woooooooo...........the evil 'tree' post!

first published february 3
if you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?
Does anyone remember Barbara Walters asking poor Kate Hepburn this question? I saw the interview when it first aired and remember thinking "Oh Jesus God, Barbara, what the fuck.' I still don't know what kind of answer she was expecting.
If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?
1. Why, A fuzzy tree, Barbara. The one that the itchy man was climbing in the Elvis song.
2. The one that falls on your car and causes you to go off the side of a hill where you die a slow, anonymous death after spending your last pain filled days sucking the dew off the steering wheel and licking up ants.
3. Bitch, listen. I'm Katherine Hepburn. I'll be Katerine Hepburn when this interview is over and I'll be Katherine Hepburn when they lay me in the grave. You, on the other hand, will from this day onward be the dumbshit who asked me what kind of a tree I resembled. *Slaps Barbara Walters briskly across the face several times*
Waiting for the Goonybird and the Stainless Steel Amazon to show up. It's black as the inside of a cow, no stars, no moon, just milk trucks going past. Ah, but no wind either, and best of all, no rain for the moment. The evil dogs are pleased-they hate rain. I keep telling them, they're DOGS, for Gods' sake. Something that licks its own ass has no right to be finicky about anything. Still, it is pretty saturated out in the back yard; they're leaving belly deep dogfoot-sized puddles after every step. Just the right conditions for a big south wind storm to start taking out trees. (later note: do I know my shit or what? i'm fuckin'cosmic, is what i am.)
Last year we finally convinced the city to take down a dying tree that was about to crush our house. This thing had a trunk that my daughter and I together could just barely circle with our arms, and that was stretching to tickie fingers on each side. Problem was it was a softwood; Lombardy poplar. Probably twenty years before somebody had pollarded the fuck out of it so it would limb out instead of growing straight up like a pillar, but in the doing had left the core wood open to the elements; it promptly rotted out. So we had a mature tree in our front yard the size of a small Spanish galleon, no exaggeration-the only thing standing due south between us and Seattle, and the fucker was full of waterlogged cottony slop instead of solid wood. Giant limbs would calve off and shatter in the driveway every time we had a storm from the south-and we get some horrible storms in February, 70mph winds, rain like an ocean wave continuously crashing over the house. (later note: and it happened two cocksucking hours later, baby.) Anyway, it took a couple of years of making ourselves intrusively friendly at city hall, but they finally did it. Wanna visit our tree? It's down at the city compost. The trunk sections are taller than your car. And they're hollow. I was horrified when they were taking it down; I knew it was bad but not that bad.Still, we got action, and it was free. Small town life in the year 2006 aint too bad. When you can roll on in to the halls of government and grab the mayor for a chat wearing trashed gardening shoes and a 'speed racer' t shirt, and he does what you ask, thats just the good life. (Yes, pants too; please.)