The house fly that has been annoying me for the last several hours is dead.

Friends, Romans, Countrymen, it has has come to my attention; that I have succeeded in my 9/22/2012 quest; and killed a fly that deserved to die.  Oh what an annoying fly this was..  Buzzing around, touching me on my nose..  A quick little bugger too..  I tried newspaper, and hair spray, and aftershave..   I missed my mark, I missed again, and I was tormented for hours by this evil spawn of a creature...  But alas, the fly quit flying; landing right next to my hand, and my coffee...  And although I thought  the evil thing was going to fly away at the shadow of my hand crashing down; it would appear that this fly was taken by complete surprise...

Ding dong the fly is dead!

Arrr! But did you try the 'Point'. Yes the 'Point' I tell you. Open the nearest door or window and point to whilst saying "Get out of my house." I find this usually works 7 times out of 10. However, looks a little strange if other people are watching you, especially when they don't know that you're talking to a fly : )

The thing is, you have to anticipate where the fly is looking to fly to in the event of a swift attack upon itself.
If you look closely at it's antenna, they will be twitching in the direction of it's planned escape.
Then, the swat is made in that direction 4 1/2 from where you would be aiming.
Simple really.

A shotgun would have worked equally well. 

Exactly once a year, usually toward the end of the summer, I'll have the same fly buzzing around my apartment for a least a week. I'll start off completely neutral towards it but by around day 7 I will snap and get the spray from under the sink. It's like, we've had a topping time together old bean, but now you must die. 

A good one for flying insects is a spray bottle filled with water and a high concentration of dish soap. Put the sprayer on mist/spray and it coats their wings so they usually drop to the floor or have to land and move much slower. Then it's squishy squishy time. I learned that one to combat wasps but it seems to work with houseflies pretty well too. I don't move so quick anymore and aerosol crap isn't only bad for your lungs it leaves toxic nastiness wherever it settles (can screw up your gear, furniture and pets). I generally let bugs do their thing but if there are a few rules. Don't mess with my food, don't bite me, don't crawl on or near my bed, don't hang out in my toilet or shower and don't dive bomb me like I'm freaking Pearl Harbor.

I use one of these if anything is flying around the house and it's not an airplane - works perfectly

Flies are the nearest thing I have to a phobia. I loathe and detest them. I'd rather put up with the famous Scottish Midgies. Being a gardener, things get pretty unpleasant for me around early July through to the end of August, and if I work up a sweat I can have 30 or 40 of them buzzing around my face, like a little private hell.

Well that would be a different matter, wouldn't it? It's me being a human and them being flies, that's the problem. If I was one, I wouldn't have the phobia, would I?

Yes... flies suck up gunk from poo and dead things then fly into your house and vomit it onto your dinner... they are EVIL and did I mention, they are nasty.

You can drown them, then dry them out and they will come back to life... they are EVIL.

There is a reason Beelzebub is called the Lord of the Flies.

J