It's three in the morning and I can't sleep. The reason I can't sleep is because I'm afraid of giant insects landing on my face. The reason I'm afraid of giant insects landing and crawling about on my face is that there's giant insects in my apartment. Actaully, that's not quite true - giant insects are occasionally flying into my apartment.

In my old place, we had roaches. A fair number of them. But they were all small to moderate-sized house and kitchen roaches, none any bigger than the first joint of my thumb. Easy to trap, easy to squish, easy to dispose of. No big deal.

But here, I live by the expressway, and the only insects that survive are the biggest, toughest, weirdest mutant motherfuckers you've ever seen. Monday night, I was met by my first of three (so far) visitors - at about 10:30 PM, crawling on the wall above the TV set, was some hideous conglomeration of a cockroach and a millipede - wide, flat-bottomed body and antennae with dozens of tiny cilia sticking out from the side. I smacked it with a magazine and it fell behind the flat files, only to crawl out an hour later to freak me out again. I smashed it with my Hagstrom and flushed the rattling corpse down the toilet.

Tuesday morning, I woke up and needed to take a crap, so I went to the bathroom. My current toilet reading is Cola Madnes by Gary Panter. When I'd finished doing my business, I tossed the hardback book down onto the windowsill and an enormous, furiously buzzing dragonfly flew out of the plant that sits there. This thing had a wingspan larger than my hand, but it seemed pretty drained and went down quick to a wad of toilet paper. I flushed it, too.

And then, at about 1AM, I get up to check on whether I'd thrown out a bunch of old original artwork or not (I had) and upon turning on the lamp was greeted by an enormous brown moth flying in tight circles around my living room, frantically looking for some coats to eat or something. I smacked at it with a newspaper but it flew away. Where? I haven't a clue.

What's next, tarantulas?

I can't sleep.