For when the giant bugs take over the earth

I just want you to know I like you guys. Really, I swear. And I only call you bugs in the vernacular, knowing that many of you (including Mr. Annual Cicada here) aren't true bugs. So I hope that's not taken the wrong way or anything.

But who am I kidding? You're not going to reason with a class of animals for whom a brain is a few knots of nerve cells -- even if they did come up with a female-dominated socialist society millions of years before our giant craniums envisioned Forbidden Planet.

Yet I can't help but hope that one day we'll realize we have more similarities than differences. That we'll look beyond your freakish exoskeletons, six legs and compound eyes to accept a higher truth -- that we're all just bouncing around inside a giant lampshade somewhere, flailing helplessly as we struggle with the evolutionary hurdle created by the 60 watt light bulb. Some days I think we're going to make it -- you, us, the bryophytes, the ring-tailed lemurs, and maybe even certain Texans. At least until the Ambien wears off, and I find myself standing on the edge of someone's swimming pool, looking down at my car shimmering in the deep end and wondering why I'm holding a set of soaking wet bagpipes. Then it seems more of a crap shoot.