Heeeeere's Tony!

Here's a weird thing.
I bet you, in the world of fiction, every psycho serial killer has a kick-ass garden, and rock-had abs.
I mention this having today gone mental with a chainsaw and killed pretty much everything that didn't move in our garden. The pain of doing this hasn't yet caught up with me, so several miles of cycling are on my menu of...well, if not exactly pleasures, then positively-directed pains, tonight. But it was as I was hacking away at weeds and clinging, sticky vine-like nightmares-waiting-to-happen, that the thought struck me that serial killers would have kick-ass gardens, and rock hard abs, all the better to kill you with (Hmm...possible idea for a screenplay - Ab-Man...the next thing to go crunch...might be you...).

I mean, think about it - Jack Nicholson from the Shining? (yeah, that's what I'm calling him - guarantee you, only the serious horror fans know the name of his character, while on the other hand, everybody knows 'Jack Nicholson from the Shining') - handy lad with an axe, if you happen to have an inconvenient tree or a leilandii from Hell.

Freddy Krueger? - anything Edward Scissorhands can do, Freddy Razorhands can do better - perfect for those  ornate topiary sculptures to give the massive green finger to your neighbours. Hell, in the shocking new remake of Nightmare, they even made him a gardener, who just dabbled in the serial killing business!

Jason Vorhees? - Massive, fuck-off machete and a hockey mask. Clearly, he's up for some heavy-duty clearance work, he just has some serious allergy issues.

Michael Myers from the Hallowe'en movies? - Granted, no particular horticultural pedigree, but if you can find me any character in fiction not played by Christopher Lloyd who looks more like a spaced-out, lost-the-will-to-give-a-shit public sector janitor, I'll eat a bowl of french fries right here right now (What am I? Stupid? I'm at least gonna get some pleasure out of losing that bet!). The guy even has his own overalls!

Norman Bates - well, you don't think the Bates Motel keeps itself trim and pretty, do you? Norman's evidently handy with a trowel when he needs to be. Just a shame about the schizophrenic killing-sprees is all...

Jigsaw...Well, granted, he'd probably kidnap the plants as cuttings, nurture them till they were nearly ready to flower, then engineer a trap for them that means the plants have to sacrifice about twelve petals in order to appreciate the wonder of the remainder of their lives...but still, he's a civil engineer - I'm thinking he'd build you a seriously kick-ass ride-along lawnmower.

But best of the lot? Gotta be Leatherface from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I think you need to be Leatherface to tackle our garden. Not only a useful apron, but...well, the signature garden implement...the chainsaw. You're not gonna tell me Leatherface couldn't get good and busy with the brush-clearing.

Ahem...as I said, this all came to me today while gardening with our own mini-chainsaw. It came to me as I was actually swinging the saw through the Triffids that choke our garden to death, and the rain of twigs and leaves and garden detritus was raining down on me. It was all I could do not to launch into a trademark evil-bastard laugh and scream "Die, you green fucks, dieeeee!!!"

Seriously - if you're looking for a serial killer, check out the gardeners operating in the vicinity.
Of course, the good thing from my point of view is that swinging a chainsaw about and nearly going mad on a chlorophyllbath is that it's exercising different muscle-groups from my normal cycle-fest, so hopefully, it'll pay off a little in terms of waking up the rest of my body, so I don't end up with chicken legs supporting a humungoid baked-potato body. Guaranteed, there's no serial killer-cum-gardener that looks like that!