who are going to sneer at my idealism and question its authenticity. It’s easy for me to say, sitting here smoking a cigar on my terrace in NYC, like some namby-pamby liberal who spends his time going to gay weddings and packed, tiny restaurants. I’m not the guy in Arizona who is out of work and being undercut by people who have no official business being there.

Except that illegal immigrants also overrun my state. And my governor has less a capacity to lead than a water park dolphin. If the haterati in Arizona paid the kind of taxes I do—their sales tax is 5.6%, while mine is 8.875%—they would pass out.  Plus, as an added bonus, I get to be within shouting distance of a car bomb, as I was just last evening. And I’m willing to suffer until we find a workable solution that doesn’t invite racism and violence.

This decision is misguided and a knee-jerk reaction to the desperate times. But they are beyond desperate measures. As a nation, we are raising dumb, sickly kids and have been so beaten down by the last nine years that we need to find new ways of saying “life sucks.”

Enter the guy or woman making seven bucks an hour and on a path to nowhere. Anger and hatred are free and finger pointing is good exercise. We have a porous border and there are dangerous criminals streaming over it every day. Let’s focus on that problem, and not on harassing people who only want the same opportunities that our ancestors had.

Have at me…