It would do.
"It's a cool tree," the eleven year old Boy Scout said, tasting a sale, eyes as bright as a school of piranha flashing through the sunlit shallows towards a blissfully unmindful back-floating koala.
"I like it," Nate opined. Bear in mind, Nate was raised as a Jehovah's Witness, and his entire experience with Christmas trees had begun seven minutes prior to that statement when he stepped onto this Boy Scout Christmas tree fundraising lot for the first time. "It's a good tree."
"Yeah, yeah," I allowed. "Okay, I guess we'll... GREAT JUMPING JUPITER! LOOK AT THAT BEAUTY!!!"
'That beauty' being a glorious nine foot blue spruce of such transcendent power and awe inspiring glory that I was helpless before its puissant visage. The blistering aura of its savage piney beauty grabbed me in an illegal full nelson, hurled me to the ground like a bag of old rags, knocked the wind out of me, and sat on my chest beaming in triumph.
I was stunned and speechless. The neckerchief clad gamin, sensing a sale, gulped gamely and grabbed for its mighty trunk. He struggled valiantly to get it away from the fence it was leaning on and standing upright so I could take a good long gander at it, but he clearly was not equal to such a Herculean task. Another plucky urchin hurled himself into the fray and between the two of them, they wrestled the forest giant upright for me to inspect.
This was no mere scrub pine, no piddling little Xmas tree. This was a tremendous tree, a tree titan, an Ur-Tree, a veritable Ent of the Modern Saturnalia. If Yggdrasil, the World Tree of Norse legend, were a blue spruce, it could hardly outstrip this tree. This was a tree of legend, an Atlas of trees, a Brobdignagian tree, a veritable woodlands colossus.
"How much?" I inquired reverently, yet doubtfully, expecting an answer somewhere north of $60. Mind you, for such a tree I would have been prepared to pay nearly any price, but Superwife had instructed me firmly that I could not spend $60 on a Christmas tree. Of course, I could have advised her that it was not, in fact, a Christmas tree, but was in actuality a fully functional ballistic missile shield, and I would hardly have been lying... give that tree a kitchen knife and send it to Iraq and I have no doubt it would win the war by New Years single-handedly... or branchedly, as the case may be. Still, one does not defy SuperWife in matters of the pocketbook; so I braced myself for the answer that would turn me regretfully away from the Monarch of All Christmas Trees, and prepared to move on.
"$42," said the jocular adult who had sidled up whilst I was admiring That Beauty.
"Sold," I gasped.
So they gave it a fresh cut and roped it to the roof of Nate's car and off we went home with it, where we dragged it inside and attempted to stand it up.
For two hours.
Only to discover that the wonderfully sturdy and amazingly strong all-metal Christmas tree stand we had employed with excellent results for the past three Christmases had by some arcane alchemy been transmuted into cellophane and chewing gum wrappers. We would lower in the tree and screw in the screws and tentatively relax our grips on the trunk and the tree would sway to the left, or to the right, deforming the metal of the Christmas tree stand, bending and twisting it all out of true, as if it were no more than cheap aluminum foil, or perhaps, some sort of medieval sealing wax.
"We need... ANOTHER Christmas tree stand," I opined, grimly. "A better one. Better... faster... stronger."
So off Nate and I went to Lowes, humming the theme song from THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN (She's breaking up... I can't hold her! seemed especially appropos to our situation). There, we inquired after Christmas tree stands, and a fellow advised us, in badly broken English, that there was "unny wun Kreesmas tree stan leff, ova deah, on de sheff." So we went ova deah, and on de sheff, dere was indeed wun Kreesmas tree stan leff, which I purchased with alacrity, before speeding victoriously home.
Upon entering, I brandished said Christmas tree stand at SuperWife and said, in my best SCARFACE tones, "Say hello to my leetle fren'".
SuperWife's eyes bugged out of her head as she beheld a Galaxy Class Christmas tree stand, a Christmas tree stand that might have been designed by Tony Stark to send blasting at high velocity straight through the helmeted head of the Titanium Man, a Christmas tree stand that looked much as if our old Christmas tree stand had shouted "Shazam!" and been magically transformed into Treestand Marvel. This was a Christmas tree stand of supreme power, a Christmas tree stand such as God might have handed down to Moses on the mountaintop, constructed from the indestructible mithril bones of a fallen archangel, flash-welded in the heart of a nuclear holocaust, clobbered by gamma rays and bitten by a radioactive spider. This was the Last Christmas Tree Stand From Doomed Krypton. Such a Christmas tree stand as this, when first spotted by Han Solo or Princess Lea, might well have surprised a squeaked "That's no moon!" from their stunned, awestruck lips.
"Okay," SuperWife said, "that looks like it will work."
And it did.
So, our Christmas tree is up.
UPDATE: And now, it's decorated! Photos as digital photography apparatus presents itself. But I did find a graphic of the Norse God of Christmas Tree Stands, see above.
This post is useless without pics.
ReplyDeleteYou want pics of 11 year old Boy Scouts? You're weird, dude.
ReplyDelete*forehead slap*
ReplyDeleteNo, you're weird for assuming that's what I meant. The Ur-Tree, oh, bunniest of men. If you don't mind.
Mithel,
ReplyDeleteI don't want to flame anyone needlessly. Having said that, coming into someone's chat threads for the first time and stating bluntly that the post you're commenting on is 'useless' is flame bait if I have ever seen flame bait.
Now, as you seem to have absolutely no sense of humor whatsoever, let me lay it out for you:
(a) telling me my post is 'useless' is offensive and aggravating. In the absence of any other kind of meaningful commentary at all, it is offensive and aggravating and a pointless waste of my time to have to read. However, rather than flame you immediately as you seem to so richly deserve, I chose to respond in a comical manner, hoping you'd understand that you were being offensive and aggravating and, you know, STOP.
(b) I am trying to do many things with this post; one of them was to describe things textually in a humorous way that would, nonetheless, more or less capture the scope and spectacle of the experience, without resorting to actual graphics.
Now, as you indeed have absolutely no sense of humor, I can understand why you find this post 'useless', as it is pretty much meant to be entirely humorous, but, honestly, if you really find humorous posts 'useless', I'm thinking you can find other blogs to read that you will enjoy more than this one, and certainly, there are other bloggers out there who may enjoy your responses to their posts more.
I'll post pics of the Ur-Tree as time and technology allow. In the meantime, if all you have to offer is "this post is useless without pics" and then an exasperated forehead slap when I reply with a joke instead of the flame you merited from the start, please, please, go fuck yourself.
Thank you.
No offense meant, intended or otherwise implied, and indeed, this meme(which comprised my initial post)is not nearly so widespread as I had supposed.
ReplyDeleteMithel,
ReplyDeleteHere's a hint -- if you mean, intend, or otherwise imply no offense, find a way to express yourself that does not include the word 'useless'. Because that one is generally just going to piss people off. A word to the wise, which may well be wasted on you.
As to this meme(which comprised my initial post)is not nearly so widespread as I had supposed, I am moved to ask -- do you often find yourself being misunderstood? Do you post on other blogs, and on those blogs, do other bloggers frequently respond to you with "WTF, dude?" or some similarly perplexed expression of their sheer bafflement as to exactly what the hell you just said? Or are you only being utterly incomprehensible here?
All of which is to say, when you speak of memes which are not as widespread as you believed they were, which comprised the entirety of your first comment, I have absolutely no frickin clue what you are talking about, but on the other hand, at least I also don't give a shit, so I figure I'm ahead on points and should probably just head for the showers.
Thanks for stopping by.
You are ahead. Ahead in meanie points. You big meanie.
ReplyDeleteMy post is funnier (and more accurate) on the subject, if, alas, useless, as it is without pix.
ReplyDeleteThe above exchange amuses in light of our conversation last week...
ReplyDeleteWay to unleash the Balloon O' Doom, man.
#1) I can't help but think how the entire situation could have been headed off, had I only been there to divert your attention away from The Tree...and, you know, back to a more reasonable option.
ReplyDelete#2) It is a most lovely tree, though.
#3) Very funny, Sweetie. And, like Nate, I found the title of this post particularly apt.
The above exchange amuses in light of our conversation last week...
ReplyDeleteWay to unleash the Balloon O' Doom, man.
I'm pretty sure our conversation boiled down to "I don't flame civil comments". I suppose 'civil' is a somewhat subjective term, but I'm going to insist on the privilege of defining such terms on my own blog, and by my lights, an initial comment from a complete stranger that is, in its entirely, "this post is useless without pics" is not civil.
And I tried not to flame the SOB, or B, as the case may be. S/he just had to keep pushing me. You start out rude and you just keep being rude in my face, you're gonna get some blowback.
None of which in any way reflects how I've responded to any of YOUR posts, Mr/Ms X.
Oh, I just think no offense was intended, despite the undiplomatic phrasing. To me, the initial comment seems to mean "Pictures! We want pictures of this platonian archtype of Christmas trees!"
ReplyDelete...Even if I'm being far too kind, "go fuck yourself" seems like, at best, escalating things. One could reasonably conclude that you mistook nerd familiarity for a troll, and went nuclear prematurely.
With coining phrases that make me smile, like "oh, bunniest of men" and "meanie points" mithel strikes me as a commentor with potential.
Still, it's your sandbox, and your milage may vary.
Nice super-tree story, BTW.
::sigh:: 'Go fuck yourself' was not my first response to Mithil. I gave him/her an opportunity to check him/herself, and s/he refused to do it.
ReplyDeleteIntentional or not, disrespect gets little slack from me. Mithil used up that very little slack and kept on coming back for more.
It seems to me that, if you don't know someone very well, and they indicate that something you worked hard on is 'useless', and don't trouble to say much of anything further than that, they have placed a big can of whup ass in your left hand and a can opener in your right hand and then said 'please please please open this'.
Beyond this, I think I'm disinclined to continue explaining myself, as at this point it's becoming very repetitive.