How To Bed Bug Proof Your Apartment in NYC

Well, August is quickly approaching, which means that students of NYU or Columbia University will be moving into brand new apartments soon, and young recent-graduates will be starting jobs in the big city. One problem that you read about a lot, but never think will happen to you (until it inevitably does) is BED BUGS. Bed bug infestations are common in New York City, so taking as many precautions as possible to prevent an invasion of your apartment is imperative.

Here are some steps you can take to protect yourself and your loved ones:

1. Interrogate The Building Owner With Nipple Clamps and a Car Battery
   Now, you might read this and think, “Hey, that seems excessive.” Well here’s a bit of information that you should know: All New York City landlords, brokers, and building managers are liars. They’re a part of a secret cult on par with the Illuminati whose sole purpose is to place unsuspecting apartment tenants into poorly cared for apartments. You’ll read the ad for the apartment on Craigslist that says, “GR8 2 BEDROOM! BEAUTIFULLY RENOVATED! BEST APT EVERRRRR!” and upon moving in, within two weeks, be covered with bed bug bites. The only tried-and-true preventative measure is to meet the landlord of your building, follow him home after work, abduct him in an unmarked van, and Saw-style torture him until he admits that he hasn’t had the apartment building properly inspected for bed bugs in years.
2. Mustard Gas Your Neighbors
   New York City law states that when bed bugs have been found in an apartment in any dwelling, then the landlord should take it upon himself to have the neighboring units inspected and treated as well. But have you seen the guy who lives in the apartment next to you? The guy who you’ve only seen leave his apartment once in three months, who wears nothing more than a single bunny slipper and his wretched, hole-filled underwear? You once happened to walk by his apartment when he left his door open, and the inside looked like the creepy meat hook-filled basement that Hellraiser lives in. You think that guy has had his apartment inspected or treated? Your landlord is as nervous about approaching him for anything as you are. The only solution is to go in Rambo-style: rappel from the roof, if you have roof access, to his window and bust in. Throw as many pesticides around the apartment as you can and GET OUT OF THERE. There’s a slight chance you’ll harm the tenant of the apartment this way – but hey, it’s what he gets if he doesn’t do his part in the war on bed bugs.
3. Burn Down Your Building
   By this point, you may have found yourself in a tough situation – your New York City dream life has been put on hold for months now, as you can no longer invite friends over to your apartment for fear they’ll carry bed bugs out with them. You’ve undergone three or four treatments from the “exterminator” that the land lord hired to basically walk around your apartment for 45 minutes to an hour, spray some Raid on the top of your mattress, and then rummage through your fridge. You washed, cleaned, and vacuumed countless times – and your girlfriend has left you like the diseased social pariah you truly are. Sometimes there’s no winning in the battle against ultimate evil, and just like in The Shining, the only way to truly beat the demons that haunt your home is to let the boiler pressure get so high that it blows the whole fucker to Kingdom Come. But be aware that even if this real-life horror movie ends with you burning down your possessed apartment building and you walking off into the night slightly burnt and wondering where to go next, the camera is almost certain to pan back around and show one single bed bug crawl out from the wreckage. In the sequel, they’ll be back with a vengeance.
4. Don’t Move Here
   There’s too many people here. That’s why bed bugs get spread so rapidly. Just don’t. If you’re already here, leave. Don’t come back. If you thought for just a moment that maybe you could make life work in this hellish, diseased wasteland, you’re wrong. Save yourself and move to Seattle. Their bed bugs tend to be college-educated.

North Carolina: Looking Forward, the Backward Way

The smile of progress.

Gaining nationwide notoriety last weekend hasn’t slowed down the nation’s fastest-moving state in reverse, North Carolina, from setting national precedent. Not since Blood Done Sign My Name has the Tar Heel State been pitied by the rest of the country, resented by its younger generation, and hailed by its old, rich (or stupid), and white. Times like these teach us that elections really matter, and with the first Republican-controlled state executive and legislative branches since Reconstruction, North Carolina is in for a wild ride until election season comes back around. Here are a few more bills we can expect to see passed in the coming months.

• Public school textbooks will be replaced with editions from 1865.
• De-desegregated water fountains, schools, and interpersonal relationships.
• Incrimination of people who watch The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
• Public school teaching assistants will be replaced with monkeys, which cost less to employ and are funny to look at.
• Teachers with master’s degrees will not be paid more, but will be rewarded with a yearly subscription to Field & Stream magazine.
• Reinstating the word “God” into the Pledge of Allegiance, so much that it replaces all of the other words. The new pledge will be, “God god god, god god god, god god god, Second Amendment, Amen.”
• “Bring Your Gun to Work Day”
• Legal gay-bashing or bashing of anyone whose mannerisms upset your grandmother.
• “Indentured Servant” unemployment programs (wink wink, nudge nudge)
• State subsidies for NC’s growing film industry – to create The Birth of a Nation 2.

Here’s hoping that North Carolina’s cutting-edge regression has some long-term benefits that the rest of the country just can’t see yet. Perhaps it’s a play to help boost the economy. Attention in the New York Times can only be good for tourism, right?

PhD Level Analysis Given To Txt

After receiving a txt from the girl he took out two nights earlier, Tim Benthel began to analyze the message in a manner unseen outside of English PhD candidates.

I think that sounds fun the txt read answering his earlier txt inquiring about drinks after work.

“There’s just so much subtext here!” he declared to his co-workers and de facto  peer reviewers. “It’s remarkable how she’s able to say so much with so few words. I’m going to be pouring over this for the rest of the day.”

While stopping short of diagramming the sentence, Benthel did say the txt out loud in every conceivable inflection. “I think that sounds fun. No, the ‘think’ here is a idiomatic expression of non-commitment not a statement on her actual knowledge. I think that sounds fun. Yes, that seems more of a possibility. Emphasizing the potential of the night to come while still not being too agreeable. Oh she’s good.”

“What about what she’s not saying?” a lofty voice asked over his cubicle.

“I hadn’t even thought of that!” exclaimed Benthel who began again in earnest figuring out everything she didn’t say and compiling it all in a growing Excel sheet. This was in addition to the thirty three page Word document containing all several hundred drafts of his response.

Benthel, who earned a C- minus his senior year of high school English and never took another class in college, spent the next two and a half hours debating what her delayed response could indicate.

In the end, Benthel reached the conclusion that she, in fact, definitely wanted to have sex with him but wasn’t sure about how soon they should move in. As of the publication of this story, he has not txted her back.

Snowden now blames leak on a “REPLY-ALL” mistake

“Some girls at work thought I was really edgy for trying to take down the man.  So while initially I had planned on saying it was a mistake, I started saying I did it on purpose and that my main motive was freedom.  They loved the part about freedom,” said Edward Snowden from the transit area of Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow on leaking NSA information.

Snowden mentioned there were several times he could have contained the situation but chose to act against his best instincts.

“Well, I started to enjoy a certain level of celebrity that I was comfortable with,” said Snowden.

He went on to talk about how the charges of espionage provided a level of excitement for life he thought unattainable.  “When your life starts to become like a spy movie, you know you’re doing it right,” said Snowden.

“But then everything got out of hand fast like a snowball effect or what I like to call now the ‘Snowden’ effect,” continued Snowden, with a wink.

“Now, I’m in Moscow and basically reaching out to any country that will grant me asylum,” he remarked.

He plans to be very careful in the future with emails though he already admitted to accidentally sending his first asylum request to Ecuador to the wrong email account.

“The email didn’t bounce, so I thought it made it to the right officials.  But that mistake is the main reason I’ve been tied up in Moscow so long,” said Snowden.

Area Man Believes It’s Time to Start Farting in Front of His Girlfriend

It’s a sunny day. Hopeful, even.

Evan Woods bravely stands outside the apartment of Sophie Grant, his girlfriend of three months and seventeen days.

“And six hours, if you want to get all exact about it,” Woods said.

He takes a deep breath and explains that, though he really likes Grant, it’s time to put their relationship to the ultimate test. Some people believe that test is moving in together, but not Woods.

“See, if you haven’t farted in front of each other yet, and then you move in together, and one day you’re just sitting there watching a movie and you don’t want to make up some lame excuse as to why you need to leave the room for a second, you need to be able to let one go without fear of being asked to move out.”

When asked if he thought flatulence brought up a hygiene issue, he shook his head no and rambled on about “positive, reaffirming colon cleansing” and “air ducts.”

Some people choose to believe that “cutting the cheese” is an unacceptable public practice. We caught up with Pamela Dawson, one of Woods’ neighbors, who agrees with this point of view.

“It’s like pollution. Only disrespectful people pollute,” Dawson said. “Sometimes, yeah, it’s funny to pollute. I get it. I was a kid once. But that’s the stuff that ruins relationships. Ruins trust. My first husband polluted a lot. It’s just…global warming, you know?”

Woods openly disagreed. “One, I’ve never liked people who use metaphors. I never know what they’re really saying. Two, flatulence only ruins trust when not discussed first. Sure, surprise farts are almost never a good thing. Trust broken. But an expected fart, pre-warned…no way that can ruin trust.”

So, as Woods squares his shoulders and makes his way into his unassuming girlfriend’s house, one thing is clear: it’s not really about farting. It’s about honesty, respect, and being who you really are in order to establish solid, emotional relationships and support systems.

UPDATE: Woods and Grant are no longer together. According to Woods, Grant had been on the Atkins diet for quite awhile and “long story short, she let one go on the way home from dinner, and I kind of threw up in her car. I didn’t apologize because I was trapped and it wasn’t fair because she doesn’t have automatic windows. She broke up with me. Probably for the best.”