Whisky

Beneath the peat bogs of Scotland flows a magical elixir that we call 'peat bog water' and it's delicious.

LACK OF STARS: (Look, I've mixed the whole formula up. Stop crying)

My friends eighteenth birthday was held in the Sutherland Army Reserve base, because her dad was the Major or the General or the King or something. At eighteen I was fresh faced and innocent, approaching all experiences with a sense of wonder and dread. Parties had only just become legal drinking experiences, which meant I had to stop drinking whatever Lemon Ruskies some dudes older brother could smuggle in, and actually go to the bottle shop and make informed choices. I had to decide what kind of drinker I was going to be. So, I wandered into this party with my ten dollar bottle of Bombora coconut rum travesty and set about having a grand time.

I quickly discovered that the main difference between sixteenth's and eighteenth's, was that alcohol was a catered affair. The family actually provided booze to the punks and gutter rats that were frequenting the event. And provide they did – before my bamboozled eyes lay not only eskies full of chilled beer, but dozens of bottles of Johnny Walker Black Label. Now, I'd never drunk whisky before. At pubs and clubs, my drink of choice was often a Bourbon Whiskey, because of reasons unfathomable to me at this advanced age. I can only assume I thought it was cool. And along that vein, I rather thought that a Scotch Whisky might be dignified and awesome. So, I absconded with an entire bottle of the stuff and embraced the party. 'Embraced the party' of course means that due to the all encompassing memory loss of that night, I have no idea what I did, except for excerpts that people have related back to me.

1. Me sitting on top of an army truck, screaming things along the lines of 'Eat your heart out, Optimus Prime!'

   

   Woo! Defence budget.

   
   
   
   
2. Me rolling around in the grass speaking to myself aka Gollum and Smeagol. Apparently I was quite good at this, and I've never really been able to carry off the voice that well again.
3. Me rolling around in the grass and vomiting horribly.

Now, it was at this point that an ambulance was called for me. I can understand this from the perspective of a gang of gormless teens – they'd never seen anything so horrible. They were scared, appalled and probably didn't want to deal with the manic spewing gollum that I'd become. Fair enough. But I would also like to point out, that it wasn't actual alcohol poisoning. I didn't need my stomach pumped. I have since been as sick, and even more so – I called it 'University'.

And when the ambulance drivers came, they were understandably pissed off. Instead of saving lives or fighting demons or whatever it was that they enjoyed doing, they had to cart back some stinking vomit teen, who was still muttering about 'his precious'. This is probably why in the middle of my rant about 'taters? What's taters?', one of the ambulance men gave me a big old slap. My mate Bob was there, and was pretty shocked. I think the dude was probably justified.

Waking up in the hospital was pretty awful, in the sense that I'd clearly done something wrong. It was clearly a big deal, a major moment of badness. Although, because all they'd done in the hospital was hook me up to a drip, I actually felt fantastic. No hangover for me.

The strange end to this unfortunate tale, is that a day or two later I received a call from the General Dad or whatever in charge of the Reserve. He told me that me and some of my friends (I wasn't the only one who hadn't dealt gracefully with free spirits) had caused a bunch of mess, and that we had to come back and clean it up. Turning up once again at the Reserve, this time Windex and gloves replacing my coconut rum and bad decision making, we were led into the spotless army room and sat down. General Dad began talking about our lack of discipline, and then also about the shame of our unnatural lifestyle. I was still expecting to hear that I'd vomited on a flame thrower or something, so that it took me a little while to realise that the two other kids sitting with me, were also the only two openly gay kids in our year of school. Suddenly it all came together, and I realised what was going on. Looking at the other two, they had clearly pegged on to it earlier than me. We weren't actually there to clean up puddles of day old vomit – we were there because this homophobic military douche was trying to get us to join the military to beat the gay out of us. I'd like to say that we stood as one, threw our pink dishwashing gloves down and marched out – but we didn't. We sat there quietly for fifteen minutes and listened, desperately hoping this threatening and insulting experience would be over soon.

THE STARS:

From that day on, the merest smell of anything whisky related made me feel incredibly ill. I felt no real qualm about not drinking it, because there was a whole world of other alcohol out there for me to drink. Until recently I was at a party, and the host, a mate of mine named Sam Cooney, wandered up to me in his nuns habit and kindly said 'You need a drink!'

I agreed, and a large tumbler of Scotch was thrust into my hand. It was a loud party, and I felt obliged to drink it out of politeness, so I didn't demur. And slowly, with great trepidation, I lifted the enormous glass to my lips and tasted the burning, petrochemical tang of whisky for the first time in almost a decade. And I found it good. Gone was the instinctive nausea. Gone was the psychological shame conditioning. Because I'd been shouting all night, I'd lost my voice earlier. Through the power of whisky, it miraculously came back. Whisky was amazing.

Words cannot how exciting this is for me. I'm one of those jerks who thinks deeply about his alcohol. I have a wine cellar. I know about 'good years'. I drink boutique beers. I know what my martini proportion is. I'm 'set' in my preferences, I know what I like and I do everything I can to maintain this standard. And now I've been given a whole new family of booze for me to discover. I have no idea what kind of whisky I like, what kind of whisky is good. There's a bewildering range of whisky's waiting to get into my face. Do I like whisky on the rocks, or neat? I now have another reason to go to Scotland (there are three reasons, the first is CASTLES). When I'm out with people now, I get to shake them and scream 'WHAT KIND OF WHISKY DO YOU LIKE!' I'm just so excited. Thanks, Sam Cooney. Thanks for this great gift.

THE SCORE:

4.5/5 stars

Necrotic Flesh

This is a story that I read at Project 52's Story Club, a fantastic event where people read amazing things at your faces. It occurs every month, much like my feelings of inadequacy!

THE STARS:

Unless your job is romping joyfully with puppies in a bouncy castle made of heroin and boobs, everyone has those days where you just don’t want to go to work. Maybe there’s a heavy workload and tight deadlines. Maybe you drank seven bottles of wine in the park the night before and yelled at teenagers about Captain Planet. Maybe the moon is out at the same time as the sun, and that makes you grumpy - and a bit scared. Regardless of the reason, one of the best ways I’ve discovered to overcome this funk, is by thinking back on the most horrifying jobs you’ve ever had. Not just the dull monotony of your high school fast food experience or the casual awfulness of telemarketing. I’m talking about that one workplace that isn’t so much a memory, but more of a deep pain that you carry somewhere in your ballbag. The idea is that this experience was so utterly soul destroying, that whatever you are currently undergoing feels like a jaunty walk through a cupcake.

THE LACK OF STARS:


For me, this was a summer job that my uncle kindly got me at a retirement village in North Sydney. Thin decrepit skeletons shuffling around and smelling of death and whisky – and that was just Milsons Point. No one really needs me to explain why a retirement village is upsetting, unless you are the kind of person who is uplifted by the idea of a place where people slowly lose every memory dear to them before dying. But I thought I was prepared for that level of sad. I’d practiced my understanding face in the mirror and developed a soothing tone to speak with, inspired by that movie The Horse Whisperer which I’ve never seen, and fundamentally misunderstand. And yes, these people were old, batty and sad but what I didn’t bank on, was the fact they were old, batty and sad rich people.

Much like a pickled onion, rich old people are like them. My primary job, after washing industrial loads of dishes, was to serve food and then remove the scraps. Sometimes I served tea. As a polite young man bought up in a house and not by sea-wolves, I felt infinitely qualified to do this. According to the aged tycoons populating this village, not only was I unqualified, but my method insulted every dead Anzac. Like in every ABC period drama ever, I would be sassed by old ladies for serving tea on the left side rather than the right, or not bowing as I exited the room or not pointing the multi-coloured mush they ate towards the sunset. Furthermore, because they were cashed up and possessed only a tenuous grasp of time, the majority of the residents drank like Hemingway all through the day. Or perhaps because they were old and in a retirement village, they knew exactly what time it was and not one fuck was given. While this might sound fun to you, this just means that when I served breakfast at 7am, many of the old people were a horrifying mix of fighty drunk, shouty drunk, sad drunk and most disturbingly, amorous drunk. And as anyone who’s worked in aged care knows, the delightful myth we propagate about old people not having sex is completely made up. In fact, there’s a huge problem with the spread of STI’s in old folks homes. But I’m not even talking about that – they can do whatever they want to each other. But because they all are stinking drunk, mostly blind and I am kinda pretty – I had to fend off the inappropriate gropings of old men all day. One dude motioned me over, got me to bend down, and then whispered in my ear

‘I can see your nipples.’

The worst thing was, after that I realised that he could actually see my nipples, as my shirt was indecently sheer.

There were of course some lovely people there, who were always perfectly delightful and polite. There were also the genuinely mad ones. Only two are really worth talking about. One was a lady named Beryl, who no matter what, always looked absolutely immaculate. Pearls, dusty mauve Chanel suits, a perm that could repel bullets. She also wasn’t allowed cutlery, because she tends to go for the eyes. When I served, she would sit bolt upright in her chair and stare unblinkingly at me, only her head moving fractionally as she tracked me around the room. Her mouth would quiver slightly, due to the intensity of her frustrated rage.The other was a lady named Fran who adamantly claimed she was a Polish princess and would make ‘special tea’ out of pot plants and pot pourri. I liked her a lot, because while she was off in a whole other world, it was a great world and she was happy there. Also, there was the outside chance that she was a Polish Princess, and she might leave me her castle in her will.

All I’ve done so far is set the scene. I’ve created a challenging ambience, a shitty backdrop to stage an amateur musical society’s version of ‘Cats’ on. Because while getting up at 4am every morning and coming to this place was depressing and hard, I was getting paid for it and I thought I could deal. Until Olga happened.

Olga worked in the retirement home as a nurse. Nurses are generally the most bad-ass, tough as nails, admirable people in the world. Olga was something else entirely. When I think of Olga, she’s always smoking the bitter end of a cigarette. Even though I understand that she couldn’t have been smoking inside, the complex pit of wrinkles and deep yellow stain that took the place of her mouth seem unimaginable without a cigarette in it. Olga had an accent which I can only describe as ‘generic Russian spy’. And she was the most depressing woman in the world. Perhaps because of the constant imaginary cigarette or more likely due to the sheer unholy weight of melancholia physically weighing her mouth down, Olga only ever spoke in clipped sentences. And it was awful.

‘Good morning Olga, how was your weekend?’

After waiting just long enough to make you think she mightn’t have heard you, she would exhale a long breath of stale smoke and then look at you from these dull, yellow eyes. Oh, and I apologise to the entirety of Russia for my attempt to mimic her accent.

‘My weekend was… not distinguishable.’

‘Bye Olga, I’ll see you tomorrow.’

‘Perhaps… perhaps you will.’

Olga got into my head in a bad way. I started having nightmares about her looking at me and saying things. I'd hallucinate her dry, joyless cackle. She was one of those people who only laughed when there was bad news. One day I was serving a resident tea and blood started gushing out of this old ladies mouth. I was horrified, and ran to get the nearest nurse. Unluckily it was Olga, who listened impassively as I explained the horrific nature of the medical emergency, took another drag on her cigarette, meditated silently on the problem and then while stubbing the butt out on the window pane, said ‘Ah, she always does that. I’ll get to her in a minute.’

By the time I came back, another nurse had tended to the woman, and I discovered the problem was actually a minor dental issue, rather than the lung rupture or heartsplosion that I’d diagnosed her with. But my problem with Olga and the job wasn’t just making me depressed and dispirited – I was scared. I developed an eye tic and once woke up in the night and vomited randomly after dreaming of Olga doing the crossword. I thought that maybe I’d calm down over the weekend, but knowing that I’d have to go back for another week of terror kept me sleepless and nervous. My skin went an interesting shade of translucent.

As I went in to work on the Monday morning, I honestly prayed that the train would derail itself or the place would burn down or my eyes would start bleeding spontaneously just so I wouldn’t have to go through with another week. I’d never felt so bad in my life, my fear and depression seemed to be manifesting at this early hour of the morning as some kind of feverish fugue and prickling pain in my neck. And when I got into work, one of the nurses, a lovely man who was saving up to buy a $9000 kareoke machine because why not, looked at me and kinda screeched,

‘What the hell is that on your neck?’

I’d thought I had a rather vigorous pimple, so was understandably abashed when he called over all the nurses and doctors to have a look at it. When I kept protesting that I was fine, he looked me in the eye and said ‘Listen, if there’s one thing you learn to spot a mile away when working in this place, it’s necrotic flesh. And that’s what the wound on your neck is.’

It turned out that I’d been bitten by a White Pointer spider, whose bite actually kills off your flesh, a bit like gangrene. If not cut out and treated with antibiotics, even the smallest bite can actually spread and kill you. If I get stressed, sometimes you can see the place where the bite was on my neck. So, it turns out that it wasn't just my emotions that were making me feel bad, but also a bunch of poison. Things had gone from bad to worse, no?

But actually, the point I’m trying to make, that I’ve laboriously made my way to, is that the moment when I was told that I had to go to hospital instead of working at that retirement village, was probably the happiest I’ve ever felt in my entire life. The most pure explosion of joy to have even been transmitted to me via the medium of speech.

I HEART POISON.

And that's the lesson I want to impart to you all. A rare glimmer of hope in the seething pit of hardship that we call existence. Miracles can happen. Good things happen to good people – and also to people like me. I want you to go forth tonight with the knowledge that next time something awful happens to you, when you're in a horrifying position that seems inescapable, you too might be lucky enough to get bitten by a flesh eating spider, which will somehow solve your problems.

THE SCORE:

5/5 stars

Lessons

Be yourself.

THE STARS:

The other day when exiting the cinema after seeing The Avengers, I heard a lady ask her three children if they could identify the moral of the movie.

“And what lesson did we learn from that?” she asked indulgently, her laser eyes flickering through the developing intellects of her children, desperately seeking to eliminate spiritual flaws. The faces of the children fell. 'Um... friendship?' ventured one. I think he was right.

A better answer would have been to bellow furiously 'IT WAS SHITTING AWESOME, MUM! BLAAAAAARGH' and jump from the roof of the carpark and destroy a bunch of cars or something.

If being unutterably lame was a superpower, then that Mum would have had a place reserved in the Avengers. Because, instead of allowing her child to get away with a perfectly plausible answer to a stupid question, she had to flex her lame muscles and provide her own moral for the Avengers.

'Well, I think they learnt that it's important to think about others.'

FRIENDSHIP

LACK OF STARS:

I've mentioned before that I don't have kids, so if I accidentally give child-rearing tips in the stream of consciousness barrage that is this blog, you're probably better off ignoring them. Then again, I used to be a kid, and then I grew out of it – which I believe means that I won childhood. But if I ever have to raise womb invaders, I'm not sure I would be so vehement about discovering lessons or morals in things. Much like Santa, this is a concept that the child will eventually learn is utter ballbags, and the world will be much harder to deal with from then on. Wouldn't it be better to for that Mum to have come out and say

'Gee fucking whiz, that Joss Whedon can write dialogue like a superstar.'

And the kids clamour around her like bats around a hysterical 60's era starlet with big hair, and ask 'But what was the lesson, mama. The moral?'

And she thinks about it, lights a cigarette and takes a swig from her flask of awesome and says -

'I think the moral of the Avengers was that sometimes things happen, and people have to do something about it. And it doesn't really mean much, except that it's cool when Thor hits things and funny when the Hulk does.'

And instead of growing up in a world where they look for ethical guidance from the random chaos around them, they learn to enjoy the meaningless, like when Mark Ruffalo goes mad or Scarlett Johansen wears leather.

The lesson you should get from this article, is that if you haven't seen The Avengers, you really should before some jerk spoils it, like I almost did in this article.

THE SCORE:

1.5/5 stars

Buses

Oh mobile stinklizard, oh wheeled time-bandit.

STARS:

The tiny Lenin that lives in my sternum raises his ineffectual communist fists to the sky and screams a shrill wail of triumph at the thought of the bus. This communal car helping the masses distribute to their places of labour, owned by no-one but the government, obeying the rules only of its own bloated sense of purpose.

Much like the classic film, The Hunt for the Red October, buses are like submarines filled with communist intention trying to blend in with a pod of whales which represent democratic governmental structure. And much like that analogy, while the intent was pure, the result just didn't quite work. Submarines.

LACK OF STARS:

Who can forget the penultimate scene of 'Hunt for the Red October'? With Sean Connery and his beard bristling with barely contained fury, bodily lifting the submarine over the Suez Canal, screaming 'SEE YOU... IN HELL!'

Moses? Put that submarine down, right now.

Unfortunately buses don't have a Sean Connery to lift them from the muck of their own ineptitude, and instead these murmuring, half-broken machines bumble around our streets with all the ineptitude of a Rob Schneider with ten broken fingers trying to call his own mother on a tiny smartphone. And then acting.

Trying to make sense of a buses timetable is about as rewarding as watching Doctor Who with two harpoons jutting out of your eyes and then trying to logically analyse the linearity of plotlines. Sometimes in order to swallow the rising apoplexy, I imagine that each bus must skirt the edge of a black hole, warping space and time and endangering everybody on board. It only helps a little bit.

And now that it's winter (again? I know, right?), buses become nomadic saunas designed to circulate a fine mist of body stench directly into your lungs. Trickles of black water curl sluggishly around your hefty manbag and the interior temperature is so uncomfortably warm that you fall asleep and drool on a hirsute young man from Sydney Uni.

THE SCORE:

2/5 stars

Small Talk

Moving in the cut-throat world of independent theatre as I do, I've become an absolute master of the crucial skill known as foyer small talk.

THE STARS:

Here's a list of things you absolutely must do:

Be Personable and Fun -

No-one likes a fuddy-duddy bowing from the waist and calling you sirrah from atop his theatre horse. Instead, mix it up and show that you are 'down' with the youth element that convert warehouse spaces into raves and confronting galleries. If there's one thing the theatre world wants apart from money, recognition and purpose in life, it's to feel culturally relevant. Acceptable opening lines when confronting your thespian buds, are phrases like 'How goes it, my demonlords?' Or 'Smashtastic, personally I think there are TOO many women writers' while slapping yourself about the head.

Forget Everybody's Name -

It's really bad form to greet people by their names. All this shows is that the person you are greeting is more important than you are. In fact, one of the best ways to get by when people say hello, is simply to just drool furiously for a few seconds.

It's been a pleasure.

Drink to Excess -

That way, your opinion of whatever travesty you just saw in the theatre, effectively becomes nullified. If you liked it, you'll back it up with all the enthusiasm of a thousand house reds. And if you didn't like it, people will just assume you're drunk. Because you are.

LACK OF STARS:

Here's a list of things you absolutely must not do:

Talk About Theatre -

We get it. You're in a theatre. It means you must be involved in theatre in some way. Therefore you have logically seen other theatre. Boring! Mix it up a little bit. Talk about that time you threw a ferret at someone. Emphasise your point by throwing a ferret at someone.

Ask Polite Questions -

This is a sign of weakness in the turgid swamp of foyer small talk. If you must seek out information, do this in the manner of a Nazi inquisitor or perhaps a drill sergeant. Keep your victim off guard by slamming your fist on the table repeatedly. Consider water torture.

HAVE YOU BEEN WORKING ON ANYTHING NEW, MOTHERFUCKER?
WELL, HAVE YOU?

Ride in on a Motorbike wearing a Whoopi Goldberg Mask While Reciting Aussie Hip-Hop Lyrics in a Dull Monotone -

You can do better than that, man.

THE SCORE:

1/5 stars.

Spontaneighers, if you are part of either the Facebook or Twitter cults, every month I do a call out for what YOU want to see reviewed. You can find me at @patricklenton for Twitter. Or join the fanpage on Facebook! There are no noticeable rewards for either, except more access to my ranting and constant updates of my day to day activities.

Theatre

Shakespeare thrusting his bony thespian fingers back through time and teaching us important lessons about fratricide.

THE STARS:

Allow me to get momentarily real at you. Right now my fingers are like emotion tubes directly into my heart/insecurity centre. I'm going to dredge up some of the crunk lining my aorta and feed it directly into this blog. So, if you can't deal with the reality, you might want to step back and open LOLcats. I've been questioning my life again, my purpose. Why I sacrifice a bunch of stuff (read: all my freaking money, all of it) for my writing. Am I writing the right thing? Should I be trying to get a job on Neighbours? Should I get a pet Emu?

Longtime readers of this blog might remember that I write theatre. Do you want to know the question I'm most commonly asked about being a playwright? Is it:

a) You must be really creatively fulfilled?

b) How soon can I give you money?

c) Why don't you write for film or television?

If you guessed A, you and me are probably going to be great friends. We'll probably get each other, and spend beautiful summer nights sharing some bottles of wine under the stars, talking about art and commitment and dissing on Derrida. If you guessed B then I'd like to request you take me on a helicopter ride.

I'm so rich, my helicopter doesn't make spacial sense. Mwahahaha.

 But if you chose C, then you are 100% correct.

Theatre is seen as a lesser version of its more popular cousins, television and film. Sometimes people are even enlightened enough to appreciate theatre as some kind of ancient grandfather of these new mediums. Even amongst artistic types, theatre is seen as contesting with performance poetry as the practice which will get you the least money or respect. There even seems to be a feeling at acting schools that performing theatre is a kind of test-run before you get that lucrative audition with Home and Away.

But why am I a playwright? Because I stone-cold love writing theatre. There is a feeling of privilege and morbid delight I get when I hand that script over and see people reading my ridiculous words. There is a artistic kinship that I've never experienced in any other form, that is formed by the collaboration between writer, director, actors, designer, musicians etc.

And theatre is a unique artform. It's not a lo-fi film. It's not a novel read out loud. It's not autobiography with friends. It's a vivid, unique and exciting style of storytelling. The experience of sitting in a theatre and watching people perform live is entirely different to any other medium. It's so alive. I'm addicted to the feeling of people sitting in a room cacking there goddamn faces off with laugher. Plus, I really enjoy that it's an artistic form that you traditionally drink alcohol with.

LACK OF STARS:

Holy crap, have you seen any theatre lately? 90% of it is bat shittingly awful. I understand that I'm at a distinct disadvantage – I don't want to think, feel or have my horizons expanded. If your play is about cancer or Bulgarian hooker ennui, or features nude gents flinging faeces at my face to forcefully enlighten me about capitalism, then I am out of that theatre. I'll go and look at some ducks and think about how much I appreciate my family or something. Shit, man. Calm the shit down. And don't even get me started on how goddamn awful most monologues are.

'It's just so... raw'.

And unfairly, this is what most people associate with theatre. And this is what I fight against. Historically speaking, this wasn't even what theatre did for the most part. The Greeks were stupid into comedies. Aristophanes has some plays WHICH STILL MAKE ME LAUGH. I mean, the excessive dildo humour really wears itself out by the fourth act, but maybe dildos were funnier in Ancient Greece. If I had a time machine, I'd deliver that dude a freaking vibrator. He'd lose his shit. And then write a play about it. And the undead king of the stage himself, William H Shakespeare? He wrote a bunch of goddamn comedies. But what do you usually study? Tragedies.

There is a lot of wonderful theatre out there. Some of it classic – I'm a huge Stoppard fanboy. I love Australian theatre – Lally Katz is a personal hero of mine. And some of my peers in Australian theatre at the moment are truly and astoundingly funny and talented. Check out Ali Sebastian Wolf or Alex Cullen when you get the chance. And I'm extraordinarily lucky enough to have gathered a bunch of awesome, talented people to be in a little theatre collective with me, which we call Sexy Tales Comedy Collective.

I don't know what this says about me. Am I arrogant enough to truly believe my writing is better than 90% of all the other theatre out there? That I can redeem theatre with my unique brand of absurd comedy epics? Not... publicly. I don't have a shirt which reads 'My theatre is better than yours'. And not really. Because when it all boils down, I don't write to change or influence or really achieve any goal. I write because I love it. I would write if there wasn't anyone reading or watching. I would write into the void. The question is, would the void write back?

I've kind of lost my train of thought. What have we learnt? Do what you love. Even if it doesn't make you money.  

THE STARS:

4/5 stars.

Trees

TREES

I know I might be barking up the wrong tree, but I'm not going to leaf this subject alone. I'm acorn to share my view. I suppose the root of this stems from all the various branches of botany. If you read until the end, I willow you a great debt of gratitude.

THE STARS:

Oh, hey there eucalyptus, whatchoo up to? Sucking up the nutrients, eh? Mind if I join in? Of course, you do, that's not my role.

Imagine how much better your life would be if you didn't have to go to all the effort of buying and preparing your shitty rice noodles. Yeah, that much better. Slink home and tell your friends, rice noodles. You could be better. You ain't no Wizz Fizz.

Now use your brain lasers to imagine if we could shuffle through life absorbing all the nutrients and bullshit that we need from the earth and directly from the sun's leering face? Pretty sweet, huh. Every morning you shuffle into some big old parkland or something, and just groove in the sun and some sweet ass dirt and then, boom, you're sweet to go.

If that's not enough of an argument to convince you that I have a point, then just imagine this with your old skull microwave:

What if Nazi Germany had been ruled by a tree? Yeah. The word your looking for to describe my argument is irrefutable.

Not entirely convinced, your honour? Allow me to present my next witness. If people were trees, imagine how epic our high-fives would be?

TREE FIVE!

LACK OF STARS:

I know this might dampen the high opinion you all have of me, and believe me that I understand your point of view. I feel slightly monstrous even saying it, and am ready to concede it's probably more my problem than anything else. Indeed, I'd probably keep this secret to myself if I wasn't trying my hardest to overcome it. Intellectually, I know I'm wrong, but sometimes your brain is powerless to conquer the fears in your hearts or bowels. So, here it is, I'll just say it: If people were trees, I wouldn't want squirrels living all up in my junk.

Thank you.

THE SCORE:

5/5 stars.