This Heat is Killing Me - 104 in the Shade
Beelzebub is also known in Christian circles as Satan. But many also know Satan by his super secret name, Natas, which is Satan spelled backwards. Then too, Satan is also known by his Pig Latin name, Atansa, which spelled backwards is Asnata. Yepper. All these are examples among many of the various interesting ways of spelling out the name of the Devil.
Four straight days of record breaking heat puts me in mind of my childhood. That’s correct. I had the misfortune of a Christian rearing. Yepper. That’s when I learned that if I was a bad boy, Natas would surely get me and I would roast in Hell, naked. Yepper. There I would be in Hell, writhing in super hot agony. But worse, a great many other similarly wicked boys and girls would also be right there with me, also writhing, liable to writhe into me. Liable to touch me. Liable to rub their hot skins on my hot skin, without my permission. Egad! Jeez Louise! Mercy!
So yesterday one of the chores I had to do was make cuttings off a Mexican sycamore *. The Mexican sycamore has about a mm depth of duff on the underside of the leaves. That duff comes off as soon as the leaf is the most tiny bit disturbed or messed with. Once off, naturally the duff goes airborne. Once airborne that particular duff heads for the nearest nostrils.
Course too, naturally, a person requires a ladder to reach the topmost cuttings. One might assume that a ladder, since a ladder allows one to go higher, also might allow one to get further away from Hell. But that is not so. The fact is, almost nothing can get a person nearer to Hell than a ladder. A ladder always makes a bad situation, worse.
Soaked in my own sweat and breathing in plenty of Sycamore duff I began to cough. I could not stop coughing. I fell off the ladder coughing. I feel to my knees in the dewberries, coughing. Instantly, I thought, Should have worn long pants. Pretty soon I had coughed both my lungs out. I could just barely espy those twain lungs, as the blood, sweat and tears clouded my vision, lying at my knees on the ground before me. Those lungs still coughed spasmodically.
The many vermin and varmints in those parts began to assemble. Still my lungs coughed. Can we have those lungs?, some of the vermin and varmints wanted to know. Hastily I scooped those lungs back into my mouth. Fortunately, a Druid Ovate such as myself is constantly ready for most emergencies. Previously, I had practiced swallowing my lungs by swallowing Hostess Snowballs without chewing. So I managed to swallow my lungs back down. Then I headed off to the water faucet. I needed a drink of cool water.
The cool water probably saved me from certain death and an eternity in Hell. But what if there had been no handy cool water? Then what?
*Mexican Sycamore - Sycamoranus mexicanus is like a regular sycamore but with extra amounts of white tomentum (duff) on the underside of the leaf. The duff prevents the leaf from losing moisture out the underside where its stomata are. In other words, the short hairs form an interlinking web over the stomata and thus prevent excess water loss, keeping the leaf fairly turgid during Hell-like weather. But when disturbed, the duff leaps off the leaf surface, thereby afflicting the lungs and nostrils of predators fixing to fuck with that particular tree. Yes. The duff has at least twain functions. First, the duff prevents water loss, and second, the duff protects the Sycamoranus mexicanus against predators or leaf herbivores.
Four straight days of record breaking heat puts me in mind of my childhood. That’s correct. I had the misfortune of a Christian rearing. Yepper. That’s when I learned that if I was a bad boy, Natas would surely get me and I would roast in Hell, naked. Yepper. There I would be in Hell, writhing in super hot agony. But worse, a great many other similarly wicked boys and girls would also be right there with me, also writhing, liable to writhe into me. Liable to touch me. Liable to rub their hot skins on my hot skin, without my permission. Egad! Jeez Louise! Mercy!
So yesterday one of the chores I had to do was make cuttings off a Mexican sycamore *. The Mexican sycamore has about a mm depth of duff on the underside of the leaves. That duff comes off as soon as the leaf is the most tiny bit disturbed or messed with. Once off, naturally the duff goes airborne. Once airborne that particular duff heads for the nearest nostrils.
Course too, naturally, a person requires a ladder to reach the topmost cuttings. One might assume that a ladder, since a ladder allows one to go higher, also might allow one to get further away from Hell. But that is not so. The fact is, almost nothing can get a person nearer to Hell than a ladder. A ladder always makes a bad situation, worse.
Soaked in my own sweat and breathing in plenty of Sycamore duff I began to cough. I could not stop coughing. I fell off the ladder coughing. I feel to my knees in the dewberries, coughing. Instantly, I thought, Should have worn long pants. Pretty soon I had coughed both my lungs out. I could just barely espy those twain lungs, as the blood, sweat and tears clouded my vision, lying at my knees on the ground before me. Those lungs still coughed spasmodically.
The many vermin and varmints in those parts began to assemble. Still my lungs coughed. Can we have those lungs?, some of the vermin and varmints wanted to know. Hastily I scooped those lungs back into my mouth. Fortunately, a Druid Ovate such as myself is constantly ready for most emergencies. Previously, I had practiced swallowing my lungs by swallowing Hostess Snowballs without chewing. So I managed to swallow my lungs back down. Then I headed off to the water faucet. I needed a drink of cool water.
The cool water probably saved me from certain death and an eternity in Hell. But what if there had been no handy cool water? Then what?
*Mexican Sycamore - Sycamoranus mexicanus is like a regular sycamore but with extra amounts of white tomentum (duff) on the underside of the leaf. The duff prevents the leaf from losing moisture out the underside where its stomata are. In other words, the short hairs form an interlinking web over the stomata and thus prevent excess water loss, keeping the leaf fairly turgid during Hell-like weather. But when disturbed, the duff leaps off the leaf surface, thereby afflicting the lungs and nostrils of predators fixing to fuck with that particular tree. Yes. The duff has at least twain functions. First, the duff prevents water loss, and second, the duff protects the Sycamoranus mexicanus against predators or leaf herbivores.
posted by ray pistrum at Saturday, June 27, 2009
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