See, the Onceler though the same thing, until the Lorax led a class action lawsuit against him on behalf of all the swome-swans, the humming fish, and the brown barbaloots.
… I don’t suppose the Billingsworths got rich selling people Thneeds?
… this reminds me of a story that, while true and while tragic, is also morbidly hilarious.
Many years ago, I was visiting the town where I grew up. As I was driving somewhere with my parents, I noted some police tape attached to some trees in the forest, so I asked what happened.
Apparently a student was driving on slick roads. A possum ran out onto the road. The student swerved to avoid the possum, flipped their car several times, and smashed their car into a tree. The student died due to the resulting injuries before medical help arrived.
I was like “oh, that’s awful” – and then paused. How, I asked, did they know the reason the student swerved. Was there someone else in the car who survived? Was there some witness to events?
No, was the reply. They know the student was avoiding a possum because they autopsies the possum for time of death.
That gave me pause.
They autopsied the possum. For time of death.
The coroner, as part of an official investigation, autopsied a possum.
And, as absurd as that was, there was one more realization that came with this.
This student swerved hard enough to flip their car and kill themselves via tree… and still hit the possum they died trying to avoid.
How utterly absurd – like, the philosophical concept of absurd style absurd.
That’s … awful. I also don’t understand how tree law applies. The driver was dead: they certainly couldn’t punish them for damage to the tree, assuming there was any. I can understand an investigation into cause of death, maybe into whether the car manufacturer was at fault for some kind of mechanical failure, but … tree law?
clif
Tree law says that if you smash into a tree at a high velocity, odds are the tree comes out better than you will.
Reltzik
I think that I (in a car, with seat belts and air bags) would fair better than a 6″ bonsai tree.
… but it’d still be a risk to myself and my car and my license, and I don’t really have anything against bonsai trees, and I’d have to be pretty drunk for the ability to shout “Banzai!” as I rammed it to seem like a benefit equal to the costs, and that would entail additional knock-in risks to my license. So, pass.
Apparently a student was driving way too fast and likely drunk on slick roads.
I grew up in a small town. They bury drunk students and don’t ever talk about the drinking.
My junior year we lost Todd, a promising sax player and Junior Prom Knight, after he went to the “After SADD” party and subsequently died of a broken neck when his z28 went off the road, slid 140 feet and side impacted a tree. He wasn’t wearing a seatbelt and broke his neck getting tossed into the backseat of his Z28. Meant it was an open casket funeral. Seat belt wouldn’t have been able to save him. Both bumpers were touching, and the tree was in the center console(pre airbags and side impact crash testing). No reason was found for why he went off the road. I saw the car about a week afterwards when I found out where it was towed to.
In deference to the prominent family he was adopted into no toxicology report was done because everyone knew it was alcohol related. With no toxicology report it didn’t go in the newspaper article. Later there was a huge shitstorm when someone, I can’t remember who, proposed displaying the car at the school. I think it should have been done a year later, after Todd’s class graduated. Later when it could have had a ‘good’ impact on bringing the problem up without attacking anyone and starkly showing the potential consequences.
Pretty sure all they need to get a time of death is liver temp—of the human. The opossum would cool to ambience too fast to be useful.
Rose by Any Other Name
The possum time of death was to see if it was killed in that wreck or by a previous car.
They also had to get the student’s ToD.
Apparently the ToDs matched, hence the authorities deciding that it was an attempt to avoid the possum.
i know ppl aren’t the biggest fan of charles, if only b/c he’s married to linda but i suppose everyone being a little bit lgbt is good. (plot twist/game theory: anyoen fully cishet tends to be villainous /shot jk)
Decidedly Orthogonal
Well…. only a Sith deals in absolutes, which being *fully* cishet is.
Dday
Sithet
Fealuinix
Man, I wish being cishet gave me evil mind powers.
Perhaps. Being attracted, and noticing that someone would be attractive if you were into that, are two separate things. Charles may be simply observing, in a roundabout way, “I see why this guy caught Jennifer’s eye.” Or even “I wish I looked that good.” People are complicated.
Li
I do not think that’s what that face is, or that Linda would have reacted with an admonishing “Charles!” if he were supposed to be expressing “I see why that guy got Jennifer’s attention” or “I wish I looked that good”, but YMMV.
StClair
This is why I mark myself (when I do) as a Kinsey 1 rather than a 0. Would I ever…? Probably not, but I take note, and don’t mind saying so.
Nothing direct, but he’s shown appreciation for some of the guys (Jacob I think?) much like Charles is doing here.
He also joked about being willing to blow guys for free pizza.
yak
I haven’t personally observed a correlation between making those kinds of comments/jokes, and engaging in or expressing earnest desire for homosexual sex.
It’s complicated and I’m not a lawyer but basically you can’t just cut down whatever tree you want. It’s serious business that can cost you a small or large fortune.
Yeah, given trees take decades, sometimes even a century or more, to reach full size, produce fruit, etc, they can be a serious money and time investment, and there are laws in various places about conduct regarding them.
Plain Marie
I wish I had know this a few years ago, when our neighbors were trying to convince us to cut down our huge old oak tree that happened to overhang their roof. And also because they wanted more sun. But we had it regularly pruned and inspected. I still resent them asking us to cut it down.
Random832
Basically, imagine how much money you would have to pay someone who owns a huge tree to let you dig it up and go plant it somewhere else.
Now imagine how much it would cost to physically dig up a huge tree with a huge root system and transport it across normal roads to the new location
Now imagine you legally have to pay for all that to replace your neighbor’s huge tree that your dumb ass decided to cut down.
Law that applies specifically to what you can and can’t do with trees.
Like for example who’s allowed to get one cut down, or pruned, what you can do about roots growing into your yard. Its not a simple as “Its growing into my yard so I can lop those bits off.”
Basically, let’s say your neighbour has this annoying tree line next to your house that keeps covering your lawn with leaves.
You may legally cut off branches that overhang into your property.
But you can’t legally go and cut down their trees, if you do, you will be fully expected to compensate your neighbour to replace their trees and full grown trees are EXPENSIVE and sometimes, outright irreplaceable.
You may even be charged 3 times the actual cost of said trees, for reasons I can’t exactly remember, but it may be due to tree age, emotional damages, and just to tell you to screw off for cutting down someone’s trees.
Unlike other property in a garden that may be damaged and destroyed like a mailbox or a cheap fence, trees are worth a LOT of money so the punishments can be very severe for what you may typically just think of as a tree. But it turns out, people are very protective of their OWN PERSONAL trees and will get MAD as heck if you touch them.
The 3 times cost is called Treble Damages and varies from state to state. Sometimes it’s because the tree is an endangered species or otherwise protected, sometimes it’s because there was clear malicious intent and the court wants to stick an extra “fuck you” on for being a dick.
Sam
Treble Damages is what happens when you roll a Nat 1.
Nature is Number 1 and has charged you three times for your crimes against trees. Don’t mess with trees.
Yeah, if you cut down, say, a 150 year old tree, you can’t exactly nip off down to Home Depot to buy another 150 year old tree to replace it. Treble damages for something like that would almost certainly go well into six figures.
Also in some states, you can’t even touch the branches overhanging your yard; if anything, the neighbor is responsible. (In Oregon, for example, you cannot touch any part of a fruit tree that’s growing on your neighbor’s property, not even the parts growing into your yard.)
Masumi
I mean, if you get to pick the fruit that grows on your side, that sounds like a sweet deal to me.
She’s really displaying her double standards here, isn’t she? So blatant. Jennifer can do no wrong, even when she has, and Sal can do no right and gets no quarter, even when she’s trying to be kind and helpful. So effed up.
…no. I mean, if you know someone else’s taste very well, you can tell if that person will find someone hot; but nobody is objectively hot.
S.R.
Eh- there are definitely folks we can point at and go “most people who are into this gender of person will find this one hot”. Kinda like spicy food- yes, any given spicy dish will have some people to whom it’s not all that spicy, but we can still say “this food is spicy”.
Li
Eh. That implies more of a shared type than I think actually exists. There are CONVENTIONALLY attractive people, and even that convention varies from culture to culture, age group to age group.
240 thoughts on “Taught himself”
Ana Chronistic
It’s FINE, Tree Law doesn’t apply to rich, (half-)WHITE people ?
3oranges
Tree law is the only law that does.
Indiana Bones
See, the Onceler though the same thing, until the Lorax led a class action lawsuit against him on behalf of all the swome-swans, the humming fish, and the brown barbaloots.
… I don’t suppose the Billingsworths got rich selling people Thneeds?
Rose by Any Other Name
… this reminds me of a story that, while true and while tragic, is also morbidly hilarious.
Many years ago, I was visiting the town where I grew up. As I was driving somewhere with my parents, I noted some police tape attached to some trees in the forest, so I asked what happened.
Apparently a student was driving on slick roads. A possum ran out onto the road. The student swerved to avoid the possum, flipped their car several times, and smashed their car into a tree. The student died due to the resulting injuries before medical help arrived.
I was like “oh, that’s awful” – and then paused. How, I asked, did they know the reason the student swerved. Was there someone else in the car who survived? Was there some witness to events?
No, was the reply. They know the student was avoiding a possum because they autopsies the possum for time of death.
That gave me pause.
They autopsied the possum. For time of death.
The coroner, as part of an official investigation, autopsied a possum.
And, as absurd as that was, there was one more realization that came with this.
This student swerved hard enough to flip their car and kill themselves via tree… and still hit the possum they died trying to avoid.
How utterly absurd – like, the philosophical concept of absurd style absurd.
Such is the absurd comedy and horror of tree law.
Jamie
That’s … awful. I also don’t understand how tree law applies. The driver was dead: they certainly couldn’t punish them for damage to the tree, assuming there was any. I can understand an investigation into cause of death, maybe into whether the car manufacturer was at fault for some kind of mechanical failure, but … tree law?
clif
Tree law says that if you smash into a tree at a high velocity, odds are the tree comes out better than you will.
Reltzik
I think that I (in a car, with seat belts and air bags) would fair better than a 6″ bonsai tree.
… but it’d still be a risk to myself and my car and my license, and I don’t really have anything against bonsai trees, and I’d have to be pretty drunk for the ability to shout “Banzai!” as I rammed it to seem like a benefit equal to the costs, and that would entail additional knock-in risks to my license. So, pass.
Just_IDD
Apparently a student was driving way too fast and likely drunk on slick roads.
I grew up in a small town. They bury drunk students and don’t ever talk about the drinking.
My junior year we lost Todd, a promising sax player and Junior Prom Knight, after he went to the “After SADD” party and subsequently died of a broken neck when his z28 went off the road, slid 140 feet and side impacted a tree. He wasn’t wearing a seatbelt and broke his neck getting tossed into the backseat of his Z28. Meant it was an open casket funeral. Seat belt wouldn’t have been able to save him. Both bumpers were touching, and the tree was in the center console(pre airbags and side impact crash testing). No reason was found for why he went off the road. I saw the car about a week afterwards when I found out where it was towed to.
In deference to the prominent family he was adopted into no toxicology report was done because everyone knew it was alcohol related. With no toxicology report it didn’t go in the newspaper article. Later there was a huge shitstorm when someone, I can’t remember who, proposed displaying the car at the school. I think it should have been done a year later, after Todd’s class graduated. Later when it could have had a ‘good’ impact on bringing the problem up without attacking anyone and starkly showing the potential consequences.
Koname
My empathic heart is crying for the human and the opossum, meanwhile my absurdist brain is chuckling.
Chaucer59
Pretty sure all they need to get a time of death is liver temp—of the human. The opossum would cool to ambience too fast to be useful.
Rose by Any Other Name
The possum time of death was to see if it was killed in that wreck or by a previous car.
They also had to get the student’s ToD.
Apparently the ToDs matched, hence the authorities deciding that it was an attempt to avoid the possum.
yak
This could be a Discordian koan
Formedras
Or, unfortunately, to Hollywood production conglomerates. Just a $250 fine against NBCUniversal? Really?
sanvi
Can see where walky gets it from a bit more here…
Proxiehunter
Including his bisexuality apparently.
anon
i know ppl aren’t the biggest fan of charles, if only b/c he’s married to linda but i suppose everyone being a little bit lgbt is good. (plot twist/game theory: anyoen fully cishet tends to be villainous /shot jk)
Decidedly Orthogonal
Well…. only a Sith deals in absolutes, which being *fully* cishet is.
Dday
Sithet
Fealuinix
Man, I wish being cishet gave me evil mind powers.
Zero
Being evil is not nice.
Mark
Perhaps. Being attracted, and noticing that someone would be attractive if you were into that, are two separate things. Charles may be simply observing, in a roundabout way, “I see why this guy caught Jennifer’s eye.” Or even “I wish I looked that good.” People are complicated.
Li
I do not think that’s what that face is, or that Linda would have reacted with an admonishing “Charles!” if he were supposed to be expressing “I see why that guy got Jennifer’s attention” or “I wish I looked that good”, but YMMV.
StClair
This is why I mark myself (when I do) as a Kinsey 1 rather than a 0. Would I ever…? Probably not, but I take note, and don’t mind saying so.
JepMZ
I can’t recall what Walky did bisexually
thejeff
Nothing direct, but he’s shown appreciation for some of the guys (Jacob I think?) much like Charles is doing here.
He also joked about being willing to blow guys for free pizza.
yak
I haven’t personally observed a correlation between making those kinds of comments/jokes, and engaging in or expressing earnest desire for homosexual sex.
Mr D phone posting
What is tree law?
BarerMender
I forget. There’s some law of physics that applies when you drive your car into a tree. Named after Asa Gray, I think, but I’m not sure.
Cholma
Tree Law is a real thing. Many a rich person has run a-foul of it thinking they can just cut down any tree they want to.
Cholma
Here’s an article from Atlas Obscura:
Sirksome
It’s complicated and I’m not a lawyer but basically you can’t just cut down whatever tree you want. It’s serious business that can cost you a small or large fortune.
DailyBrad
Yeah, given trees take decades, sometimes even a century or more, to reach full size, produce fruit, etc, they can be a serious money and time investment, and there are laws in various places about conduct regarding them.
Plain Marie
I wish I had know this a few years ago, when our neighbors were trying to convince us to cut down our huge old oak tree that happened to overhang their roof. And also because they wanted more sun. But we had it regularly pruned and inspected. I still resent them asking us to cut it down.
Random832
Basically, imagine how much money you would have to pay someone who owns a huge tree to let you dig it up and go plant it somewhere else.
Now imagine how much it would cost to physically dig up a huge tree with a huge root system and transport it across normal roads to the new location
Now imagine you legally have to pay for all that to replace your neighbor’s huge tree that your dumb ass decided to cut down.
Ray Radlein
TREE LAW! TREE LAW! TREE LAW!
Cholma
Yesssss! Summon the lawyer of the trees!
Needfuldoer
… The Lorax?
Reltzik
Lawrax.
Slartibeast Button, BIA
Unfrozen Cave Man Tree Lawyer!
Shade
Law that applies specifically to what you can and can’t do with trees.
Like for example who’s allowed to get one cut down, or pruned, what you can do about roots growing into your yard. Its not a simple as “Its growing into my yard so I can lop those bits off.”
Sam
Basically, let’s say your neighbour has this annoying tree line next to your house that keeps covering your lawn with leaves.
You may legally cut off branches that overhang into your property.
But you can’t legally go and cut down their trees, if you do, you will be fully expected to compensate your neighbour to replace their trees and full grown trees are EXPENSIVE and sometimes, outright irreplaceable.
You may even be charged 3 times the actual cost of said trees, for reasons I can’t exactly remember, but it may be due to tree age, emotional damages, and just to tell you to screw off for cutting down someone’s trees.
Unlike other property in a garden that may be damaged and destroyed like a mailbox or a cheap fence, trees are worth a LOT of money so the punishments can be very severe for what you may typically just think of as a tree. But it turns out, people are very protective of their OWN PERSONAL trees and will get MAD as heck if you touch them.
Taffy
Can’t charge me if the branch falls on my head and kills me. Checkmate, neighbor.
Reltzik
Sure you can be charged! … if it takes you long enough to die from it.
NO MATTER HOW BAD THE SCENARIO, TREE LAW CAN MAKE IT WORSE!
Gilthwixt
The 3 times cost is called Treble Damages and varies from state to state. Sometimes it’s because the tree is an endangered species or otherwise protected, sometimes it’s because there was clear malicious intent and the court wants to stick an extra “fuck you” on for being a dick.
Sam
Treble Damages is what happens when you roll a Nat 1.
Nature is Number 1 and has charged you three times for your crimes against trees. Don’t mess with trees.
Ray Radlein
Yeah, if you cut down, say, a 150 year old tree, you can’t exactly nip off down to Home Depot to buy another 150 year old tree to replace it. Treble damages for something like that would almost certainly go well into six figures.
Thulcandran
Also in some states, you can’t even touch the branches overhanging your yard; if anything, the neighbor is responsible. (In Oregon, for example, you cannot touch any part of a fruit tree that’s growing on your neighbor’s property, not even the parts growing into your yard.)
Masumi
I mean, if you get to pick the fruit that grows on your side, that sounds like a sweet deal to me.
Ray Radlein
You generally don’t get to; but if nature blows the fruit off the branches and it drops onto your land, you could get a real windfall
Reltzik
Depends on the tree.
If it was an avocado tree, that wouldn’t be a sweet deal. It would be more of a sorta nutty/buttery/creamy deal instead.
anon
maybe it’s similar to bird law 8D https://vocaloidlyrics.fandom.com/wiki/%E5%AD%94%E9%9B%80_(Kujaku)
anon
huh, wrong link lol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gM5DBHb1GV0&ab_channel=FXNetworks
Daibhid C
It’s the thing you have to do for four years before you can study law. See also tree med.
David DeLaney
it is a meme on Twotter
–Dave, precisely because it is a very real and usually unexpected Thing
David DeLaney
eh, i’ll leave that one
–Dave, damn keyboards putting uio all next to each other
ps; and putting the never-to-be-sufficiently-damned CAPS LOCK key right next to the _a_
Rectilinear Propagation
It trended on Twitter when one of the studios cut all the branches of the trees providing shade to actors protesting during the strike.
They were public property but the fine didn’t amount to much.
NGPZ
I am so tired
Of her fucking
DOUBLE STANDARDS!!!
?
Mr D
Do not fuck double standards.
In fact, you should try to avoid fucking single standards too.
Taffy
It’s my flag and I’ll fuck it if I want to.
Jamie
Fucking a pair of battle standards is kinda metal, ngl.
Plain Marie
She’s really displaying her double standards here, isn’t she? So blatant. Jennifer can do no wrong, even when she has, and Sal can do no right and gets no quarter, even when she’s trying to be kind and helpful. So effed up.
Sirksome
I wish the Walkertons would go away forever now. That’s even with Charles trying to charm us with his knowledge of tree law.
UrsulaDavina
Eh I’d be more impressed if he broke down bird law.
Coatl
I’m just wondering, what kind of event is necessary for them to learn to use neurons correctly for the first time in their lives?
anon
i can see the ‘walky-ness’ of this, maybe linda and him got married bc no one else would tolerate this side of him lol
Taigan
Is mister Walkerton having an… appreciation of the male form something that’s been established before?
cbwroses
I don’t think so.
Shade
I mean you can realise someone is hot without finding them sexually attractive personally.
eh, whatever
…no. I mean, if you know someone else’s taste very well, you can tell if that person will find someone hot; but nobody is objectively hot.
S.R.
Eh- there are definitely folks we can point at and go “most people who are into this gender of person will find this one hot”. Kinda like spicy food- yes, any given spicy dish will have some people to whom it’s not all that spicy, but we can still say “this food is spicy”.
Li
Eh. That implies more of a shared type than I think actually exists. There are CONVENTIONALLY attractive people, and even that convention varies from culture to culture, age group to age group.