Grass. No, I’m not talking about the kind you "didn’t inhale," Mr. Politician. I’m talking about the kind that grows on people’s lawns. You see, I have a problem with grass—and I’m not even allergic to it. My problem is, the stuff doesn’t bloom, it doesn’t produce fruit, and in August, it begins to look worse than an aging Hollywood starlet. In my opinion, it serves no practical purpose in the vegetal world, it’s a pain in the ass as a decorative ground cover, and it’s not very aesthetically pleasing. Who came up with this ridiculous excuse for a plant, anyway? And why do we all just mindlessly accept the chore of its constant upkeep, when there are other options out there that make so much more sense?
Well, dear audience, I have a theory as to why. It goes something like this: grass is really a clever behavior-controlling device that has been implanted on the earth by aliens. Think about it. It’s not really that far-fetched, is it? Consider what we do for this silly little pest: without question we cultivate it, we feed it, we groom it, we nurture it in even the most hostile environments, even, it seems sometimes, against its own will! There are the odd people out there who even talk to this plant. (They must be further along in the whole alien-control deal than the rest of us.) Does any of this behavior make sense? No. And yet we do it, day in and day out, and no one even bothers to ask why we started doing this in the first place. I mean, did you ever stop to imagine what kind of idiot sat down at the dinner table one night and said, "Honey, we don’t seem to spend enough time outside these days. Why don’t we plant something all around the entire house that will require regular upkeep? And hey, if it was not native to the area, that would make it more susceptible to changes in our weather and require even more work! And, oooh, what if it could turn brown and ugly in the winter, and die off in strange little patches for no visible reason? Wouldn’t that be great??"
I honestly don’t think that the above conversation ever happened. I think that something far more diabolical is at hand. Something sinister, like the domination of the commercial world by Wal-Mart and Starbucks–but far worse! This weedlike plant is, as we speak, surrounding our very homes and populating in every suburban community across America. And we are promoting it through our behavior. It must be stopped. I say, people of America, unite! Turn off those lawn mowers! Throw away those edgers! Toss out those tools and chemicals of oppression! Plant a native ground cover! Plant a flower or vegetable garden! Plant a rock garden, for Pete’s sake; it requires nothing of you! Think of all the hours that you have slaved away on this plant, the hours of your life that you have wasted in mowing, aerating, weed’n’feeding. Take those hours back! Free yourselves! Tear it out, and then sit back and sip lemonade in comfort on your porch. It will be good for your soul, and for your country. And it will prove to those aliens once and for all, that we humans are not as easy a catch as they may think we are.
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