Life and death here at the punchline

I am a cold-blooded killer.

Just thought I'd put that out there before telling this joke:

A group of researchers decided to study the effects of culture on ingenuity. To conduct their study, they gave two Russian military specialists a couple of metal bars and locked them in a room for one week. When the Russians were let out, they emerged with a missile that they'd made out of the metal bars.

Amazed, the scientists then gave two metal bars to two engineers from Japan and locked them in the room. After a week, the Japanese guys emerged with a precision milling machine they'd made from the metal bars. The scientists were stunned and eager to see what the two Americans who were next in line for the study could do.

After a week, the Americans stepped out of their room with nothing. The scientists, dumbfounded, asked the American pair why they hadn't made something from the metal bars they were given.

"Make something?!" one of the men said. "If you wanted something made then you shouldn't've picked a couple of cowboys."

"Yeah," said the other one. "Cuz right off we broke one of them metal bars and then lost the other."

Meanwhile, back in my private kill zone.

I'd decided, after long and agonizing deliberation, to pull a willow tree out of one of my horse corrals. I love trees. Out here on my little piece of the prairie, they are precious life forms scraping out a living in a dry and gumbo world. I can barely make myself trim the dead limbs off them in case I'm disturbing their Zen-like peace.

This particular tree didn't need to be in the corral. I knew this. It actually had been a burden for it to be in there, and I'd spent years sighing at it for growing in an inconvenient place. I'd had to build a barrier fence around it to protect it from the powerful destructive forces of equine evil-doers. And it made the approach to the corral's big gate tight for a tractor. Besides, it was half dead anyway, I told myself.

Removing the tree was a logical thing to do, and needed to be done to accommodate other changes made this fall. I felt wretched and diabolical, like, y'know, a really bad, bad person.

I apologized to the tree constantly as I used the fork lift to rip it from its place in the Earth:

While wrapping the chain around a branch of the trunk that I knew was dead: "I'm sorry." After ripping that dead trunk off: "I'm sorry." Then going in for the smaller of two live branches of trunk (groaning): "I'm sooorry." And when I got to wrapping chains around the large, main trunk: "Forgive me, tree. I'm so sorry." Then, when it didn't come out right away, and I had to repeatedly slam the weight of my mighty machinery against it: "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sooorrryyyy!"

So the willow tree is gone now. I killed it. The carcass of its once noble and twisted self is wilting on the to-be-burned pile.

It suits my lingering internal agony that the willow tree did gain some measure of revenge in the process.

The chains I used while killing it? Yeah, somewhere during the slaughter, I lost one chain and broke the other.

(I live life as the punchline of one joke or another at http://viewnorth40.wordpress.com.)

I am a cold-blooded killer.

Just thought I'd put that out there before telling this joke:

A group of researchers decided to study the effects of culture on ingenuity. To conduct their study, they gave two Russian military specialists a couple of metal bars and locked them in a room for one week. When the Russians were let out, they emerged with a missile that they'd made out of the metal bars.

Amazed, the scientists then gave two metal bars to two engineers from Japan and locked them in the room. After a week, the Japanese guys emerged with a precision milling machine they'd made from the metal bars. The scientists were stunned and eager to see what the two Americans who were next in line for the study could do.

After a week, the Americans stepped out of their room with nothing. The scientists, dumbfounded, asked the American pair why they hadn't made something from the metal bars they were given.

"Make something?!" one of the men said. "If you wanted something made then you shouldn't've picked a couple of cowboys."

"Yeah," said the other one. "Cuz right off we broke one of them metal bars and then lost the other."

Meanwhile, back in my private kill zone.

I'd decided, after long and agonizing deliberation, to pull a willow tree out of one of my horse corrals. I love trees. Out here on my little piece of the prairie, they are precious life forms scraping out a living in a dry and gumbo world. I can barely make myself trim the dead limbs off them in case I'm disturbing their Zen-like peace.

This particular tree didn't need to be in the corral. I knew this. It actually had been a burden for it to be in there, and I'd spent years sighing at it for growing in an inconvenient place. I'd had to build a barrier fence around it to protect it from the powerful destructive forces of equine evil-doers. And it made the approach to the corral's big gate tight for a tractor. Besides, it was half dead anyway, I told myself.

Removing the tree was a logical thing to do, and needed to be done to accommodate other changes made this fall. I felt wretched and diabolical, like, y'know, a really bad, bad person.

I apologized to the tree constantly as I used the fork lift to rip it from its place in the Earth:

While wrapping the chain around a branch of the trunk that I knew was dead: "I'm sorry." After ripping that dead trunk off: "I'm sorry." Then going in for the smaller of two live branches of trunk (groaning): "I'm sooorry." And when I got to wrapping chains around the large, main trunk: "Forgive me, tree. I'm so sorry." Then, when it didn't come out right away, and I had to repeatedly slam the weight of my mighty machinery against it: "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sooorrryyyy!"

So the willow tree is gone now. I killed it. The carcass of its once noble and twisted self is wilting on the to-be-burned pile.

It suits my lingering internal agony that the willow tree did gain some measure of revenge in the process.

The chains I used while killing it? Yeah, somewhere during the slaughter, I lost one chain and broke the other.

(I live life as the punchline of one joke or another at http://viewnorth40.wordpress.com.)