MY GIANT ONLINE MEDIA EMPIRE is kinda freaking me out. I’ve just added an iLike profile to go along with my Friendster page, my MySpace page, my Amazon.com wish list, my Netflix Friends profile, my homepage, my other homepage, my blog, my old Monster.com resume, my old HotJobs resume, my old Creative Hotlist resume, and whatever else Google can dig up. It’s all out there for the world to see. And like the guy at The Sneeze, I don’t even know why I signed up for half of these things in the first place. Maybe I should get myself a good alias. Because at the same time that I’m glomming onto every web template within clicking distance, I’m also terribly concerned about my privacy. Can you overexpose yourself and still have no one know who you are? Has the Internet turned us all into megalomaniacal, self-absorbed, social networking, paranoid cyber-stalkers? Or is it just me?

NIGHTY NIGHT, SLEEP TIGHT, don’t let the Cimex lectularius infest your home, drag you into legal battles with your landlord or co-op, force you to throw out your mattress and vacuum all your books, and generally make life miserable. Apparently, bed bugs don’t just bite, they terrorize. And while everyone else in New York is trying to get rid of them, this guy keeps ’em as pets:

“People are afraid to admit they have bedbugs, because they feel it means that they haven’t had proper cleaning or hygiene in their apartment,” said Louis N. Sorkin, an entomologist at the American Museum of Natural History. (He keeps a small colony of bedbugs in a glass jar at his office and lets them feed on his arm.)

FEMALES ARE SCARY, pretty much no matter the species. Even so, there are so many creepy moments in this article about cannibalistic sugar mamas, I don’t even know where to begin. Well, I suppose this description of dead suitors leaving behind their leftover genitalia seems a good a place as any:

Scientists have found other species in which males encourage their own cannibalism. One remarkable twist on this strategy is seen in a species of orb-weaving spiders. The males suddenly die as they mate. The male’s death may be a strategy for preventing other males from mating with the female. In death, its sexual organ becomes stuck in the female’s receptacle. Even if she feeds on the rest of his body, the organ remains behind, preventing her from receiving more sperm.

Um. Jeez.

A POX ON THE SOX or some kind of epidemic has surely stricken the hometown team. Not only did Jon Lester get back problems from a fender bender on Storrow, but now he’s been diagnosed with lymphona. Plus, apparently Papelpon’s arm fell off last night. Tek has a bad knee. Trot has strained biceps. Gonzo has a strained oblique. Papi has heart palpitations. Manny has a bum knee, too. Wily Mo has a messed up wrist. Wakefield has a stress fracture in his rib cage. Schilling’s missing his next start with a muscle strain. Beckett just kind of sucks. And then once Wells got healthy and proved to be effective, we dealt him away. It just turned September, but the white flag is already waving over Fenway.

THE PERILS OF CELEBRITY ACTIVISM IN CHINA are revealed in this article about Yao Ming trying to dissuade Chinese from eating shark fin soup. (Apparently, shark fin soup is bad for sharks.) All very noble, indeed. But be careful not to offend Chinese tradition too much or you might end up like this poor girl:

And when Zhao Wei, a popular singer, donned a Japanese military flag for a fashion shoot — disrespecting not just government policy but perhaps the sensibilities of Chinese still angry over the war with Japan — her career began to fizzle. At a concert, she was tackled by a construction worker who said his grandparents had been killed during the war. He smeared her face with feces.

Old grudges are hard to give up, I suppose. Also, more evidence that the Chinese only hurry at change as long as change means more moolah. And more moolah means more shark fin soup, naturally.

NOMAR WILL ALWAYS BE NOMAH even if he is playing in blue instead of red:

One of Garciaparra’s ex-teammates in Boston said the Dodgers and Yankees made the same offer, but Garciaparra chose LA because, ”He always considers himself a Red Sox. That’s one thing people don’t understand about Nomar. He would have never signed with the Yankees because he always thought of himself as a Red Sox player.”

It’s a character trait that reminds us why we don’t miss Johnny D. as much as we thought we would. Then again, who knows what would have happened had the Yanks offered Nomar $14 million more to play in pinstripes, as they did with Damon? (I still like to think Nomie would have done the right thing.)

WHY WE SUCK is well-stated in Robert Wright’s review of books on anti-Americanism. This bit pretty much sums up why we can’t all get along, whether we’re talking about conflicts of nationality, race, class, gender, sexuality, age, weight, baseball teams, or even musical preferences:

In other words: We’re not obnoxiously evangelistic, just obnoxiously self-involved. So even if Bush doesn’t reflect the real America, and is replaced by someone who does, we’ll still be in trouble. At least, we’ll be in trouble if much of the problem is indeed, as Sweig argues, the longstanding “near inability of the United States to see its power from the perspective of the powerless.” Changing that will require not a leader worthy of the people, but a leader willing to lead the people.

Sweig complains that “Americans think of themselves as kings and queens of the world’s prom.” But, actually, we can’t escape that role, at least for now. In wealth and power we are No. 1. The question is whether we’ll be the typical prom king or queen — resented by most at the bottom of the social hierarchy and many in the middle — or instead the rare prom king or queen who manages to be really, truly, you know, popular.

Americans may be bad at doing what Sweig recommends — “seeing ourselves as others see us” — but we’re not alone in this. People in general have trouble putting themselves in the shoes of people whose circumstances differ from theirs. That’s why the world is such a mess — and why succeeding at this task would qualify as real moral progress.

NATURE’S A MOTHER in this warm and fuzzy New York Times article, which arrives just in time to brighten everyone’s Mother’s Day:

Researchers long viewed infanticide and similar acts of maternal skulduggery as pathological, a result of the mother’s being under extreme stress. A farmer’s child pokes around in a rabbit’s nest, for example, and the mother rabbit responds by methodically consuming every one of her eight baby bunnies. By standard reckoning, it made little genetic sense for a mother to destroy her young, and maternal nurturing was assumed to be a hard-wired affair.

More recently, scientists have accrued abundant evidence that “bad” mothering is common in nature and that it is often a centerpiece of the reproductive game plan.

Along with a bunch of other fun-filled examples of mothers from hell, the author also sneaks in a reference to birds called “blue-footed boobies”. So, basically, the whole article is a non-stop laugh-fest.

JUDAS COMES BACK TO FENWAY AND IT ISN’T PRETTY. Johnny Damon tipped his hat even as the faithful booed. It probably shows he’s a classy guy – which certainly counts for something, but not so much that it could stop the jeering. Joe Torre can’t understand it: Johnny gave Boston four great years and a championship title. Are we really so ungrateful? But it’s not just because Damon’s a traitor or because he chose money over loyalty (five years for $52 million to play for the Yankees, instead of $40 million to spend eternity as a Boston legend). No, I think we boo because if we didn’t, then we’d be making a mockery of the rivalry itself. Johnny’s defection stings. But his belief that we’d welcome him back to Fenway wearing pinstripes is an even bigger insult. We loved him and we cheered him because he helped us beat the hated Yankees in the greatest comeback ever. If we also cheered him in his return as the enemy, then it’s as if we never really loved him in the first place. Or to put it another way: If the rivalry doesn’t matter, then why are we even watching?