Trees: Nature's Silent Assassins

Pictured above are 2 pictures of the trees in our front yard. And I don't know your thoughts on trees, but I bet you think that trees are just these majestic plants that stand around looking pretty and do helpful things like convert carbon dioxide into oxygen. I mean, it's something pretty close to that, right? Wrong. I'm here to tell you, trees will fuck your shit up.

Think I'm playing? Take some time and sit back and really think about it. Trees may look serene. They may appear motionless, barely even swaying in the breeze. But that's just a facade. The whole time you're sitting in the shade or even climbing in its branches, the tree is slowly advancing on you...underground. That's right, while you're walking around above ground, thinking you and the tree are all buddy-buddy, it's roots are reaching out trying to get into your pipes and into your foundation. It's slowly destroying your home and by the time you realize it, it's probably too late.

For some trees, this method is too subtle, too covert. These trees will wait and wait, all the while gaining your trust, all the while biding their time, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. Then, when the time is right, say during a windstorm or another severe weather event, they spring into action "collapsing" onto your house. This can lead to extensive damage to your home, and may also kill the tree. But to the tree, it's all worth it, because by then it had totally become consumed by it's hate. I mean, why do you think the Unabomber hid in the woods? He may not be a tree, but he sure is one at heart. Live in where you fit in, as they say.

By now you're probably asking "Why? What did I do to the tree?" The answer is that you probably did nothing to the tree, but for one reason or another and through no fault of your own, the tree just doesn't like you. It's not just you, though, it's all of us. In fact, trees have always had it out for mankind. It true, even the Bible says so. Why did Adam and Eve get kicked out of the Garden of Eden? Because they ate the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. Not the "Plant of Knowledge" or the "Bush of Knowledge." No, it was the TREE of Knowledge.

I know it's hard to believe, but again, think about it. Put the Bible aside and think about your own experiences with trees. Do you remember that time when you were a kid and you fell out of a tree you were climbing? Did the tree do anything to try to save you? Did it try to break your fall? Did it call for help when you hit the ground and had the wind knocked out of you or you broke your arm? No. No, it didn't.

"But that's not fair," you say. "Trees aren't thinking beings. They can't move at will. What you're suggesting is preposterous."

Maybe so. Maybe I'm just a crackpot like the Unabomber who should go hide in a cabin in the woods...well, probably not the woods, I mean why would I go into the lion's den? Okay, maybe I should hide in an undisclosed bunker or something. Whatever. But if I'm crazy and trees don't hate us, then why do they wait all year, growing and storing their leaves until it starts to get shitty out and then "BAM!" they take a huge dump on our yards? And it's not just one quick dump, no it's a "I'm taking something to read with me, like War and Peace" dump. I was outside for 3 hours raking and bagging that shit on Saturday. And not only are the trees both still full of leaves, but by Sunday evening you couldn't even tell I raked at all. Friggin' awesome.

The whole thing wouldn't have been so bad, if they weren't laughing at me the whole time. No, I'm not going crazy, I mean I didn't actually hear them laughing, but I could tell they thought that shit was funny. Well, it isn't funny, and I'll tell you what, if they don't clean up their act, I'm not aerating the yard next year, either. Two can play at this game.

For more information on the evilness of trees, please visit The Honorable Anti-Arborial Association, which despite misspelling it's own name, is quite informative and entertaining.

Toilet Humor

Ahhh...modern plumbing. Did you know that more than any other invention, modern plumbing is credited as being the main reason why people in industrialized nations are living longer? Yes, even more than advances in medicine and being able to keep and store food. It's because having things like fresh running water and, um, waste disposal keeps disease from spreading. If you look up the Black Plague you find that most scholars essentially blame it on people dumping their chamberpots into the streets and/or people all drinking from the same well. By some accounts the plague lasted up to 7 years and killed 30-45% of the British population between 1348-50!

And the crazy thing is how relatively "new" some of plumbing is. My mom can remember when they had their first indoor toilet installed. Now, granted, they lived on a farm, but still. Can you imagine having to use an outhouse at 3:00 A.M. in the middle of January when it's Minus 75 Degrees with wind chill? Fuhgedaboudit.

So, needless to say, I think that we all take plumbing for granted. I mean, I never stop to really think about how great it is. If the brown goes down, I'm happy, know what I'm saying? So, last Monday I was over at my folks sorting through comics from both mine and Cal's old collections. I somehow ended up with almost all of his comics after he joined the cult back in '97 and have never really gone through them. Now that Megan and I have our own house, it's time to figure out what to keep and what to try and unload. After a couple of hours I called it a night, loaded up a box full of Punisher comics and headed home.

I got home at about 8:30 and as I was letting the dogs out, I thought that I heard running water. The house is still a little new to me and I'm not quite used to all of it's sounds yet. Sometimes, for example, I think that I hear running water, but it's the A/C or furnace or something. Anyhow, I'm outside with the dogs for a little bit, and when I come back in, I still hear it and this time I'm sure it's running water. So, I go downstairs and it gets a little louder. It's not the washing machine, so I venture down the hall toward the bathroom and, sure enough, I hear water running from behind the closed door. Now, at this point I'm really confused, because it sounds like our shower and I'm thinking to myself that Megan's teaching class and she hates the downstairs shower anyway. So, I knock on the door and say "Megan? Hello? Anyone in there?" Silence. I turn the knob and slowly open the door, hoping that there's not some acquaintance that needed to use our shower naked in there. The good news was there was no one in the shower, the bad news was there was a wall of water pouring out from behind the toilet.

I don't know how long I stood there, trying to discern where exactly the water was coming from and what exactly I should do about it. Thankfully we have a drain in the floor in the bathroom, so the room was draining fairly well, but there was still enough standing water that I didn't really want to slog through. And I still couldn't tell if the water was coming from a burst pipe or what. Finally, a voice in my head suggests "Hey, idiot, why don't you turn off the water to the house?" So, I sprint around the corner and do just that. The water stops and I relax a little. I mean it was a lot of water. So much so, that I started hoping whatever happened had just happened, because if it had been running like that all day, our water bill was going to come with a complimentary jar of Vasoline.

I venture back around the corner to the bathroom and tiptoe through the standing water towards the toilet. I take the lid off the tank and discover that there is no water in it. I still don't know exactly what happened, but something in the back of the toilet had somehow disconnected and... well, like I said, I don't know what happened. All I know is that there is now water all over the place. So, I start fiddling around with the mechanisms in the tank when the phone rings. It's Megan. I answer and immediately Megan can sense something is wrong. I start to tell her about what happened as I walk over and turn the flow of water to the house back on. Not, full blast mind you, just a little bit so I can see exactly where the water is coming from. I peek back into the bathroom and a geyser from the back of the toilet is now shooting up to the ceiling. I scream like a girl. Megan shouts "I'm on my way home." Nothing like having your wife tell you that she's coming home to rescue you, to stroke the male ego, let me tell you.

Needless to say, I sprinted back to the water valve and turned it off again. I went back into the bathroom and turned off the water to the toilet this time. Crossing my fingers, I turned the water to the house back on and, sure enough, no geysers or pouring water. I threw down some towels and closed the door. Good enough.

So for now, we have no working toilet downstairs. I'm still debating on whether or not to get a kit to try and fix whatever went wrong in the tank myself, or to just call a plumber. All I know is plumbers are expensive, and rightly so, what with saving us from the plague and all. But still, $70 for an estimate? Maybe an outhouse isn't such a bad idea after all...

Politics As Usual

Let me begin by saying that I pretty much hate politicians. I do. There are some exceptions to be sure, but for the most part I see them as wealthy white guys who are out of touch and who sell their votes to the highest bidder. I am sick and tired of having to decide between the lesser of two evils, because no matter how much less evil someone is, he or she is still evil. I truly believe that having only two political parties in this country only exacerbates the situation.

That said, right now one of the political parties is appearing more and more evil. Maybe evil isn't the right word, but they sure as hell are looking more corrupt. I'm talking about The Republican Party. Now, I could go on and on about errors in judgment and incompetence on the part of the current administration, but those could be construed as opinion. No, I'm talking about legitimate criminal misconduct.

Let's go down the list, shall we? First on the list is David Safavian. Now, he's not a big name politician, but he was appointed by the Bush White House as head of procurement for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Pretty big job. Well, he resigned September 16, because he was going to be arrested for repeatedly lying to investigators about a case involving a Republican lobbyist named Jack Abramoff. That investigation, by the way, involves Abramoff sponsoring illegal golf trips for Republican officials to Scotland.

Next up we have Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. Frist apparently owned shares in Columbia/HCA. HCA is a huge for-profit hospital chain that was started by his father and older brother. Frist sold his shares about 2 weeks before a bad earnings report was issued that would have cost him anywhere from $2 million - $6 million. Now, Frist claims that he sold his shares because wanted to remove even the appearance of a conflict of interest. That's funny, since he didn't seem to mind when he helped block Clinton's Patient's Bill of Rights in 1999 or when he was in charge of putting together the Medicare Bill in 2003. But then his stock wasn't trading for more than $50 a share then either. If any of this sounds fishy to you, well you aren't the only one, since Frist is now under investigation by the Justice Department and the SEC. Oh, and he's looking at running for president in 2008. Hooray!

I wish that was all I had, but I'm going to keep going. This time we're going to the White House and we're taking a look at top presidential adviser Karl Rove and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the Vice President's Chief of Staff. These two are also under investigation by the Justice Department. Why, you ask? Well, nothing short of treason. Some people would disagree with that assessment, and to be fair the whole thing is very convoluted. Essentially, they are both under investigation for leaking the name of an undercover CIA operative, Valerie Wilson, in retaliation for her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, writing an op-ed column in the New York Times which stated that some of the evidence used to make the case for war with Iraq was exaggerated. So, why do I consider that treasonous? Well, besides the obvious reason that outing our undercover agents could easily fall under that definition, it's also because our first President Bush called it treason. In a speech at the dedication ceremony for the George Bush Center for Intelligence in April of '99 he said: "Even though I'm a tranquil guy now at this stage of my life, I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the name of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious, of traitors." Obviously, I agree with him, but apparently his son doesn't, since Rove and Libby are still working in the White House.

Last on my list is a favorite of mine. And by favorite, by the way, I mean the most corrupt. Who receives this dubious honor? Why it's none other than House Majority Leader Tom Delay.Yeah, yeah, yeah...he was indicted on charges of conspiracy and money laundering, but that's not what makes the guy so despicable. No, he wins because of his incomparable hypocrisy. This guy has fought to keep forced labor factories open in Saipan. Saipan is the capital of the U.S. territory of the Northern Mariana Islands. Factories can make goods there and throw on the good old "Made In The USA" label. Apparently, they can also turn their workers into slaves and prostitutes and even force them to have abortions. That's right, Delay, friend of the Religious Right, who recently spoke to thousands of evangelical Christians in August, supports forced abortions. I guess that's not that out of character, though, since they didn't have a choice.

When Delay visited the islands on a trip sponsored by our friend Jack Abramoff, he had this to say: "You are a shining light for what is happening to the Republican Party, and you represent everything that is good about what we are trying to do in America and leading the world in the free-market system."

And you wonder why I'm pissed.

Honestly, I'm pissed because there's no opposition party. The Democrats, you say? Please. Sure, right now, I'm longing for the days when the worst scandal to come out of Washington involved a blowjob from an intern, but the Democrats are a bunch of spineless wimps. They've known about this stuff and done absolutely nothing about it. They've been too scared to even bring ethics charges against Delay. And with all this scandal surrounding the Republican Party, you'd think that they would have some grounds for a consistent message of maybe why they're better than their Republican counterparts. Nope. All they can do is talk about how much Bush sucks. We know that already! How about telling us how you're any better? They can't, and that is why I'm probably voting Republican in the next presidential election.

Surprised? That makes two of us. But remember how I said that I pretty much hate politicians? Well, there's a couple out there that I respect, and more importantly, trust. If either John McCain or Chuck Hagel run, they've got my vote. These guys have criticized the war in Iraq, investigated corruption, and introduced campaign finance reform. Each of these actions took a lot of guts and proved to me that they care about what's right, not about what's best for their party. If either of these guys become president, things should really shape up.

Wishful thinking? Maybe. After all, didn't Bush promise to bring "integrity back to the office?" Whoops. Knowing my luck, it'll be Frist running against Gore in 2008. And I'll waste my vote in my quixotic quest to ratify a third party... again.

Sigh.

And they wonder why nobody ever freakin' votes...