She’s not kidding

First and foremost, let me assure all of you that Cor’s mom is out of surgery and doing great. Thanks for your thoughts and prayers.

(If Cor’s mom is reading this, stop here)

    So moving on to the title of this strip. Some of you may be aware that my counterpart, among her many virtues, is something of a giftaholic; the unfiltered joy she experiences when she presents a loved one with something that cost her money (the more the better) is overwhelming. Now I love the cycle of gift-giving, but I’d rather be on the business end, all things being equal, and I think this is a rational point of view. My wife fails to fathom this (except when jewelrey is concerned). There is no better evidence for this than the fact that our apartment barely has food for two days and our bank statements must stifle giggles as we read them, and YET we are scheduled to pick up a 12-foot tall dogwood tree for Corelyn’s mom.

    Take it in, reader. A TREE. That there is an occasion for this gift (thanking her for doing so much to plan the wedding…not that any gift we give could repay that) is beside the point for several reasons: 1) We have already given her several gifts in gratitude for the wedding 2) It’s a TREE. I just can’t emphasize that point enough. Tree. Now I am not a plant expert, but the design of these arboreal entitites suggests to me a sedentary lifestyle. They don’t want to move, and they have measures in place to prevent it from happening, and I think those measures should be respected. Yes, a rose is also trying to stay put, but roses are weak fools, the plant world’s version of a nerd you beat up for lunch money. We trade the sum of their lives for a peck on the cheek from a bonny lass (like that one?), and then, as if joking, place their corpses in a vase filled with water. As they invariably whither, they are actually chastised for doing so, and referred to as not “good roses.” Some of us like to move them around, watching with amusement as they lean desperately towards the sun. This is a sign of our dominance over the rose; we even get angry if they prick us.

     Trees are different. One cannot, one does not, pick a tree. If you see a beautiful tree that perfectly matches your mantle piece, you just keep right on walking, because it’s not yours to have and you know that. You must truly destroy that organism before you may plunder its precious innards. A tree is no mere plant, it is a foe, and killing them takes longer and is more complicated than doing the same thing to a human being. Your bare hands are a pathetic display against their armored hides; if you don’t have fire or a chainsaw, get the foxtrot out of their faces. Even if you do have those things, when they come down, they’re aiming for you.

    My point is, I respect the tree too much to feel comfortable putting the thing in some topsoil and driving it around. Have you ever seen a potted tree? It’s ridiculous. No “pot” that weighs anything less than a ton has the faculties to possess all that is tree, and its feeble attempts to do so border on comic. This is a form of life that reminded Jesus Christ of Heaven, that smirks at our grandparents and calls them “whippersnappers,” and, in a delicious twist, provides the oxygen we breathe. Neither I, nor my wife, is qualified to “deliver” this to anyone. The only person who can give trees is God.

      Really, though, it just sounds like a pain and I’d rather not do it. When you get married, you become painfully aware that any loyal spouse probably has you eyed not just for emotional companionship, but technical functionality. In Corelyn’s case, she has very deliberately acquired for herself a beast of burden. If she contacts you denying this fact, which is very likely, I advise you to ask her about a certain clandestine meeting she had with her mother over a few glasses of wine, not long before we were engaged, wherein the primary topic of conversation was how yours truly was “useful.”

     On a serious note, though, I think practical compatibility is a good thing; my wife loves to re-arrange furniture at random, so it works well that I’ve been into strength training since high school. Corelyn, as well, is maybe the best painter I’ve ever known, a crack commando of interior decorating, and I prefer her cooking to anyone’s in the world. This stuff can’t build a relationship, but it can make it a lot easier.

     After much deliberation and a desperate call to Billy Cover, I purchased “Resident Evil 4″ on the Wii the other day. It’s a survival-horror game which uses the motion control remote to let you manually aim your gun, which of course is perpetually out of ammo. It’s one of those games that is so scary and so intense that only small doses are recommended. Example: within five minutes of starting, and long before any instructions on playing the thing had commenced, I was tossed into a barricaded building with a pistol and a few shotgun rounds, and assaulted by an entire town of bad guys. I was given no objective, not even a “Survive!” message, and several times the game cut to a scene of more opponents arriving from all corners of the village. On my last leg of health, gripping a Wii remote caked in sweat and screaming at the heavens for mercy, my foes simply vanished, and the game’s title appeared ominously on the screen. The message was clear: this is but the beginning.

Yikes.

For your Penny Arcade offering today, I submit a cameo by a personal favorite character of mine: Jesus (yes that one). Now their portrayal will take some getting used to, but believe it or not it’s very reverential in its own way. He uses profanity, and that’s obviously probably wrong, but I always enjoy how they make Jesus their own at Penny Arcade. He talks to them like they’re His friends, and His description of Christmas (“It’s like my birthday, but you get presents for other people. I don’t need presents, cause I live in Heaven and stuff.”), and His answer to what Heaven is like (“It’s pretty cool. You guys would like it.”) showcase a respect that I appreciate.

This is one of the weirder ones starring Jesus, but I can’t find the others now.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/ (This link will only work today)