A winner and trees

For all of you who participated in choosing the topic of one of my next blog posts, I have an announcement for you. Polls closed at midnight last night, the votes have been tallied up, and a winner has been chosen! Exciting stuff, right? Just to refresh your memory, the candidates were:


6) My thoughts on the prison system in the United States.

5) On being an outcast.

4) Why Jesse "the Body" Ventura would make an excellent president.

3) The night I spent sleeping outside of an airport in Italy.

2) How I met Ben, the love of my life.

1) The time I met Jason Schwartzman and was featured in a Phantom Planet music video (at age 16).


It was a really close race. First of all, thanks to everyone who voted. You make me feel like this blog is worth keeping up with. Really! I wouldn't just say that. Second of all, I have decided that I will eventually post on all of the topics listed above, just because so many of you told me to. I am happy that you are interested in hearing about my memories and opinions. That's pretty cool. The topic that got the most votes, but only won by one vote, was the how I met Jason Schwartzman option so I think I will do that one first. It's a pretty fun memory. I would tell you about it now, but I wanna leave some suspense with you.



On an unrelated note, I want to talk about something that keeps happening in my neighborhood: the cutting down of trees. I live in the city, mmmkay? We have a few parks and some trees growing out of the sidewalk, but that's about it. We have animals like birds and squirrels and other such city dwellers that live in those few trees. The city keeps cutting them down.

Two trees were removed from right outside of our apartment two years ago-- trees that we depended on for shade and privacy. Now they're gone. A year ago, two more trees were cut down across the street from where we live. These are all really old, huge trees, mind you, that large birds of prey would hang out in. I once spotted a hawk or an eagle or something like that sitting on a large limb of that tree and snapped a photo from my window (posted above). It was so big and majestic, I couldn't believe something like that lived just 50 feet from me.

You can imagine how disappointed I was when I saw the notices of removal posted on those trees. Ben even went to a community meeting with the people who wanted the trees removed and tried to convince them to not cut them down for the sake of the birds who called them home. The city wanted them down because branches were falling and getting in the road. I understand it's a safety concern, but isn't that why you should be trimming the trees every so often so loose branches don't fall in the first place? Cutting down the trees as a solution to falling branches is like getting all your teeth pulled out because one is aching. It makes no sense.

Now, just down the street from me, I saw two more trees with removal notices tagged on them. I can only hope that some other people in San Francisco feel the same way about the trees and want to save them. If they do get cut, at least it's winter and birds aren't nesting in the branches. When they cut the trees across the street they did it in the spring when unsuspecting baby birds were helplessly trapped in their nests. Sometimes, I swear that our society is run by a bunch of f*cking morons.