One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small, but bed bugs just make you itch

My apologies to Jefferson Airplane. And now for something completely different: news not from New Jersey.

Just five months after a certain Village Voice columnist made readers feel all creepy and start looking for bed bugs everywhere, as if paranoid, a music review in the same paper about an indie band called White Rabbit implies that bed bugs are becoming a rite of passage–another facet of urban life to be overcome by young hipsters going places. Ben Westhoff writes,

A sextet of twentysomethings who publicly admit to liking ska, the White Rabbits moved here from Columbia, Missouri, less than two years ago and have since become municipal rock stars, if the vast expanse of bobbing brunette ponytails at their live shows is any indication. All this despite an exploding tour-van tire, an outbreak of bedbugs in their Bushwick loft, and the unfortunate influence of F. Scott Fitzgerald and J.D. Salinger in their songwriting.

They’re not yet a rich and famous band, so the White Rabbits went through what we all did, and I know it sucked. Yes, I know having bed bugs sucks for the rich too, but if you can afford to fly heads of PCO firms across country to personally treat your beach house, or you can flee in the night to a new $13,500 a month loft, like some celebs with bed bugs, it’s probably a bit easier than it is for some of us.

Mind you, it could be worse. Think of that bloke in the Flaming Lips who wears the plush bunny costume. What if they got bed bugs? Now, getting rid of bed bugs when you can’t toss your bunny costume in the dryer has got to be rough.