don’t pee on the electric tree

first of all, i just want to say that i really appreciate mark letting me blog-sit for him for the past couple of weeks. he’s got a lovely url with a fabulous view of the http. next tome i’m crashing at his site i’ll be sure and have you all over for some www and html. mark phillip is the biz-omb! and if any of you would like for me to look after your blogs while you are out, you know where to reach me…or perhaps not. but mark does and he can give you my info. now, i would like to tell you about the neighbor’s tree which i am now convinced is plotting my ultimate demise.
normally do not attribute anthropomorphic qualities to inanimate objects but this tree definitely has it in for me or one of my roommates. or perhaps all three of us. i say this only because we have narrowly escaped serious bodily injury or even death at the limbs of this tree twice in the past week.
the first was on saturday night when i returned home from a lovely keg party at which i drank copious amounts of beer. actually, it only seemed like a copious amount of beer because it was being served to me in a 6 ounce styrofoam cup rather than the 12 ounce plastic cup which is usually the standard protocol at such events. anyway, the effect was such that i thought that i was drunk when i was really just tired from having to lift that little cup to my mouth so often. anyway, when i arrived back at my house there was half a tree occupying the area that used to be my driveway. also, the power was out. so i dealt with it in the manner to which i am accustomed with such unforeseen events. i drank a 3 shots of cuervo, lit a buch of candles and a joint and played guitar until the sun came up at 6 the next morning, which i hadn’t really planned on but which i blame solely on the fact that all our clocks are digital.
the next day the lesbians who live next door and who are guardians of the killer tree, came over and told us that they would be out of town for the weekend but that when they got back on monday they would bust up the tree for us with their chainsaw. this is where i have to express just how grateful i am to live next to a lesbian couple. i maintain that regardless of your moral or ethical or religious beliefs regarding homosexuality you cannot argue with the imperical fact that lesbians are extremely handy to have around. i say this because not only did they bust up the tree as they had promised, and before we could offer the aid of our using mark phillip’s chainsaw (although, to be fair i seriously doubt that all 3 of us using chainsaws would have been even half as handy as one lesbian with a butter knife), but they also offered us tips on how to keep the squirrels from eating our tomatoes (fyi…it’s fox pee). also, they cleared it out of our driveway and bundled it up for disposal. now if that isn’t an argument for the homosexual lifestyle i don’t know what is.
anyway, the tree, seeing us cart away it’s aputated and discarded appendages, must have taken great offense because today as my rommate and i were unloading the trunk of his car it summoned up a great bolt of lightning from out of the clear blue sky which tore through it like…well, a bolt of lightning. ok, it wasn’t a clear blue sky. it was more of a greyish black. but the effect was no less jarrng. now, let me make it clear how close we were to this tree and lest you think i am exaggerating, i am fully prepared to offer up photographic evidence. i would say that i was probably about ten to twelve feet from the tree while my rommate was even closer. i would say maybe about 8 feet…from a BOLT OF LIGHTNING! for those of you who have never been struck by lightning let me describe it for you. i did not so much see the lightning from the outside in as i felt it from the inside out. also, it felt as though my eardrums had exploded and i was a conduit for the rolling stones light and sound board. needless to say…it freaked me out. more than a little bit. because i knew that i hadn’t actually been struck by lightning. i had just felt the ground current rushing toward the lightning. all that i know is that now there is a huge scare on the outside of the tree, for which it will probably blame me) and i have no desire to go anywhere near that tree again if i can help it.
now, if i can only figure out how to get my tomato plants to do the same thing with the squirrels…i may not even need the fox pee.