Where Are the Plant Heroes?

Physical Plant Himself:
I'm as patriotic as the next plant. But sometimes this country angers me.

Let me explain. The Professor has reached the dangerous and unpredictable Stage 4 of summer boredom, which I normally enjoy. This Stage is characterized by long periods of almost plant-like stillness, which would be comforting except that he's usually staring at something with this intense, slightly horrified look on his face. (Today it was a bottle of facial moisturizer used by the female to regulate sun absorption and maintain her youthful appearance.)

Then, just when you think he is going into some form of mental hibernation, he'll laugh crazily and walk quickly out of the room in order to chase the cats with the swiffer, (too bad those rumors aren't true), or throw the chef's knife at the cutting board from across the room while the cats hide under the couch.

Anyway, lately, Stage 4 has taken the form of a weird obsession with press releases issued by the North Korean ministry of propaganda. Evidently he thinks they are high fucking comedy. He left this one on the laptop screen today:

Ichon Hero Gingko Tree

Pyongyang, July 18 (KCNA) -- There is some 720 years old hero gingko tree in Ichon Township of Ichon County, Kangwon Province of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. It, planted in 1282, has been called "hero gingko tree" from the period of the Fatherland Liberation War (1950-1953). During the war, people there and military transport vehicles used to shelter themselves beneath the tree from the U.S. air raids.

One day in August Juche 41 (1952), a U.S. fighter spotted a truck of the Korean People's Army hidden under the tree and attempted to attack it. But the fighter ran into the tree to be crashed. From then on, the people of Ichon have called the tree "hero gingko tree."

By the collision, only one bough remained. Since then, the tree has shot out many branches to become exuberant. The tree is 20 meters high, 7.8 meters in the circumference of the lower part of the trunk and 14 meters in diameter of its umbrella. It opens flowers in the middle of April and bears some 100 kilograms of fruits every year.

The state has registered the tree as a natural monument.

Perhaps now you understand, stupid humans, why I am angry at this country today. Where are our plant heroes? Who are young American saplings to look up to? This North Korean ginko tree took out a human fighter jet with its branches.

On a daily basis, all over the U.S., heroic trees risk losing the majestic appearance of their trunks and limbs in order to smash passing convertibles piloted by inebriated human douche-bags. Where are the accolades? Where are the press releases?

By the Way I Love Steven Seagal

Physical Plant Himself:

Poetry is for pussies, but the Professor thinks writing about things I love will help me deal with my so-called agressive impulses.





Defend Us Mr. Seagal, by Physical Plant Himself.

Defend us Mr. Seagal, student of the Japanese guy who invented Aikido.
Use the humans’ urgency against them and throw them through the window.



















Use your appendages like hammers to smash crazed Voodoo Rastafarians
(like in Marked for Death) and other evil dickheads.
Make your feet move back and forth like fervent digging tools,
sweeping the earth free of evil kitties.
Poke out their eyeballs with a two-fingered scooping motion
and then show them their own eyeballs and say something funny about it.















Mr. Seagal, you are like a giant tree with a ponytail and squinty eyes,
which kicks ass throughout the land in the name of plants’ rights and other liberal causes.
Like a giant tree, your face shows no emotion when you are ass-kicking.
When you move you look stiff and weird, in a bad-ass way.
Wrap your giant limbs around the kitties and crush them until their heads explode and cover the walls with cheap red syrup, sold in bulk quantities at a wide variety of entertainment industry wholesalers.














I love you Mr. Seagal. I don't have ears but I bet that you play guitar beautifully.


















I believe Master H.H. Penor Rinpoche’s statement that you are a “tulku,” a “reincarnation of a Buddhist master who, out of his or her compassion for the suffering of sentient beings, has vowed to take rebirth to help all beings attain enlightenment.” Except that you know sentience is a load of crap and plants matter too. You only want peace for all organisms except for the ones that suck.












I don't believe that you lied about working for the CIA in Japan and that you sexually harrassed several women and that you once dared an extra in one of your movies to try to choke you because you were impervious to that judo move and he made you pass out and you tried to sue him and you that have extensive sordid connections to the mafia and make all of your household servants bow and call you a weird name for some reason. You and Zidane are the best.

Your friend, Physical Plant.

P.S: My poetry is terrible and this makes me lethargic and depressed. I need some Steven Segal's Lightening Bolt Energy Drink. This is from a website that sells it:

Are you stuck drifting through life in a state of existential confusion wandering aimlessly through the multitudes of energy products not knowing which one is the right one for you? Then look no further for the true meaning of life then Master Sensei Seagal’s Lightning Bolt Energy Drink!

Lightning Bolt, the one and only energy drink crafted by martial arts expert and herbal specialist Steven Seagal, is the only all natural 100% juice energy drink on the market. This long lasting energy elixir is made with key ingredients from all over the globe. With a healthy dosing of Tibetan Goji Berry, Asian Cordyceps, B-Vitamins, Green Tea, Yerba Mate, Ginseng, Ginkgo Biloba, Guarana, and Policosanols, Lightning Bolt will give you the strength you need to punch your adversary’s faces through plate glass windows day in and day out!

Features:
• 100% Pure Steven Seagal Juice
• Designed for intense mortal combat or any extreme situation requiring ultimate energy
• Can has Steven Seagal’s face on it (who could ask for more!?!)

Its time for the Steven Seagal Experience! There is no telling what will happen once you get his juices inside you!

Attack from Above!

Physical Plant Himself: This morning, like just about every Sunday morning, the Professor woke up mumbling something about “that’s not how you play baseball, Condoleezza,” threw four Advils at his face, missing with three of them, and went back to bed, pulling the sheet off the sleeping female.

I am eternally watchful and don’t require rest, unlike many so-called “sentient” creatures. (By the way, big fucking deal.) This is why, an hour later, I was taking a keen interest in the General’s attempt to eat one of the fallen Advil, hopefully poisonous for cats, when the Postman descended from the dresser like a furry black ninja, ripping and tearing at my beautiful foliage.

Attack from above! It was all a trap! The General had intentionally distracted me, and was now sneaking forward in order to dig my roots and chew on my tasty fronds. Why are cats such dicks? We should be banding together against the humans – instead, they prefer to leap from high places and fuck with my shit.

Luckily, I was saved by their pathetic fucking attention span. Some useless variety of winged invertebrate flew in the window and zigzagged into the bathroom. Evidently chasing prey that is actually capable of autonomous movement is more of a challenge. Assholes. They should pick on something their own size. Sometimes I see a large crow perched in the tree outside and wish it would burst through the window, tearing at their bellies and feasting on their delicious entrails.

Better yet, I wish Steven Segal would kick in the front door, his ponytail whipping around like a cobra, his karate chops like the blows of an axe. He would grasp cats by the neck and deliver them a stern lecture on the injustice of harassing defenseless plants. Then, when he gave them a chance to apologize and mend their ways, they would attempt a sneak attack, showing that their true animal nature and making them deserve full Steven Segal lethal fury. Perhaps at this point he would break a chair in half and wield the legs like nun-chucks. Then maybe he would devour their carcasses.

A couple of weeks ago I was lamenting my lack of whip-like appendages which would help me defend myself from small black cats. The Professor read my post and showed me a recent Times article about a medical team that implanted a microchip in the brain of a paralyzed human, allowing him to control a robotic arm with his thoughts. If the Professor were really a genius like he’s always saying he would construct such a device for me.


Retribution! Black kitties beware my vengeance!

Corporate Citizenship

Physical Plant Himself: I've noticed that Harpers magazine is the Professor's preferred reading material when traveling by public transport. He probably thinks it gives him an air of sophistication, impressing the teenage Russian girls from Brighton Beach. I can see him now, turning the pages every now and again with a concerned expression, making quiet grunting noises like “good point, Harpers.” Dickhead. Hmm… what you theenk is more heep to Russian teen? Creepy bourgeois intellectual or boyfriend with five machine gun and suitcase full of Ecstacy?

I can’t read Harpers, of course (I’m not convinced that the Professor can either) but I took a gander at the back cover the other day and saw this ad:




The ad is supposed to be about how Toyota is a good “corporate citizen,” but it took me a while to figure this out because I was distracted by the pink-shirted eunuch in the foreground of the "factory team," which, apart from the eunuch, consists of three geeky male humans in safety goggles, nearly identical except for their varying coloration and height.




Here, this might help:

Eunuch

















Then I got stuck on the photo on the right-hand side, which apparently depicts a Toyota employee raking leaves in the woods.

Human Raking Woods

What are we supposed to make of these photos? Since Toyota puts a lot of thought and money a large ad campaign of this sort, we can only assume that their PR team has decided that staffing their factories with eunuchs and raking up the woods are the very definition of "corporate citizenship." I don’t want to come across as hostile to plants or humans of ambiguous organs – some of my best friends are monoecious.

But what exactly do the eunuchs do in the factories? Do they have a special skill that aids in production? I asked the Professor and he pulled the usual irrelevant, pretentious fact out of his ass: “In the Middle Ages, Physical Plant, young men in monasteries were castrated so that they would retain angelic high singing voices throughout adulthood.”

Do Toyota eunuchs sing inspiring hymns of productivity to the other factory workers? And why is it necessary to rake leaves in the woods? Rotting leaves are future delicious food for nutrient-hungry saplings. That's like me raking all the potatoes out of Idaho; the muffins out of Connecticut; or the disco fries out of New Jersey. Where do Toyota employees rake the leaves to? Are they converted into a high-nutrient mulch which is fed to the factory eunuchs? Good thing Toyota isn't marketing its cars to house plants because I don't fucking get it. The best I can figure is that Toyota has engineered a crazy telepathic robot which will forecast consumer trends and handle marketing and PR from now on. They asked the robot for "two messages that will connect with today's liberal community" and it came up with "save the eunuchs" and "rake the woods."

Today I Smell of Victory

Physical Plant Himself: An exemplary day today! The Professor sat in his undergarments while consuming multiple bowls of something called Muesli and exactly 89% of The Raiders of the Lost Ark. Then the usual routine: he says fuck repeatedly, putting on the same shirt as yesterday and the light blue pants that the female hates and runs out the door with typical human urgency. Then he comes back twice, saying fuck and locating useful items. Bravo, shit-head. Don't ask me what the fuck is so important to do outside when nourishment, pollination and waste removal can all occur indoors, sometimes in the same room in a space of two hours! According to The Raiders of the Lost Ark, when the Professor goes outside, he jumps over the hole and whips the thing with urgency, then pollinates the female. Sometimes he gets to whip another human, which must be fun.

Since, in his rush, he left the TV on, I got to watch it all day with the General and the Postman. Unfortunately, I lack the appendages to operate the remote and they’re too fucking lazy to change the channel. We watched a commercial in which a male human was handed a hair removal device by a foxy female scientist in a lab coat. She had invented this hair removal device just for him! Five blades work better than four for extra sexy hair removal. Now they will pollinate! This got me thinking… I wish I had a sexy female scientist to invent whip-like appendages that I could use to whip the cats into obedience. Instead, however, the Professor left his deodorant next to my pot for me to use. I have no particular need for deodorant. My natural plant pheromones have always sufficed for pollinating the bitches. But the Professor has a new deodorant, whose scent promises Victory. There is a picture on the deodorant of a strong human arm, using a massive hammer to smash body odor into oblivion. This is exactly what I need, and is in keeping with my New Year’s resolution to achieve ruthless and final conquest over all enemies. Here is a photo of the Victory-scented deodorant. Nothing can stop me now.

Edu-Core

The Physical Plant Himself: A few years ago, my friend Dan Infecto, a blacksmith in Seattle (now in Austin) introduced me to Bloodhag, possibly the world's only Edu-Core band. They had just completed a tour of public libraries all over the West Coast, where they played death metal songs about major science fiction authors to audiences of small children, asking impossible literary trivia questions in between songs and throwing books at the children when they got the answer wrong. They're some of the only humans I respect. Here's an interview with them by a bunch of pussies from NPR.

They're Manipulating You

Physical Plant Himself: Wake up call: Domestic cats have more than 100 different meows? Maybe some crazy bitch on the upper East or West Side would find that cute. Maybe she would think it validates her downright bizarre fucking behavior at home. I think it's disturbing. A few years ago a Cornell psychology student compared human responses to domestic cats and their wild African ancestor species and found that domestic cats possessed a whole vocabulary specifically designed to
manipulate us. I keep telling the Professor to throw those cute little black fuckers out the window or take them for a leash-less walk in some distant municipal park, but obviously he can't hear me because my fucking species hasn't learned to meow. Yet another way in which I've been dicked over by God. I hate cats.