Starring Jimmy Page as the Orkin Man- by Vijith

For years, Tuscarora, Nevada has faced an nightmarish annual assault worthy of a cheesy third-rate horror movie: hordes of enormous crickets which travel in buzzing blobs covering up to two square miles, devour everything in their path, and are just generally all scary and gross. (In particular: gooey guts from squished crickets actually slosh deep enough on some roadways to become a driving hazard, and in the past they've even had to use snowplows to clear away the expired carcasses.)

However, residents have recently determined that the little buggy bastards can't stand Led Zeppelin, so they circle the city armed with boomboxes cranked to 11 to repel the chirpy invasions. Strangely, the six-legged goons seem to love rap; sure, Rick Ross typically wards off most sentient beings, but apparently the effects on a hive mind are quite different. (Great, now there's one more reason for Gramps to complain that new music blows.)

Unsavory bipeds can be dealt with in a similar manner; over the past couple years, information has emerged pointing to the use of music as a torture device on Guantanamo Bay detainees -- incuding the theme song to "Barney" and David Gray's "Babylon," either of which, with enough repeats, could probably have even the most hardened criminals begging for the reprieve of a nice midafternoon waterboarding.

I was a psychology major in college, and in one class, the department's resident psychoacoustics geek grad student lamented the shrill sound of the building's fire alarms, which we were forced to endure numerous times via occasional drills and misfires but never because of the real deal. He told us that he measured their output with an SPL meter and determined that they were literally on the verge of qualifying as sonic weapons, but when he reported this with great dismay to the administration, they were just pleased at the thought that physical pain would prompt students to leave the building in a much more expeditious manner in the event of an actual emergency.

Tuscarora's woes also bring to mind the great gypsy moth swarm which ravaged upstate New York when I was a kid; I remember running around in the woods collecting leaves for a science project with my walkman blasting the new Hammer album (also probably a good choice) and still hearing the din of millions of the botanicidal creepy-crawlies crunching away on leaves and grass and anything else which had the misfortune of being green. It's not easy, or so I've heard.

With the exception of the sonic weaponry, though, none of the above alternatives seem to be on quite par with Robert Plant's wail when it comes to piercing chitinous exoskeletons, so for now, the Tuscaroran weapon of choice will remain Zeppelin tunes like, say, "Trampled Under Foot" (although come to think of it, "Weapon Of Choice" is also pushing the boundaries of the intolerable and might be a good option). Presumably that first Silverchair album will serve the same purpose with the incoming frogs, but what will they use when God himself shows up to claim all the firstborn sons?