hired assasins stalking the 'burbs, looking for work

Every couple of weeks in the spring and summer I have flashbacks. It starts when then this creepy dude flashes past the suburban* office window. He reminds me of the the ice-pick wielding hit man in La Femme Nikita, the one with the ear bud.

We never know what motivates this evil spirit in the film, he just seems to have a need to kill things - people in particular. This dude will seemingly stop at nothing to do a frontal lobotomy on his victims using nothing more than an ice pick and his surly attitude. We also don't know what's being piped into his head through the ear bud. Orders from HQ? Directives from his fellow hit men, "watch out behind you!" It's not until the final scene that we discover what's being piped into his brain"** and it makes us laugh. This guy makes Jules Winnfield in Pulp Fiction look like a saint. He doesn't pause to read scripture, he just plunges the ice pick in deep, quick! there! it's done.

So this dude flashes by my window at the office. He's wearing an ear bud. Who is he? Is he after me? He must be.

I turn off the lights. Log off the computer. Just in case he's got the ability to go wireless. I turn down the radio. Close the door. Sit in silence. Motionless. And wait. After about a half-an-hour of this, he's usually gone and I crawl out from beneath the death desk. Who is this masked man? And why does he wish to kill things?

Then today, I finally find out, "He's the lawn dude". Come to spread his death and destruction on the planet. The other day, it was "weed and feed" day - that's what they call it. They apply a mixture of inorganic fertilizers and herbicides, both of which are made from, or owe their existence to foreign oil. The fertilizer insures the grass will continue to grow so in another couple of weeks, serial-killer dude will again ride past my window operating the most energy inefficient gasoline-powered object on the planet - the lawn mower. The herbicides are applied so that there are no dandelions in the cool-season grasses which don't belong here. All of this makes about as much sense as the Surge.

Does any of this matter? Ask the Bluebird couple, who just hatched a clutch of chicks and now must feed them pesticide-laced worms. Want one? Ask the 5-legged frog that lives in the mud puddle. Ask your children if they'd like a little pesticide with that apple. or that orange. Or ask yourself. "Why are people still doing this to the planet?"


*Sad but true, this Warrior Ant is sometimes forced to work for the MAN - in the 'burbs.

**Eine kleine Nachtmusik Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart