A Lesson in Trees

Nirvana said that Mother Nature is a whore. They were wrong. She’s a pimp and the Bradford Pear is a whore among trees, as I have written in my previous post located here. I’ve accumulated some additional evidence from a recent storm to help illustrate my point.

This is what happens when Mother Nature the Pimp helps you spread your pollen and you don’t pay her back:

Here’s what happens when Mother Nature sends squirrels and other desperate animals your way and you don’t give her a cut of the nuts stored in your trunk:

And here’s what happens when you allow regular customers (such as birds) to dwell in your branches for free:

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Lesson:

Don’t mess with a pimp or she will mess you up.

Some people think that pine trees are whores because they’re weak trees. Not the same thing. When you plant a young pine sapling, it shoots up as fast as it can. This makes them the crack junkies of the tree world.

This is what happens when a crack junkie shoots up too quickly:

Lesson:

Pine trees are junkies and their habit of shooting up can really mess up your yard.

Pizza Is The Best Medicine

Charlie Chapman (guitarist and instructor at Berklee College of Music in Boston) gave one of the most memorable guitar lessons and it wasn’t about the guitar. He said that there would be days where nothing seems to go right and you just feel like you’re running into walls no matter what you do. The solution? Pizza. And lots of it.

He advised his students that times like these call for a pizza with everything on it. Everything. Don’t worry about whether it’s what you usually like. The point is that the usual routine isn’t working, so you need a break from it. Next, you get a six pack of beer and a bad movie. Eat the whole pizza, drink the beer and watch the movie.

This has become a ritual in my household and it really works. So whenever things go so terribly wrong that it looks like some evil force has planned your day for you, it’s time for a pizza break. Don’t worry about your diet, getting behind schedule in your work, or about anything else - because pizza is the best medicine in times like these.

Sadly, Charlie passed away from cancer not too long ago. But we think about him every time we have a bad day and decide to order pizza to cure it. It works every time. Now when we think back on all those bad days, we only remember the beer, pizza, and laughing at a film so terrible that you can’t believe people put their real names in the credits. Most of the time we don’t even remember what made the day so bad in the first place.

God bless you, Charlie.

I’ll have a Mar-Go-Rita

It’s been a very hot summer.  Record breaking heat. It’s time for someone to cash in on this heat wave and this is why I’ve come up with a great new business idea.

Every summer when the heat kicks up, the ice cream truck comes around and both kids and adults rush into the street to buy a refreshing treat (or, in some cases, a stale but frosty snack that has the illusion of being a treat because of the novel situation that someone drove it to your neighborhood in a musical vehicle). In any event, it’s a summer ritual for many of us.

But what do most adults really want? Booze. What if there was a truck that drove around playing polka music that sold frosty mugs of beer?  How much faster would you run out of your house to get something like that - even if you’re still in your bathrobe? Or better yet, stay in the AC and send the kids out to the curb with your ID and a twenty and tell them that there’s an extra five in it for them if they don’t spill the brew.

There could be other trucks.  My personal favorite is the Mar-Go-Rita truck that sells margaritas (either frozen or on the rocks) as well as tequila shots for people who still have to go back to work in the afternoon and need something to get them through that next meeting. If you decide to implement this idea, might I also suggest that you have a friend drive the Fajita Nacho Truck right behind you? Because I’m going to want a snack with my Mar-Go-Rita and I may not be in any condition to drive out to get one (if you’re making them correctly).

This is a potential goldmine for the right person. Not to mention that it would solve the problem of drinking and driving because we no longer have to drive to get our drinks. Our drinks would come to us.

I’ve done my job by planting the seed of the idea. Now I’m just waiting for the right entrepreneur to implement this in my neighborhood. I’ll be on the porch waiting.

Independence Day or Independence Week?

It’s Independence Day (July 4th) here in the United States. This is the holiday where we celebrate our freedom and the signing of the Declaration of Independence.  But I can’t help wondering how we can really feel free when most of us will be enslaved again tomorrow morning when we go back to work.  So I’m proposing that we make this holiday a week long festival.

Here’s why:

1.) Making this the only paid holiday that lasts a full week (the first week in July) will emphasize the importance of it.  Not to mention that people feel more free when they’re not thinking about going to work the next day.

2.) It gives us more time for parades and making homemade ice cream (it takes a long time to churn ice cream. A week of paid vacation should make that more feasible).

3.) Everyone knows that you can’t blow off fireworks without getting drunk first, so making this holiday a full week gives us more time for fireworks AND more time to sober up before going back to work. It’s a win-win situation!

If the government can’t give us a week of paid vacation for this, the least they can do is change the law so that it’s legal to set off fireworks when sober. Not that we’d follow it.