Short Cuts

I've always thought it unwise to spray a city full of people with insecticide, without having thoroughly researched the effects of the pestiferous poisonous unkempt toxin.

Not to mention all the other animals negatively effected by the venom, the skunks and fox the raccoons and deer the rabbits and groundhogs the little chipmunks. 

They still spray a park that's close to my place or at least they did up until last summer, and I could never figure out why because there are hardly any bugs.

This summer, when I didn't notice a sign that they'd sprayed, there was the odd mosquito, but nothing like the forest proper which isn't surrounded by urban life.

You didn't even have to apply bug spray but if the swarms seemed too intense, you could easily put some on and the bugs would disappear. 

Bug spray works even in the deep forest and you do actually need it there sometimes, it can keep them from feasting upon you with easily applicable adventurous spirit. 

Lots of bug spray without deet can be easily purchased these days as well, should you be worried that the harmful chemical in most sprays is just as bad for your body. 

Nothing quite like the routine application of enduring sunscreen throughout the day, followed by insect repellent at night, such a feast for pale sensitive skin.

Clearing the skies of bugs also has negative effects for bird species, known as ye olde insectivores who feast upon them to freely sustain themselves.

Are people just crazy to begin with or is insanity characteristically acquired, by mad environmental stimuli which leave them functional yet borderline?

That seems to be the question Robert Altman's asking in the multivariable Short Cuts, where several families see their lives connect after a summer of bathing in insecticide.

There's no doubt there's some crazy to begin with but the excessive lathering of the toxic goo, sincerely exacerbates the otherworldly tendencies with obtuse unknown unacknowledged variables. 

I remember a friend of my dad's who was so harmless she wouldn't even swat mosquitoes, let alone put on bug spray with its inherent destructive chemicals. 

Just living with the surrounding mosquitoes and even deer flies, horse flies, and no-see-ums. 

Seems like a better life to me.

I like the First Nations tradition of covering yourself in mud to avoid them as well (I saw that in a film I reviewed 10 years or so ago).