Comments on: The Axe

By: miguel

miguel — Wed, 27 Nov 2002 12:35:23 +0000

They definitely do in Austria. Far as I know, they each have their turf — section of a town, etc, so they don’t get in each other’s way — and go around in black outfits with white bill-less caps sweeping chimneys. They visit customers prior to Christmas, distributing little calendars and collecting tips, like members of many other guilds (postmen, volunteer firemen, etc). They are a good luck symbol and if you touch your button, I believe, when you see one you’ll have good luck — your chimney won’t catch on fire or something. But I have never seen one dance or sing like they do in Mary Poppins.

By: tim

tim — Wed, 27 Nov 2002 11:18:17 +0000

Do chimney sweeps really still exist??

By: andy

andy — Tue, 26 Nov 2002 21:53:16 +0000

axe. cut down trees. no trees left. deserts ensue due to, um, nothing keeping the soil together and stuff. hence deserts are expanding.

how’s that for an explanation? can you sleep now, sue?

By: ratty

ratty — Tue, 26 Nov 2002 19:02:20 +0000

i love tools. but i could really do some damage with an axe. PMS and an axe??

NOT.

By: miguel

miguel — Tue, 26 Nov 2002 12:21:41 +0000

Remember, always cut *away* from yourself, CLM. And if you have to stab something into your hand, I recommend a brand-new chisel. They’re so sharp you hardly feel them.

And you’re totally right, zizka, I’d never thought about that before. But you never hear about a mailman shooting up a gun shop, do you, or someone hacking everyone up with a machete in the garden center. Way I see it, you might have to shop at that store again, and they’d kick you out if you had a reputation for murdering their customers.

By: zizka

zizka — Tue, 26 Nov 2002 11:19:31 +0000

Last time I visited my mom in (small town) Minnesota, I was sitting on the front step relaxing when I saw a husky woman in her fifties I didn’t know charging towards me with a bare knife in her hand. I was momentarily startled but then I realized where I was. It turned out that she was headed to my mom’s garden, which she shared in, to cut some broccoli.

My feeling also is that when people buy axes and then go kill perfect strangers for no reason, they don’t kill perfect strangers right in the same store where they bought the axe. Somehow the symbolism would be screwed up.

By: CLM

CLM — Tue, 26 Nov 2002 11:19:01 +0000

Drove a screwdriver through my hand yesterday. Which was nice, being as I hadn’t driven a Dremel blade into my thigh in well-nigh a week.

Tools are not our friends.

By: miguel

miguel — Mon, 25 Nov 2002 16:13:25 +0000

more than anything else, the axe to me represents a new level of opportunity for traumatic personal injury. after what i did to myself with a chisel a few years ago, i approach the tool with trepidation and respect.

By: D

Mon, 25 Nov 2002 15:40:37 +0000

I thought we already had a Sahara desert? Isn’t it in Africa somewhere?

By: Jessica

Jessica — Mon, 25 Nov 2002 07:09:10 +0000

I am going to be up all night trying to figure out what that (above comment) means.

We have a fireplace in our sitting room. It’s very gothic, tall and narrow and the brickwork painted black, really nice against the aged redwood walls of the Arts and Crafts interior. But our landlady thought it’d be cute to put an ivory shag carpet in the room, after refinishing the hardwood floors in the rest of the house. So we have this like firepit with a white shag carpet in front. The phuck we’re gonna light a fire in there and get soot on the carpet, or heaven forfend a loose spark.

Our cat goes out for hours at a time, in the fall and winter, and comes back smelling like someone else’s fireplace. Little sneak.

By: sue

sue — Mon, 25 Nov 2002 06:26:29 +0000

arrghh! give a man an axe and you soon have the Sahara Desert!