in d.c., there's not really much to look forward to, weather-wise. you've got the long, endless winters, that can either be a forty days forty nights type stretch of freezing rain and grey skies, or that can throw snow down with such fury that you'd think you were actually in upstate new york, not the supposedly 'mild' mid-atlantic. fall can be decent, but spring, while christened with the beautiful cherry blossoms, is actually only three days in length. and when the three days of spring are over, then you've got the onslaught of a d.c. summer to look forward to.

if you've managed to avoid a d.c. summer, i advise you to keep doing whatever you're doing. it's no secret that the district turns into a hellish swampland from june to september, with mosquitoes rising up against the humans, a hazy, burning, unrelentless sun, and enough humidity to make your eyeballs sweat. add this year's election campaign, possible area-wide lead poisoning, and that crazy global warming "threat", and it's possible we could have some sort of bizarre 'dawn of the dead' situation on our hands. i'm not sure how d.c.'s humidity could turn people into zombies, but i'm not willing to count it out.

but this spring, we're lucky enough to have a sort of harbinger of the summer hell to come. it only happens every 17 years, and seeing as 2004 is harboring all other sorts of signs of the apocalypse (mostly in the forms of gw's possible reelection), why not one more? i mean, the last time it happened, i was seven years old, my boyfriend j.c. weis had just dumped me, i didn't get the lead role in the second-grade play, and i was about to get a little sister. 1987 and 2004, years of the devil? i think it's possible.

i am, of course, talking about THE CICADAS OF DEATH.

A few inches below the surface of the soil, in about 15 states and the District, billions of cicadas that were spawned in the spring of 1987 are ready to leave their subterranean homes and taste life in the open air.

you might be thinking, at this moment, that i am possibly overreacting to the threat of cicadas. they are essentially just harmless insects; they don't bite; and catherine is some sort of super girly-girl that just irrationally hates bugs and jetpack sharks.

if you're thinking that, you're going to get eaten by cicadas. i'm not kidding. this is a serious, serious threat, and you need to take it as such. you'll see what i'm talking about when you first notice your feet crunching as you walk along some lovely, nondescript sidewalk in the city later this may. you might think it's a bit of plastic or some long-dead leaf, a remnant that's survived from fall. but it's not. it's the shell of the baby cicada, amber in color, sinister in appearance, with hollow eyes the size of gumballs. soon, your shoes will be stepping in cicada shells all over the place; even sooner, you'll feel that you can hear the sound of crushed cicada shells under your tires as you drive through the streets. the crunching sound will keep you awake at night; your dog might frolick through the dead, empty shells of the cicadas that coat the yard, his paws crackling with every leap, but you will feel the dread of what's to come, reflected in the hollow amber shells.

fortunately, the crunching sound that haunts you night after night will, thankfully, disappear. but a new, mounting sound will take its place. it's a buzzing sound, a distant thunderstorm or a helicopter taking a tour over the skies of d.c., you'll think. you'll be wrong. it's merely the murmur of billions, literally billions, of cicadas, coming to descend on your car, your house, your clothes, your hair, your skin. they're harmless, people will tell you. there might be billions of them, and they might form a new skin on your body, but they're harmless. they'll be gone soon enough, they'll say.

but just see if you can look straight into the glowing red eyes of a cicada and believe that everything will be really be okay. just try it.

Fathomless deepens the heat;
The ceaseless shrilling of cicadas mounts, like hissing fire,
Up to the motionless clouds.

zunta.org was down for a while last night, as I'd forgotten to pay my domain name service bill (since it got sent to my old Charlottesville address). I'm sure you can imagine how embarassing this is for me, speaking as a nerd.

It's taken care of for the foreseeable future, and the DNS change will be trickling through the internet over the next 48 hours or so -- different people will be able to see the site again at different times. If you sent Catherine or me any mail that bounced, please give it another try.