When you take a good person and treat them like crap. You have come along, seen something nice and thought, ‘how can I make this situation shitty? Oh, I know, I’ll squat down and actually sh*t on it.
Basically, it is making something desirable or acceptable when an undesirable situation is presented. A rose with thorns intact is consideredunacceptable as a gift, but the florist ''stems" the rose, e.i. removes the thorns to thus create a very desirable product.
First we stem the rose, then we place it in the flowerarrangement. A dozen roses, stemmed and wrapped, is only 39.99 while supplies last.
Its a euphemism for "struggling against love". In the movie "Brokeback Mountain", Jack and Ennis were hired to protect the sheep from wolves.... ie... to _stem_ the wolf attacks. Instead of stemming the wolf attacks, they stemmed the rose... which meant that they were battling against homosexual desires. Essentially, it was used to equate _being overtaken by same-sex-attraction_ to _being overtaken by a wolf attack_ .... and was used as a device to show that the boss saw them as being attacked by love.
1st person: "Trying to have an intelligent debate with you is useless! Its like attacking a bulwark with a buckler!"
Person 2: " Now you're just trying to punch a marlin in the rose bucket."