Murder in the First

A few months ago I was tuned in to the documentary "Who killed the electric car?", a bleak tale of the birth and death of a short-lived idea freeing us from the greasy depths of oil-reliance: a car that runs on electricity. " Oh, what a great idea!" one thinks when watching the electric fetus emerge from the environmentalist womb. Visions of wars ending, smoggy airs parting, and smiling drivers exiting cars and plugging them into earth-conscious sockets start flashing in the mind. I imagined the fall of American imperialism and the possibility of peace, harmony...but then the tale takes a turn for the worse as the Bush Administration and oil companies sabotage the the invention to preserve their investment interests. As a result the electric cars are secretly sent away to an EV1("electric vehicle") burial ground somewhere in Arizona. I remember watching the footage as an aerial shot panned over the dumping grounds for these earth-preserving cars and envisioning their metal shells as corpses...left to die in a mass grave in silence. And littering the land to boot.
This reminded me of an equally saddening sight: the fate of Christmas trees after Christmas. Today marked the first day of my annual tree sighting. All splayed out on the curbside sans lights, decorations or love, the post-Christmas evergreen has continually filled me with a feeling of sadness. I've always felt that the sight of them on the street was a cause for mourning or the impetus for a moment of silence. These trees, plucked from their homes and carted to unfamiliar environments, drowned with water and dressed up with pomp and glitz, used and abused, are then discarded without a second thought as soon as the party has ended. The whole act has a tone all too similar to that of procuring a prostitute.
On the first day of their disposal, the trees still seem to have life in them. With their pre-attached tree stands they could easily be hoisted up into their original position and lined up in rows to ornament the street for a week or two. They could in fact live the extent of their lives and die naturally ( I'm sure they've been watered enough inside their respective brothels).
But today in Oakland, CA I saw the worst disposal of a holiday-prostitute-tree to date: the homicide, cover-up and disposal, mafia style.
This makes me appreciate my new family tradition of celebrating festivus....no tree, no gifts, no pomp and glitz. Next year while everyone else goes murdering trees, there'll be a festivus for the rest-of-us.