Thursday, December 3, 2009

One of the reasons why I hate suburbia




There use to be a time in this wonderful country when a home and yard were nearly sovereign territory for the owners. While in some neighborhoods there were justifiable limits on what a family could do on their property, just about anything was okay as long as it did not interfere or harm the people living next door. These were people that bought a house for it to become a home, not some strangely considered investment believing that while they maxed out the credit cards the house would be their piggy bank.

Now in these wonderful preplanned and highly regimented suburban developments full of little drones whose sphincters pucker up to microscopic sizes the moment an errant leaf has the audacity of landing on their prized hunter-green colored lawn spoiling the carpet like flow. Such situations automatically results in the drone mounting his or her equally prized riding lawnmower with vacuum attachment and padded insulated cup holder bringing it to life and spewing forth all sorts of carbon dioxide from the four-stroke engine so the obsessed homeowners can cruise across the lawn to that misguided leaf so that it and any of its brethren will be sucked up, bagged in a non-biodegradable trash bag, and then be dropped off in a landfill to spend several centuries buried.

Making things even more ridiculous these insidious little drones are not only obsessed with keeping their precious yards, despite the near hazardous levels of fertilizers used, pristine. But like some bad example of an East German informant network with neighbors spying on neighbors on violations of the smallest of rules these drones run off and report possible acts of independent thought to the Homeowners Association which in turn acts like some damn Orwellian suburban Big Brother forcing the offender through threat of lawsuit to tow the party line.

Yes, this is the new America where brave men and women put their lives on the line even now to protect property values and "aesthetic guidelines" so the collective group of weasels, chickenhawks, and anal retentive mindless parasites are not visually disturbed by such horrible things as wrecked cars on cinder blocks, empty liquor bottle collection littered about the yard, and the American flag flying proudly in the breeze. What a wonderful country.

Veteran battles homeowners group on flag issue


22 comments:

Rhiannon said...

Well I spent years dealing with homeowners "stuff" and "rules" and regulations. Now I have a different kind of "rules" form the Federal government living on SSI in poverty due to my disability. The "continous" paperwork is mind boggling.

They use "gas hoggers" blowers all around this apartment, many of them going at once with different people running them. Sometimes they put them down on the ground without turning them off. This happened once when a car in the apartment complex here blew up last summer. One of the yard workers here dropped his "running" gas blower and "Ran"...as it laid there in the hot sun on the grass lawn "running"...as the fire trucks came to put out the fire from the truck blowing up it's engine I tried to turn the blower off but didn't know how...and I"m very sensitive to the fumes..so I just kept waving my hands to everyone standing there "gapping" at the firetrucks and not paying attention to me...so I saw the woman manager standing there watching "the scene" and I walked as fast as I could to her and yelled in her ear "that blower is in the grass on"!...she said "Oh my god" and ran over but like me couldn't figure out how to turn it off...it was vibrating and moving around on the ground..the grass was turning brown and heating up! She went and got someone to turn it off but they were to scared to..it was the same man that had run off and dropped the blower when the truck had exploded in the parking lot. So...sigh...I just held my breath and determined to turn that sucker off before another fire started right on the grass right in front of the apartments! I picked this heavy blower up as it vibrated in my hand and I was scared but held it and saw the switch and clicked it off...it was very very hot to the touch.

I'm sorry but some people are so stupid...and whimpy.

Later the manager (who I don't care for because she does NOT do her job) came over to me and thanked me and said "this whole apartment complex could have burned down if you had not figured out how to turn that blower off". I said "you need to tell your landscape "men" how to not run off and leave one sitting there running..it's not too hard to figure out"...when it's 100 degrees outside!

Well, now I feel better! Your post enabled me to let off steam about when that happened. I'm so tired of doing others people's jobs for them because they are not using their brain, "afraid" or just downright lazy!

Hey, where's that cat video you promised me? Or were you just joking?

Rhi

Pammy said...

Unfortunately, this story is becoming all too familiar.

Why anyone would buy...or even want to live...in a community where they have things like "Homeowners Associations" is completely beyond me.

Laura said...

Good grief!
I thought you American's were all about flying your flags!
The poor old coot. Just let him fly his flag. Sheesh!
We have a-holes like the ones you described in my neighbourhood as well. Some people are always looking for something to bitch about.
If it isn't a flag it would be something else.

((Hugs))
Laura

Me said...

Speechless here.

:(

Mike said...

What bothers me most about suburbia is the environmental harms: the elimination of farmland, the polluting commutes, the extension of utilities services ever farther from city centre.

In my part of the world, a 100-year-old dairy farm was told it had to shut down because the people living in a new upper-middle-class neighbourhood didn't like the odour. That's progress.

Randal Graves said...

Makes me think of that episode of the X-Files with the wacko HA boss and his killer tulpa. Edgers should be banned.

These lunatics WANT to be controlled.

Jack Jodell said...

I, too, say let the old Vet fly his flag. "Homeowners' Associations" are nothing but a group of stuck-up snobs who are small-minded, overly controlling busybodies with not enough important and relevant stuff going on in their lives to keep them busy. F_ck suburbia!

Commander Zaius said...

Rhiannon: I have a special hatred reserved just for leaf blowers. Now, I admit I have one as well which I use when the job of dealing with leaves is simply beyond just sweeping. Why do I have a device that I hate? Well it has to do with the very rules about keeping this damn subdivision clean.

Pammy: One of my biggest dreams is to win the lottery which would allow me and the family to leave suburbia behind. I despise the "area" and most of the people I live around but my wife has a very different opinion of subdivisions and the people here.

Sunshine and Hill: One of my biggest revelations about the people of the United States these days is that their patriotism is a mile wife but an inch deep.

Stimpson: Got to love all those mindless parasites wanting to live out in the country but not live with the oddities of country life.

Randal: I have an almost equal hate of edgers. Shit, I just hate yard work and should honestly be living in a third world jungle.

Jack: I figure someone like that colonel should be allowed to fly his freaking stained underwear from the top of his roof if he wanted. He is one of the reasons why those sorry bastards can have their fancy homes.

Kentucky Rain said...

Beach when I read articles such as this I suppose I must consider myself blessed. I live out in the country and my neighbors, bible banging rednecks, live no closed than 1000 feet across the road and just to the north of me. I spent a small fortune and put in a 6 foot fence between me and the guy to the north. The ones to the east cannot be blocked by a fence unless I wanted my place to look like a stockade, so I planted 500 pine trees between the road and my house. Now, instead of looking at rednecks I can look at trees!

Kentucky Rain said...

P.S. I fly a huge American flag from my porch!! It irritates the hell out of these Deep South bible bangers.

Vigilante said...

WTF, Beach! When I moved in here in Sozadee 10 years ago, there was a flag flying on the front porch. By March 2003 it had died, and I took it down. "Good", I said to myself. Last November I bought a brand new Stars & Stripes. Anyone wanting to take it down will have to deal with my Doberwoman (while I just stand there and watch)! I feel the same way with this Vet from the World's Greatest Generation! What the Fook, Man. WTF!!!

goatman said...

♫♫ Little boxes on the hillside, little boxes all the same.
There's a blue one and a pink one and a green one and a yellow one and they're all made of tickey tackey and they all look just the same. ♪♫

Vigilante said...

How'd you do that, Goatman? ♫♫♫♫ Cool! Never saw that in a comment before. (Just fell off the turnip truck.)

SJ said...

@Goatman,
creepy-ass song.

@Beach Bum,
this is ridiculous. The man's a vet. For this to even be a discussion is an insult to the man.
Let him fly the flag as long as he's able or wants to.
-SJ

Commander Zaius said...

Madmike: I envy you and your distance. I keep talking with Dragonwife about moving to a house that while not in the country at least not in a subdivision. But she was raised in one all her life and cannot view life any other way.

As far as flying the flag and irritating the rednecks, several years ago while at my last job and still in the National Guard I became aware that several of my "very patriotic" co-workers had become upset that they were having to cover my weekend shifts while I drilled. Apparently having to cover for my absences while I was serving the country was taking away from their time deer hunting.

Like most of those blowhards, their patriotism was a mile wide but an inch deep. Such devotion to our way of life is one of the reasons why I often think about expatriating.

Vigil: While the battle for the soul of America is far from lost with any manner of possible events able to rekindle it it is times like these that I'm almost overwhelmed with the idea that we lost our national soul years ago and are only waiting for the right events to bring the rotten tree down. That Colonel has earned the right to fly whatever he wants. His neighbors aren't worth the errant dog shit that obsess being dropped in their yards.

Goatman: Yeah, ain't it grand. Sometimes I wonder if all this prepackaged crap and regimented expectations is the reason many people have to find happiness in a pill.

SJ: I agree and like I responded to Jack's comment the Colonel could fly is stained underwear from his flagpole and I would stand guard over it.

Middle Ditch said...

That photo says it all. Awful. The same here but here the houses are all attached. Mostly six or seven in a row and paper thin walls.

Let him have his flag.

Rhiannon said...

Hi Beach Bum, it's me again.

I have a song on my blog that I'd like to share with all my blog friends for the holidays. Hope you'll drop by and give it a listen.

Rhi

Joe "Truth 101" Kelly said...

We all are endowed with enough sense to know what is acceptable and when a person is just being an ass. In this case, the homeowners association folks are being the asses.

Keshi said...

Houses r no longer HOMES u see :)

hey BB tnxx for dropping by! Hope all is well with ya :) TC n KIT.

Keshi.

Commander Zaius said...

Middle Ditch: Being so close with so many rules and stuck up people drives me crazy.

Rhiannon: Just got over there a few minutes ago.

Truth 101: Yeah, but when the lemmings are all in agreement its get tough.

Keshi: Hope your holidays will be great!!

lime said...

come on up to the mountains of Pa where we don't have to worry about lawns becasue all we can grow is moss. also, the single sunny spot in the yard is where my washline is planted and i have the audacity to hang socks and underwear.

Commander Zaius said...

Lime: Now that you mention it I can't tell you how much I mess my Grandmother's clothe line.