Monday, January 05, 2009

O圣诞树, O圣诞树我流了我的在您的血液: O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree I shed my blood on you

I think I’m allergic to my Christmas tree. Yes, it’s artificial. But it’s from China and I have an aversion to all things manufactured in China. If I’d been boycotting products made in China back in 2003 I might not have bought it. Do Americans make artificial trees? I know I live in the land of the Christmas tree, but I also have a woodstove. Dried out Doug Fir and American made woodstoves do not a happy holiday make. Does that contribute to my carbon footprint? And since it probably does, which contributes more: the Chinese wire and probable lead content, or the smoke from my chimney burning good old American grown Doug Fir? Crap I don’t want to know the answer do I?

Yesterday, after appreciating the lit brilliance of my Chinese artificial Nordic Christmas tree (ha, ha I’m imaging blonde Chinese people with dog sleds hauling my Christmas tree after harvest from the hills of Outer Mongolia,) I took off all the red balls and beads, crystal hearts and angels (all most certainly made in China) and carefully packed them away for later this year. Gingerly parting the wire branches I waded inside to break the tree trunk in to three parts, and proceeded to scratch my arms all to heck, pierce my left thumb (which was already highly abused from changing the high beam bulb - most assuredly manufactured in China- in Ducky’s Aspire earlier in the day) and bled profusely from that tiny hole for thirty minutes. Note: Chinese made band aides do not last as long as Chinese made Christmas trees.

I’m fairly certain I left a Chinese band aide in my American made hot tub filter.

And dirty words (all in English) I flip over my Dell Inspiron lap top and note, that yes folks the (frellin’ Australian made up word for Fuck!) stamps on the underside all say “Made in China.” Next time I’ll buy a Samsung or Sanyo or something less America sounding and maybe it will be made in some place closer to home, like Mexico or Canada.

Bah Humbug,
Cele

6 comments:

JulieAnn said...

"I’m imaging blonde Chinese people with dog sleds hauling my Christmas tree after harvest from the hills of Outer Mongolia"

Priceless! OMG, so funny! Buy real, baby; buy real.

My verification word: cult i nul. I don't know.....I just liked the cult part.

Angie K. Millgate said...

Holy hell, my friend! This one had me in stitches all the way through. I'm lovin the same passage as Juls.

And... somehow my captcha seems appropriate: phallbal

OMG! That seems funny to me too!

Anonymous said...

Quite the humorous post. But it reminds me of my scraped arms as I tried to rebox the tree over the weekend. I hope you have remained high and dry with that recent storm system moving through your area!

foundinidaho said...

*snort*

Anonymous said...

As a child, I lived for the weekend after Thanksgiving. My mom and I would drive an hour or so to the tree farm and wander around for another hour or so looking for the Perfect Tree. Once found, we’d hack the sucker down and strap it to the top of her teeny, tiny roller-skate of a car and make the trek home to spend the evening decorating and listening to Christmas music.

Christmas was always special to my mom and I. When I was in elementary school we made extra money painting windows all over town with cheesy Christmas scenes. We would go to my grandma’s and cut cedar and holly to decorate around our windows and front door. We would bake tons of cookies and breads and make candy. We drove around looking at Christmas lights….. and if possible, the Tree stayed up until early February.

So I don’t live at home anymore. We haven’t painted a Christmas scene in 25 years. Grandma sold her property and the cedar and holly trees two decades ago. Most of our traditions have gone way, way, way by the way side, but the smell of the Christmas tree brought back all of those memories. And now there’s some fakey Chinese tree that doesn’t smell anything like Christmas. And it bit you. It made you bleed for a half a damn hour. All I can say to you is, “Karma!” That is a message from the spirits of Christmas Trees Past and they are mad at you! The least you could do is get one of those pine scented car freshener things and hide it near the tree.

I love you Mom, but I hate your tree. Remember the year we got the live tree and the scraggly thing lived in the front yard for years.. hehe

Psam

Cele said...

JA - I actually perfer real trees. But our Christmas tree is within 12 feet of our woodstove, so it's an artificial tree or none. And this one is actually pretty. Despite what Psam says below.

Abgue, phallbal too funny

Steve - watch out for those poinky ends the hurt. Definately staying high and dry, while we've already had 10 inches of rain in 2009 we've been very lucky. But there is still a lot of the rain season left...watch this space. And whoa, dude you guys and your snow.

Fii - welcome back from the flip of the years in England.

Psam - thank you for the years spent painting windows together, hunting for the perfect Christmas tree together (I still bemoan that Montgomery Christmas Tree farm quit selling to the public.) I will stand by the fact that my fake tree looks beautimous, even if it doesn't smell like Doug fir. But no I won't put a pine tree deoderizer behind it.