This is really freaky. Bérubé has a large limb come crashing down in a windstorm; I had the same thing happen this week. That thing is about two feet in diameter at the base, and it smacked down hard on our tomatoes and strawberries (I have no idea what our willow tree had against those poor plants—jealousy might have been the motive, since we water them more).

Bérubé's wife urges him to do the manly thing, get a chainsaw, and chop it up. My wife's first thought was that I get a chainsaw and cut it up for firewood. Her second thought was that I cut it into decorative logs for the backyard. I suspect her third thought, suppressed by the aghast expression on my face, was that I take up chainsaw sculpture as a hobby.

Bérubé sensibly wussed out; I too had visions of a chainsaw bucking against a knot and sending roaring blades whirling through the air to take out a digit, a limb, a cerebral hemisphere. I told her no way and called a tree service.

This is just cosmic synchronicity, man. How can all these similarities crop up simultaneously? They can't…there must be a Schemer behind it all. Maybe David Horowitz is skulking around, cutting through the tree limbs of liberal academics and whispering suggestions to our spouses in an evil plan to cripple us all.

Except…Bérubé is growing a beard; I'm regrowing a beard after shearing it all off in a fit of insanity a few weeks ago. How did Horowitz do that? Mind Control Rays?