"I'm hearing from people, they're in tears there are so many mosquitoes."

Said UW-Madison entomologist Phil Pellitteri.

There are 54 different types of mosquitoes in Wisconsin, he said. "The ones that will make or break a summer we call summer floodwater mosquitoes."

They can lay eggs and those eggs will stay dormant for as long as three years. "It's almost like little time bombs out there," Pellitteri said. Once standing water hits them, they hatch....

"It's just crazy. This is unlike anything we've ever seen before with mosquitoes, that's for sure," said Tom Leonard, assistant store manager at Elliott's Ace Hardware in West Allis.

"I've been doing this for 30 years. This is the first time where almost every customer through the door says, 'Where's your mosquito repellent?'"

We had a terrible encounter with mosquitoes last week in the Kettle Moraine here in southern Wisconsin. But on Monday and Tuesday, we were all the way north, at the Apostle Islands National Seashore, where we went on a long hike through the woods, wore no repellent, and got no bites. Yesterday, we were hiking a little further south, at Morgan Falls and Copper Falls, and though we were able to hike without resorting to repellent, we got a few bites. So people bitch (and itch) about the mosquitoes in Wisconsin, but the northern tier is also Wisconsin. Check it out! We saw some highly scenic places, and though it's the peak of the season, we were often the only or almost the only people there.

When mosquitoes come to the Althouse café...

... they always order elbows.

In the Kettle Moraine.

It's very pretty here, but the mosquitoes are insane.

If we could only look closely enough...

... would we sympathize with the mosquito?

Sports headlines toy with the brains of nonfans.

I've long been annoyed by the NYT blog called "Bats." I was bitten by a bat once and had to get rabies shots. And I've had other run-ins with the leathery-winged fiends. Actually, I love them when they are outside, eating mosquitoes and so forth. I might like reading a blog about bats. But Bats is not about bats. It's about baseball. (Maybe if I cared about baseball, I'd still hate the blog title "Bats," either because it disrespects pitchers or because I would still think it was about bats.)

Now, today, The Washington Post has a front-page teaser: "Do Juicers Belong in the Hall of Fame?" And I'm thinking, so there's an Appliances Hall of Fame? Where is it? What was the first inductee? Refrigerator! I'll bet it's refrigerator! But I click to the article —which is (obscurely) re-titled "Do Juicers Belong in Canton?" — and see that it's about drug users and the Baseball Football Hall of Fame. Oh, I don't know. But if there's an Appliances Hall of Fame, it's scraping to low too let in the juicers.

"Malaria is spread by mosquitoes. I brought some. Here, I'll let them roam around – there is no reason only poor people should be infected."

A really rich man — Bill Gates — would like to scare the bejesus out of you who are not so rich but not as in touch with the life of the poor as he is.

IN THE COMMENTS: I detect 3 themes.

Theme #1: Microsoft sucks. Examples: Jeremy says, "Releasing bugs on an unsuspecting public and leaving them vulnerable to viruses is what Gates has been doing his whole career." And Franco says: "Feeling horribly guilty about his immense wealth and distraught over his failure to prevent viruses with his Windows operating system, Bill Gates is launching his next generation operating platform, Screens, which designed for poor people who can't afford Windows."

Theme #2: Lawsuit! Example: Daryl says:

How is this so different from:

1 - saying "Rich white men don't have to worry about gun violence.

2 - pulling out a handgun

3 - pointing it at the audience

4 - firing blanks

5 - telling people: "LOL JK it was just blanks don't be a drama queen"

???

This was an intentional tort. Punitive damages. Based on his net worth. Bill Gates' net worth.

I'm touching myself just thinking about it.

Theme #3: Damned enviros and their DDT ban.